This tripreport covers my recent trip to Milano.
The reason for this trip was simple, to fly Lufthansa Italia before they are gone, so I started looking at some fares from Stockholm on their last days of operation in late October, since I would be on a break from school by then. The fares were great at 49 EUR to MXP, but problem was the timing of the flight, which required a night spent in Milano, something which I wanted to avoid since I wanna make it a day trip. So what I did was that I started to look at fares to ARN from MXP. Fares were the same, and since the flight left MXP at 17:30, I had plenty of time to reach MXP the same day.
When thinking of how to get to Milano, I realized that easyJet, an airline I hadn't flown, has quite alot of operation at both CPH and MXP, so I checked for a flight from CPH to MXP, and on the 25th of October they had a perfectly timed departure at 11:25 with arrival at 13:30, for about 30EUR. To get to CPH I chose the morning DY departure, since they were about 20 EUR cheaper than SK, at 30 EUR. I quickly booked all three flights. I later added Speedy Boarding on my EZY flight.

The night before departure I did OLCI on my LHI flight and printed out a boarding pass for my U2 flight. Too bad DY don't offer online check-in.

25th of October

I'm being driven to ARN by my mother, and while being on the final straight to the terminals, I get an SMS from Norwegian, telling me that my flight is delayed by 10 minutes, and have a new departure time of 8:50, no biggie, I still have enough time at CPH for my transfer.

I'm dropped off at ARN T2 and head into the terminal. It's quite alot of fog out today, classic October weather.



I head inside and choose my seat for the flight and print out my boarding pass at a self service kiosk.

Landside T2:


Mine is the only flight posting a delay:


I decide that there is not much to do landside so I head through security to get airside. A short 2 min queue and a quick security check and I'm through.

I don't really like airside of T2. It has low ceiling, it's crowded, it's narrow and some gates has far to little seating. Luckily it was recently announced that they will upgrade parts of ARN, T2 included.



Although, if you leave the main gate area and walk towards the non-schengen part, there is a rather nice area right before the passport control.



When waiting, i notice that the departure time has been pushed forward an additional 10 minutes. After five minutes, another five minutes is added, and our new departure time is 9:05. Still no need to be worried about my connection at CPH. Should have a good 40 minutes there before the gate for my EZY flight is closed.

My gate without a plane.


Sooner or later, our aircraft arrives and the passengers from the previous flight disembarks. Our boarding is called before the last disembarking passengers hasn't even left the jetway. I guess they want a quick turnaround to reduce the delay as much as possible.

My aircraft arriving in the fog.


And at its place before docking to the jetway. No bump on the fuselage roof, so no inflight internet today.


DY3195
ARN-CPH
Boeing 737-800
LN-NOJ “Tycho Brahe”

I head down the jetway and since I'm seated at row 21 I board via the rear stairs. Always nice to walk on the tarmac next to the plane.



Tycho Brahe will do the honors of transporting me to CPH today.


I greet the FA at the back galley, he answered me so low and quick that I couldn't figure out what Scandinavian country he was from.

The plane felt rather new, but it wasn't new enough to have the Sky Interior. Too bad, I've flown with it it once, when all overhead lockers are closed the cabin feels really roomy.

I take my seat and luckily I get three seats for myself.

View from the seat.


Is it just me or does that winglet look real good?


LN-NOJ features the slimline recaro seats, also found on DY's newer aircrafts with the Sky Interior.

The seat is kind of hard but not too uncomfortable, the legroom is rather nice actually, especially for a LCC.




Cabin view from my seat.


The women seated on the window seat across the aisle from where I am seated seems to be working for DY, since the cabin crew recognizes her and chat with her a couple of times throughout the flight. My thoughts are confirmed when I spot a DY ID card hanging around her neck.

When boarding is completed, the safety demo is showed on the fold out screens in the ceiling. It's on Norwegian so I'm guessing this plane is based in OSL.


The load is about 50% on this morning flight.

When the demo is complete, a FA comes over the PA and say that we have missed our slot time, and have received a new one, but we'll have to wait at the gate for another 25 minutes! Now I am really worried, I do some quick math in my head and if we push back in 25 minutes, I will have 15 minutes in CPH for my transfer, tops! And that is not good since I will have to be going from one end of CPH to the other, to reach the low-cost pier F that EZY is using (DY is using the A-pier, I believe it's because they did not think the savings was enough to justify a move to the F-pier, and that the F-pier is unable to offer transfer passengers with hold luggage, which DY wants to).

