STR – SKG HF 1741
06.05 h – 09.25 h
August 6th, 2001

Boeing 737-8K5 without winglets
D-AHFY
Actual dep. : 06.20 h
Seats 10 A+B / 12 A+B


My 2 week holiday in Greece started when my father drove me and a friend of mine to the airport at about 05.00am. We had already checked-in our lugage the day before.
Terminal 4 at STR was pretty crowded that morning at it took a while to get to our gate.
At about 05.35 we were bussed to our 737-800 which surprisingly wasn't equipped with winglets which dissapointed me a lot.
The next dissapointment occurred when we boarded our plane a saw that row 10 and 11 (we had 10 A+B) didn't have windows on the left side.
I was really pissed at that time.
Why in the world does this plane not have windows in 10,11 A ?? The other side does by the way.
After take-off we moved to row 12 since two seats including a window were not occupied. Plane was about 85 % full.

Anyway, so a few minutes later we taxied to runway 07. We were number 2 for take-off after a Condor 757-200.
We took off and climbed to our cruising altitude of 37000 feet. Another thing that surprised me was that they only switched the seatbelt signs of after we had reached our cruising altitude after about 20 minutes just behind Munich.
At that time a light breakfast was served which consisted of a roll, butter, ham, orange juice and some desert. A drink service followed. It was alright for a charter airline I guess.
After breakfast, they came around with their inflight shopping and I asked an f/a whether I could go visit the cockpit which was denied. The pilots didn't say a lot inflight and they didn't seem to be nice fellas.
We passed Salzburg, Klagenfurt, flew across Yugoslavia and Macedonia to approach Salonica airport from the East.
We touched down at 09.16 h local time and taxied to the small apron where we parked next to another HF 738. Behind an Aegan RJ 100 came in.

Got our lugage and were driven to our resort about 2 hours south-west of Salonica.
Had a nice vacation there but I'm also glad to be back here in Germany.



SKG – STR HF 1742
18.10 h – 19.45 h
August 20th, 2001

B 737-8K5 with winglets !
D-AHFJ
Actaul dep. : 18.08 h
Seats 6 A+B

We arrived at SKG airport around 2 hours prior to departure to check-in for our trip home. The line was pretty long already.
Fortunately we got good seats this time, row 6 A+B.
SKG airport is not very nice, small and was overcrowded.

The plane came in early from Hamburg and so we were already bussed to the plane at 17.30 h.
There was a big smile on my face when I saw the plane with winglets coming in as I knew this was gonna be our plane for todays flight.

This time the pilots were a lot nicer than they guys on our inbound flight. They gave us information on the ground about our airplane including the new winglet-technology and told us other facts like weight (67 tons) and altitude, …
We taxied to runway 28 and started an immediate take-off roll after turning onto the runway.
Soon we reached our cruising altitude of 39000 feet at Mach 0.79 and turned Northwest towards Skopje. We passed Macedonia, south Hungary, Graz, Salzburg, Munich and then started our approach into STR.

After our small dinner was served (horrible) and they were finished with their inflight shopping + beverage service I asked an f/a again to chec whether a cockpit visit was possible. A minute later I was invited to do so.
Both pilots were pretty young and nice. Since I was wearing a Lufthansa Poloshirt the pilot immediately asked why I did so.
I told him I was just into aviation and I had a nice conversaton with them.
He told me that there's hardly a difference of flying the normal 738 and flying the 738 with winglets.
After about 20 minutes in the cockpit we passed Salzburg were thunderstorms reached about to about FL 380. WE turned to the left for 10 degrees to avoid them and continued towards MUC. AT that time he asked me to return to my seat since this was a trainee flight for the first officer. He would have allowed me to ride the jumpseat for landing but due to the fact that it was a trainee flight he wanted me to return to my seat. Just try next time again he said.

At 19.12 local time we touched down on runway 25 at STR and taxied to the apron. We were bussed to the terminal and our lugage was immediately there.

Generally a nice trip on HF – the 737-800 is a nice plane.
Inflight they showed some short reports on the history of the airline as well as some holiday destinations and the “airshow”.

Hope you liked the trip reports.
Comments would be much appreciated.
Best regards,
B737-700