Air Serbia A319 economy class, Stockholm to Belgrade
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01. Trip report introduction
02. Air Serbia A319 economy class, Stockholm to Belgrade
03. Air Serbia ATR72 economy class, Belgrade to Zagreb
04. Croatia Airlines Dash 8 economy class, Zagreb to
05. Sheraton Zagreb Hotel, Zagreb
06. Primeclass Lounge, Zagreb Airport
07. Croatia Airlines/Air Nostrum CRJX business class, Zagreb to Copenhagen
08. SAS A321 economy class, Copenhagen to Stockholm
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| Stockholm (ARN) to Belgrade (BEG) |
Date: 2018-06-02
Flight number: Air Serbia JU411
Aircraft: Airbus A319
Registration: YU-APC
Age of aircraft: 12 years
Duration of flight: 2:33 (gate to gate) - one minute more than to Paris... :)
Seat: 15A (economy class)
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| Seat map with my seat (15A) in red. Courtesy of Seatguru.com |
It was time to get this Sarajevo trip started, and my parents and I met on the train headed for Arlanda. The flight to Belgrade had a 10 am scheduled time of departure, which in my opinion is practically perfect. I prefer when the flights depart somewhere around 8-10, as that usually gives you enough time at your destination as well (at least if you're going on a short haul flight...)
Air Serbia do provide online check-in, but only for certain departure airports, and Arlanda is not one of them. Therefore, we had to check in at the airport. When we arrived at the counter, the agent informed us that the flight would be 45 minutes late (this was obviously BS, as the flight hadn't even departed from Belgrade yet, but I guess the agent didn't want to be the one breaking the bad news to us...) She informed us of what we needed to do, if we were to miss our connection in Belgrade. When I asked for our boarding cards for the Belgrade-Sarajevo segment, she told us she couldn't get the computer to print them for some reason. I'm guessing they had already decided to rebook us, and that they knew all along that we wouldn't make our connection.
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| At ARN Terminal 5, ready to start a new adventure! |
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| Check in for Air Serbia |
It took half an hour to get airside this morning, so there were a lot more people at ARN today compared to all my previous flights this year. Not that we were in a hurry, as we had to wait for our plane to make the two and a half hour flight form Belgrade first...
Our departure gate was F59, which meant I was back to my usual gate after getting F58 when travelling to Dubai. As I explained in that post, a friend of mine usually gets F58, whereas I've only gotten it that one time. I've often been across the hall, at F59 instead...
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| Waiting area in the F pier of Terminal 5 |
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| Wondering what this trip will be like if we don't make our connection... |
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| I thought this 90 minute delay was optimistic, but we actually pushed back at 11:37 |
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| Let's see how fast we can turn this bird around... |
As we waited to board our plane, I started looking at possible connections. The one that made most sense to me was connecting with Austrian via VIE, as that would mean that we wouldn't have to wait that long in Belgrade (but still arrive in Sarajevo well after 8pm). There were also seats left on those two flights, so if we were in fact missing our connection, I was keeping my fingers crossed by this time that I would get two more flights with the Austrian flag carrier, after flying them for the first time in April this year.
Boarding started only 22 minutes after the plane had arrived at the gate, so this was a really quick turnaround.
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| I really like the tail fins of Air Serbia's livery! |
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| The Serbian flag next to the door. It's impossible to see here, but this plane's name is "Novak Djokovic", in honour of the tennis player |
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| Seat 15A, mine for this hop to Belgrade |
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| Decent seat pitch |
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| Preparing for poletanje (at least I'm guessing that that's take-off in Serbian...) |
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| Thundering down the runway |
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| Bye-bye, Stockholm! |
Soon enough, we were flying just east of the east coast of Sweden, with nice views of the Baltic sea and the islands Gotland and Gotska sandön. Gotland is one of my favourite places in Sweden, but now it's been six years since I last visited it (flying SAS to the tiny Visby Airport (VBY)).
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| A great day for flying! |
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| The uninhabited island and national park Gotska sandön |
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| Passing Visby located on the island of Gotland (the tiny airport, VBY, is to the left in this picture) |
Less than half an hour after take-off, they started the lunch service. I was happy to see that Air Serbia include something to eat in the ticket price, at least on this flight. I'm not sure about their super short-hauls in the Balkans.
We had the option of "chicken or vegetable wrap", and it was an easy choice for me. The vegetable wrap with carrots, red cabbage and red bell peppers was actually really tasty. With that, I had a Schweppes tonic water to drink. It was actually a full size can of soda, as opposed to many other airlines who try to win the competition for tiniest soda can...
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| Today's lunch! |
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| Carrot, cabbage and bell pepper wrap - two thumbs up for this lunch! |
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| One of my favourite views! |
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| Getting cloudy as we get further south in Europe |
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| Lamps and air vents on this A319 |
A while after the lunch service, they brought the cart back through the aisle, but this time with food for purchase, if anyone wanted anything else. I was perfectly happy with the lunch included in the ticket.
I napped for a few minutes (despite the fact that the people in row 16 were making quite the hubbub), and soon enough, we started our descent towards BEG. Apart from the delay, this had been a pleasant flight. Friendly cabin crew, good food, and decent seats. We landed some ten minutes after our flight to Sarajevo had taken off, so we got to get more acquainted with Nikola Tesla Airport. As we didn't make our connection, it turned out that the Air Serbia ground crew in Belgrade were also professional in how they handled our delay, but more on that in the next post.
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| Almost there! |
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| Touchdown! Welcome to Belgrade! |
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| Enjoying some Serbian air outside Nikola Tesla Airport (BEG) |
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