Luckily, only a couple of mins later, we receive info that we were allowed to leave earlier, cutting our delay with 20 mins. Phew!
I should also mention that they did offer to check up gate info and any other relevant info for people connecting at CPH. I was gonna take advantage of this but when we left earlier than first estimated I did not bother.

So we pushed back and the engines was started, and we started cutting through the fog to get moving. While taxing to our takeoff runway 19R I spotted the daily (soon to be 5x weekly) UA/CO 757 to EWR. It was barely visible through the thick fog.

After pushback.


While taxiing, with the sun burning through the fog.


We made our way to the runway and after watching an untitled Saab 2000 taking off ahead of us it was our turn.

We made a very powerful takeoff, to leave the fog behind us.

Once we have taken off and started climbing, we immediately leave the fog and our aircraft is exposed to the sunlight, above a sea of fog. A very beautiful sight. ARN's ATC tower reaches above the clouds and looks down on the fog.



Climbing over the sea of clouds.




Service begun soon after the seatbelt sign is turned off. I decide on a muffin and a bottle of sparkling water for about 5 EUR. I forgot to take a picture since it was still “early” morning!

The skies were overcast for most of the flight.

There weren't much words from the cockpit for this flight. The cabin crew consisted of two males and two females, all somewhere in between youngish and middle aged.

Sooner or later we begin descent and reach the Danish coast and the clouds are all gone!


Descending with our beautiful winglet, with Avedøreværket in the background.


We did a very hard touchdown on runway 04L. I mean hard, probably the hardest one I've experienced so far.





A quick taxi followed to gate A4.

Flyvergrillen, famous CPH spotting place.


My seat.


As my gate for the EZY flight were to close in exactly 30 mins after I stepped into the terminal, I wasn't in a rush but neither did I have time to stroll around. So what I did was to leisurely walk towards the lowcost F-pier, where easyJet currently is the only operator.

Why, thank you!


CPH shopping district.


Some nice tails from different corners of the world.


Maybe some day...


Boring corridor leading to the low cost gates.


Hmm, maybe you will be my ride to MXP?


After around 15 mins I had arrived to the F-gates.

Impression of the gate area wasn't too bad. It was rather roomy and lots of natural light thanks to the big glass wall towards the apron where the planes park. There aren't any real facility's here, but that's really to be expected on a lowcost terminal. The largest negative aspect I could think of was the lack of seating. There were far from enough benches.

Non-schengen gates:


Schengen area:


Indeed, the EZY plane I spotted earlier will be my ride.


At my gate F7 they were already letting people into the holding pen. A short two minute queue and I showed my boarding pass and passport to the gate agent and I was allowed in a smaller holding pen for passengers with Speedy Boarding.



There was one man there before me so I would be second for boarding.

Another EZY plane at the neighboring gate.


We stand there for a few minutes and another 10-15 passengers with speedy boarding arrived, and soon we are allowed to board the aircraft.

EZY2656
CPH-MXP
Airbus A319
G-EZDN



The one passenger ahead of me goes to the first stairs, so naturally I'm first at the rear stairs.







I greet the FA arriving in the back galley at the same time I reach the top of the stairs. The cabin crew is Italian and consisting of three middle aged females and a middle aged male.

I decide on the same seat I had on my previous flight, so 21A it is.

View from my seat:


The seat was rather hard, not too comfortable. The legroom wasn't good but somewhat better than expected.


I get another gentlemen sitting in my row, and no one ever sits down in the aisle seat, and yet this man remains seated in the middle seat. And me being the shy Swede that I am, I did not ask him to move there either. Oh well, I wont complain as long as I have my window.

The load is rather good at 80-90%.

The safety demo is done manually with a recorded voice. We soon push back and taxi to take off on runway 04R. The captain is also on the speaker, saying that it's raining down in Milan, and is expected to do so for the entire day.

The terminal we just left:


We take off after this SK MD87:


As I watch the SK MD take off I notice it turning its nose to the right after take off, so I realize that it's quite a lot of crosswind today, I guess that explains the hard landing a little less than an hour earlier.

And it's indeed confirmed once we begin our takeoff roll. The Airbus plane is being shaken left and right like it's a small prop aircraft.


The SAS A319 retrojet as seen during our take off roll. Would love to fly it some day.


Despite the shakiness we manage to leave the runway behind and begin our climb.

SQ taxiing:


Seated on the left hand side of the aircraft I get some nice views over the CPH terminals.


After take off we did a right hand turn and headed south.

