Airline review: Underwhelming flight was good, until it suddenly wasn’t

The flight

Brussels Airlines, Athens to Brussels; Airbus A320; economy class; duration 3 hours 11 minutes.

Frequency

Daily.

Brussels Airlines, economy: we arrive to a seatful of cookie crumbs.

The loyalty scheme

Miles & More. Brussels Airlines is owned by Deutsche Lufthansa AG and often code shares with siblings Austrian, Lufthansa and SWISS, all fellow Star Alliance members.

Carbon emissions

My Co2 emissions are 0.381 tonnes. Brussels Airport is a key testing ground for aviation sustainability and the airline is equally environmentally innovative from Green Fares (proceeds help purchase more sustainable aviation fuel) to dry washing planes saving 2000 litres of water per wash. Brussels Airlines aims to be carbon neutral by 2050; they have already decreased CO2-emissions per passenger by 46 per cent by updating to an Airbus-only fleet.

Checking in

It’s our luck we’ve checked in online and have only hand luggage. For many European countries it’s the last weekend of June school holidays and Athens airport is heaving at all check in counters, Brussels Airlines included. We sail on past straight to security. Yassou!

The seat

14A leather seat with a pitch of 30 inches (76 centimetres) and 18 inches (45 centimetres). The appearance of the plane is smart with a snazzy red and navy colour palette and hello, what do we have here? There’s a seat full of cookie crumbs, as though a holidaying Hansel and Gretel have just been topping up their tans.

Baggage

Our base Eco Lite tickets include eight kilograms of carry on and a generous extra 40 x 30 x 10 centimetres personal bag. A 23 kilogram checked bag costs €25 ($42), or free with a higher fare ticket.

Entertainment

There are no seatback screens on inter-Europe hops so I’ve loaded up the kids with sticker books and a charged iPad.

Service

Service onboard is warm and friendly. There are four cabin crew for today’s 156 (capacity is 180). When delayed 30 minutes due to a runway closure in Brussels, water is quickly delivered when requested for my thirsty kids. Likewise the captain communicates the delay’s cause and announces they will blast the air conditioners on maximum for comfort in the cabin.

Food

Healthy, organic food on an airline, what? Belgian partner company Foodmaker is environmentally focused using recyclable materials and their own farm grown vegetables in items like salmon wraps and green chicken curries. But their Fries in the Skies (6.50 euros) hot chippies are the winners on the day.

One more thing

For our connecting overbooked flight from Brussels to Munich we accept a call for volunteers with the incentive of €250 per person to move to a later flight (including being re-routed to a slightly more convenient Frankfurt). Directed to contact Deutsche Lufthansa AG for compensation, they oddly deny both overbooking and compensation. The later flight is then delayed, meaning we miss the last train to our final destination.

The verdict

The Brussels Airlines experience was good, until suddenly it wasn’t. The combined seat crumbs, price (not that low), overbooked flight, delay, misleading Brussels ground crew and ghosting post flight by uninterested customer service undermine an environmentally progressive airline. Were they having a bad day? Unfortunately, the lasting feeling is an underwhelming ‘meh’ to Belgium’s national flag carrier.

Our rating out of five

★★

The writer flew at her own expense.

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