Avis du vol entre Tel Aviv et Athens en classe Economique avec SkyUp Airlines

Hello and welcome to this review of the flight from Ben Gurion Airport (TLV) to Athens-Eleftherios Venizelos Airport (ATH), which I took on 30 September 2024 on my way to a family trip in China.

Unfortunately, since this trip was with my family, I did not take many pictures of the flight: this report in particular will be very image-poor, with the exception of the tourism bonus, and I can only offer my apology for this.

While the flight itself doesn't have special significance to me, the fact it was to Athens does: my second-ever flight, and the first one I have memories of, was to Athens in 2006 - when I was at the tender age of four - as part of a family vacation to Skiathos, which was my only time in Greece until then.

BACKGROUND

During much of October 2024, me and my family (my parents, my siblings, and myself) went on a three week trip to China, visiting Hong Kong (2-7.10.2024), Beijing (7-13.10.2024), Xi'an (13-14.10.2024), and the Guilin area (14-18.10.2024) (the Guilin portion of the trip included an night in Guilin city proper (14-15.10.2024), and visits to Ping'an Village (15-16.10.2024) and Yangshuo (16-18.10.2024)). Although we originally planned to fly from Israel immediately to China (TLV-ZRH-HKG), and back from China immediately to Israel (HKG-FRA-TLV), we had to change our flight plans due to the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East which happened around the same time, resulting in us extending our trip to include stops in Athens (30.9-1.10.2024) and Larnaca (19.10.2024).

This was not only my first time ever in Hong Kong and China, but my first time anywhere east of Tbilisi. The trip was overall very enjoyable, though I did find the increased surveillance and police presence in Mainland China bothersome: I had to carry my passport with me, instead of leaving it at a safe in my hotel room like I'm used to do in the west (and like I indeed did in Hong Kong).

Internet censorship in Mainland China was less of a problem than I feared: my mobile data package gave me uncensored internet access, while as for Wi-Fi networks, I installed a VPN on my devices in advance. The VPN worked well overall, only having some hiccups in the afternoon.

The final flight itinerary for the trip was:

The itinerary also included high-speed trains G307 (Beijing → Xi'an) and G319 (Guilin → Hong Kong).

BEN GURION AIRPORT - TERMINAL 3

Me and my family arrived at the Airport by 13, around two hours before the scheduled departure time. Although security and passport control went smoothly, I remember that the check-in process had hiccups (though I couldn't confirm it). What definitely was a problem, however, was the fact that there were two Israir flights to Athens scheduled to depart that day at around the same time: 6H561 (which departed after an hour's delay) and 6H565 (which was first delayed for five hours, then cancelled entirely). We were first initially worried we'd have to replan or even cancel the trip to China at the last minute, but eventually we found out our flight was 6H561.

For lunch, we went to the McDonalds at the food court; I had the Big Premium burger (formerly known as the Mega Big America), which is largest burger offering anywhere in the world, which is an Israel-exclusive menu option (and my usual order in McDonaldses in Israel). It was the usual mediocrity, although blander than in other McDonalds due to the Ben Gurion airports branch being kosher (and therefore lacking cheese). I opted to order it instead of the chicken nuggets (my usual for Terminal 3's branch) because my family had an entire "pool" of them to be shared by all of us.

Due to the security situation in the Middle East at the time I took my flight, most European airlines, including SWISS and Lufthansa, cancelled their flights to and from Israel. Because of this, we adjusted our flight plans from the originally-planned "direct" routes (where we'd fly from TLV directly to a layover in Zürich, and from a layover in Frankfurt directly to Tel Aviv - there were no true direct flights between TLV and HKG at the time), we instead opted to re-route the flights to other nearby airports - Athens for the onward leg and Larnaca for the return leg - and plug the gap using an Israeli carrier. Since the flight was held during the Tishrei holiday season, and El Al doesn't fly on Saturdays and Jewish Holidays, our choice was limited to Israel's other two - much smaller - airlines, Arkia and Israir.

Arkia and Israir are similar in many respects; both of them are leisure airlines with a small fleet consisting predominantly (or in Israir's case, entirely) of Airbus A320s, with a network centered mostly around European - particularly Greek - destinations, as well as domestic flights to Eilat, with the planes' amenities and service level being generally comparable to most European airlines (read: noticeably spartan in comparison to El Al). Despite both of them launching ambitious expansion plans that includes wide-body fleets and services to North America and Asia, they are not true competitors for El Al, and I doubt that their ambitions can be realized without both of them merging into one company and getting extensive help from a large foreign backer (such as Air France-KLM, the Lufthansa Group, or IAG).

Israir's flights are ultimately those we went with. However, because of the small fleet size, both Israir and Arkia frequently resort to wet-leasing planes from other companies to increase their capacity: This particular flight, for example, was done by Ukrainian low-cost airliner SkyUp.

Since civilian flights in Ukraine are currently suspended as their safety cannot be guaranteed due to the Russo-Ukrainian War, SkyUp has moved to a model of wet-leasing planes to other companies as a consequence. In an interesting coincidence, the SkyUp plane I flew on was wet-leased by Arkia between June and July 2024, and wet-leased by Israir until October immediately afterwards.

At around 14:24, our plane connected to the gate.

Its appearance baffled some of my AvGeek friends I made online, as despite being a very old 737 with the eyelash windows, it also had Split Scimitar winglets (retrofitted at some point between November 2018 and April 2019).

THE FLIGHT ITSELF

Aircraft Information:
UR-SQD
Boeing 737-73V (serial number 32413, line number 1202)

Delivered new to EasyJet (as G-EZJR) on 20 August 2002 (which operated it until July 2009) and acquired by SkyUp on 26 October 2018; 22 years and 2 months old at the time of the flight.

This was my first (and as of the initial writing of this report, the only) time flying on that plane.

SkyUp has an all-Boeing 737 fleet, with 8 737-800s and 2 737-700s. In both of these, the entire plane is taken up by an economy class with ACRO Series 3 Recline seats, having the standard 3-3 configuration with 32-inch pitch and 17-inch width (which I fit in easily). The seats themselves were rather cheap, but did not feel uncomfortable on this flight. However, they do lack amenities such as charging plugs and device holders.

There was no in-flight entertainment whatsoever.

As SkyUp itself is a low-cost carrier, having cheap and simple seats without much in the way of Amenities is understandable - in fact, Israir proper's fleet is similarly spartan.

Although boarding began on time at around 15, the takeoff was delayed by an hour, so for a while, all I had to see out of the window was a view of the (absolutely horrible) Dan lounge in the B concourse:

However, since I was sitting in a window seat, I had the opportunity to take this takeoff shot:

The plane's door was improperly closed, with the handle left in the open position. I wanted to alert the cabin crew to this, but my parents insisted otherwise. However, the flight itself was unremarkable and went without issues.

As there was no in-flight entertainment, I entertained myself by watching the assorted few HaPijamot episodes I had saved to my iPad. The flight time was just enough for three episodes, which was more than sufficient entertainment.

There was no meal service, but there was free water available for passengers. The cabin crew was friendly and helpful.

Before I knew it, it was already time to land. The approach was stunning at first with its over-water portion, but quickly made way to a village scene that was (in my opinion) somewhat miserable to watch:

While Taxiing, we passed by a former Olympic Airways 737-200, which is now used as a training aircraft for fire and rescue:

Our plane was taxied to a remote stand, and shutte-buses carried us to passport control. From there, we went to baggage claim - which looked as unimpressive as I remember it being back in 2006 - and from there, an airport shuttle van came to pick us up to our hotel.