I kinda like this picture:


It seems like only Copenhagen is seeing the sun today, as soon the skies got overcast and it remained so for the entire flight.




Shortly after the seatbelt sign had been turned off the BOB round started, I was gonna buy a “Menu 2”, which was a sandwich, boxer chips and a bottle of soda or water included for 7.50 EUR. But when the cabin crew reached my row they just passed without looking at me, I noticed they doing the same thing a few roads ahead of me, so they had to back down. Anyway, I stopped them when they brought the cart back to the galley, so no biggie really, as they still had what I wanted in stock.
I decided on a ham and cheese sandwich with salt and vinegar chips and a bottle of water.



Since I received my “food” rather late compared to everyone else, the trash collecting round was started rather early for me, as I still wasn't finished, so I gave them the little I was done with thinking they would collect the rest later on. Well, that didn't happen as there were never a second trashcollecting round. I tried to reach them my trash a couple of times but they just passed quickly, probably not noticing me.
Anyway, it was a little annoying but I just put my trash on the floor and handed it to them when they did a trashcollecting round when descent had started.

The flight progressed smoothly, I spent most of the time reading. The easyJet in flight magazine was nice with some interesting articles.


I also read a magazine I grabbed at ARN, that was published by Arlanda and it was about Arlanda, but I noticed a little mistake they made, as after every article about a something outside of Stockholm, they write how you can reach it from ARN. And for a short article about Rwanda, they have written, translated from Swedish; “Brussels Airlines flies from Arlanda via Brussels to Kigali in Rwanda”, thing is that SN don't fly to ARN, they fly to BMA.


Cabin view during flight:


Soon though, the flight deck announced that we were gonna land soon and descent was started. He also confirmed that it was indeed still raining in Milan.

Countering some contrails during descent:


Only views of the Alps I got during this flight:


We flew through some really thick and low clouds and soon we landed on runway 35L.

Thick clouds.


SQ taxiing for takeoff while we are on final approach.


We did a slow breaking, since our terminal (T2) was next to the end of the runway anyway.

Cargo apron and ATC tower:


Terminal 2, easyJet land:


We taxied to a stand right next to the terminal. We still had to take a bus ride though.

Indeed it is quite wet here:


I quickly made my way through the baggage reclaim hall into the arrival hall. I had decided to not visit Milan town this time, as my layover wasn't too long, and the weather wasn't the best to explore the town, so I'll defenetly come back some day to do a proper visit!

As you see on the pictures, the arrivals hall wasn't too charming, so I went outside to the shuttle bus who would bring me over to terminal one.


Normally, I wouldn't mind a busride around an airport, but as this bus was covered entirely by an ad, it was very blurry when watching out the windows, so that wasn't really much fun.

After some minutes of busriding we arrive at the trainstation outside T1.

The bus that brought me to T1, note the ad covering all the windows.


I walk through the trainstation and end up in a funky room you have to walk through to get to the terminal.


When I arrive in the terminal I take the escalators to reach the check-in hall.


First impression of the terminal is rather decent. High ceiling and it has a few nice areas.

Part of one of the check in halls, the queues is for Emirates and Qatar.


I decide to head to a self service kiosk to get a proper boarding pass. I had checked in online the previous day and were assigned to seat 5A, which I decided to keep.

After check in I did a little tour around the terminal, looking at the various check in halls and such.

Some nice tails:


Terminal exterior:


Thai taxiing:


And taking off in the distance:


The new C-concourse, not open yet.


After a little while, I decided it was time for lunch. As I was in Italy after all, I decided on pizza, although from a fast-food restaurant. ¼ pizza, a 0,4 liter drink, and two side orders for 8.50 is decent value, at least for an airport restaurant.


When I was finished with my food I decided to go airside, which is downstairs. There were no queue at security with plenty of rows open, so I was through in no time.

T1 airside was rather boring in my opinion. There was the standard shopping mall.


And then some very boring walkways (although with rather nice views of the apron).




And finally the gate area. Note the buckets collecting rain water leaking in.


As I still had quite a lot of time on my hands I decided to take out my laptop and getting started with this trip report.
I could connect it to power thanks to the oneworld charging point. Thank you oneworld! Even though I'm not flying with any of your airlines until January.


The FIDS announce that our gate will be A11, which is squeezed in between two other gates in the corner of this concourse, which makes it impossible to see our plane, other than the tail.

The gate squeezed in between two others:


The tail of our plane:


Sooner or later boarding time came closer, and I gathered my stuff and went to the gate to wait the last couple of minutes.


Boarding was first called for business class passengers, *A gold members and passengers seated in rows 15-25.

Shortly thereafter general boarding was announced, and I went down the jetway after showing my BP to the gate agent.

LH3714 operated by Lufthansa Italia
MXP-ARN
Airbus A319
D-AKNJ “Milano”



When entering the aircraft and after greeting the male FA in the galley, it went quite slow to get down the aisle, so I peeked into the cockpit. The Italian pilots seemed to have quite a lively discussion as only Italians can! (not aggressive, just lively)

Soon the flow down the aisle was resumed and I was soon at my seat 5A, after asking the Italian gentlemen at the aisle seat to stand up so I could get in.

View from my seat, with a beautiful Alitalia 777 landing:


The load on this flight was good, I did not see any open seats in economy.

As this was quite far forward in the cabin this row had business class legroom, which is definitely nice for this almost 2½ hour flight.

The seat itself was very comfortable.


It was a manual safety demonstration in both Italian and English. There was also some recorded Swedish announcements playing a couple of times throughout the flight.

We begin taxiing towards runway 35L, the same runway I landed on a few hours earlier, so I guess a runway change took place some time during the day.

Turning into the active runway:


We take off and a turn to the right, pointing us north, follows.



We are soon inside the thick clouds, once again.


The seatbelt sign stays on for what feels like a very long time, I believe it was due to some turbulence. Did not feel to bad for me though. Maybe they just wanted people to sit down during meal and drink service to make it quicker?

Cabin view:


Climbing away from the clouds:


I got to see the Alps at one time this flight aswell:


Sun settling behind the clouds:


I had read some old tripreports with LHI, and that they served hot meals in economy section aswell, but I didn't really know if this was still the case. Well, it turned out it was still the case.

I got served chicken with potatoes and cooked vegetables with some bread.


We also got an apricot pastry as dessert.


The drink run was made after the meal service, I decided on apple juice and some sparkling water.

All of this was really impressive, I payed under 50 EUR for a 2½ hour flight within Europe, and I get a meal included.

The only thing I could complain on regarding the meal service is that it took quite some time before they collected our trash, so we had to sit with our tray tables down for a while. Did not bother me that much though. And I guess if they would have collected it earlier the ones in the back wouldn't be done with their meal yet.

When the trash was collected I decided to look through the In flight magazines. I say magazines, since they had both the standard LH magazine, and a smaller one for LHI, which mostly contained articles about the LHI destinations.



The LH magazine was really nice with lots of interesting articles.

I spent the remainder of the flight reading the magazines and just looking out the window, despite it being overcast for most of the flight, there was a beautiful sunset displaying outside my window.


Sooner or later, the skies cleared somewhere over Sweden, and some nice nightviews of small towns south of Stockholm were displayed.

Shortly after this our descent were started, and we were treated with some beautiful views over Stockholm City at night.

I'm not a good photographer, and I'm even worse when it's dark, so my photos over Stockholm this evening are all really bad, but I'm gonna upload one of the lousy photos just to give you a little idea of what it was like.


We also passed Arlanda and did a 180 degree turn to line up for runway 19R, the same runway I left this morning.

Not so much more to say really, we taxied to our gate nr. 5 at the end of the A pier of T5.


My seat after the flight:




Soon I were out on the curbside, waiting for my father to pick me up and drive me home.
Some Christmas lights up at ARN already:


To sum things up,

Norwegian did their job, although a small delay, that didn't matter much in the end. If I would have been delayed for those additional 25 minutes though I would probably have missed my connection at CPH. I think it was good of them to announce that they could check for gate info and such for the passengers connecting at CPH.

easyJet was not the best experience, but they did their job for a cheap price and got me to my destination in one piece and on time. I guess it all came down to the crew that did my easyJet experience to what it was. I could definitely see myself flying them in the future though, if their price and schedule suits me.

MXP was a decent airport, although boring at some corners. Did not see much of T2 but it didn't seem to be the best airport terminal around.

The big winner on this trip was Lufthansa Italia. Too bad that they are going away. A flight for under 50 EUR, with a nice crew, drinks and meal included and on time departure and arrival. Nothing to complain at.

Thanks for reading and comments are always appreciated!
My next tripreport will be some SK longhaul flying with the family, a trip I will be leaving on tomorrow morning. The report should be up in a couple of weeks.

Martin

[Edited 2011-10-28 10:26:27]