Arrived quite early at VIE, around 1630-ish for the 1805 departure, didn't want to risk getting stuck in traffic, and was sharing a cab with a colleague who was on a flight to DUS at 1735. There's a large Austrian check-in area as soon as you enter, with a choice of Economy and Business class counter service, and self check-in with bag drop.
I couldn't see a Star Gold check-in area, but there were no queues to do self check-in and a bag drop, so I did that.
The self check-in platform is the same as that provided by Lufthansa, and I think it's pretty awful, such as not asking you for your seat preferences - fortunately, OS give you the chance on booking to give a seat request, which the machine honoured, and spat my boarding card out. Went and dropped my bag off at the bag drop, with no waiting.
On the way to go airside, I noticed what I'd been looking for: there is a whole separate premier pax check-in lobby area, for Star Golds, Miles & More Senators, etc. This is just to the left of the entrance to airside in the terminal, a nice quiet, seperate area, with carpeting, seating, etc.
Said I'd comp my colleague into the lounge, which wasn't a major problem, as there is a Business Lounge tucked upstairs above the main 'plaza' area, so is available to Schengen and non-Schengen pax. (There are also lounges after passport control in the Schengen area, and closer to the gates in the non-Schengen area).
This lounge is quite large, and is split into three sections: a welcome lobby area, with standup tables, stools, coffee and drinks bar, etc., for people who are just stopping for a quick drink before boarding the flight. This area also contains reception, and 'concierge desk' to handle passenger enquiries, rebooking, etc. Behind this, down some steps, is a large lounge area with seating, and again drinks, snacks, etc., plus work desks. Along a weird twisty corridor is a seperate room with a panoramic view over the apron area and East-West runway 29-11, with lounging chairs, bar with stools, and a quiet room with lounging chairs, plus drinks, snacks, etc.
We chose the panorama lounge, which was actually quite busy, and a lot of people seemed to be leaving bags on seats, but soon got a seat around a table and enjoyed some typical Austrian mariellenkuche (apricot cake), 'homemade' apparently, and a nice strong coffee.
Once my colleague headed off for his flight, I decided to go into the Schengen area and try the Senator/HON Circle lounge, which is also accessible to Star Gold members. This was a much smaller lounge, but with the similar modern and fresh decor to the larger Business Lounge - nice leather seats, in shades such as light blue, purple, green - sounds bright, but it looks bold, makes a statement, and works!
Behind some mesh curtains, was a view of the Eastern apron, mostly remote stands occupied by props and regional jets, plus LCCs. There was a slightly nicer range of snacks and drinks in this lounge, including some pretzels, marinated olives, cheese, etc., and around 1730, evening snacks were put out in the help yourself 'pantry' area, and on a trolley. The evening snacks included two different types of soups (with typical Austrian accompaniments such as sliced pancake pieces or crispy batter nuggets), warm fresh Austrian 'semmel' bread rolls, a hot pasta bake, little individual chicken salads, or veggie salads, plus two sorts of dessert, a chocolate mousse and a berry and vanilla cream pot. All looked very good.
Guide to Plaza Business Lounge - with pictures of the lounge. The Senator lounge was fairly similar.
Having snacked on one of the chicken salads and a chocolate mousse, it was 1740, and with security still to negotiate, and a bus out to the aircraft, I thought I'd best go! VIE isn't a big airport, and security is done for each gate or group of gates. Security was right next door to the lounge, and with plenty of lanes open was negotiated in moments, helped by efficient staff. When I got to the gate area, the gate was already open, and a couple of flights of stairs took you to the waiting bus, which soon left for the aircraft, with only about 20-odd people onboard.
After a quick drive across to the Western end of the apron, we found Fokker 70 OE-LFP, named 'Wels', waiting for us, we were welcomed onboard by the two young crew, and offered newspapers and sweeties while the Captain gave us details about the flight. With about 25 people on board, we closed up, the crew gave the safety demo, which is given by bilingual recorded announcement with both crew demonstrating the equipment, and taxied out to Runway 29 for departure, which happened without delay.
With the light load, the typical Fokker-70/100 flapless takeoff - like a rocket - felt even more rocketlike, into a fairly clear evening, with nice views of the city of Vienna on the right hand side thanks to the wide oval windows on these Fokker jets.
The crew then told us that we could expect a light hot meal in all cabins, after which they came through and in economy served us a quite a stylish black cardboard tray thing (for a cardboard tray!) containing a small hot foil dish of a wild mushroom ravioli bake with a cream and mushroom sauce, served with a choice of warmed breadrolls, followed by a chocolate mousse. There was a choice of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks, tea and coffee. I thought this was very acceptable for the short 1h50 flight, and the quality was very good - excellent taste in the pasta, it had a real 'restaurant' flavour to it, though the chocolate mousse was a tad rich so I didn't finish it (and I'd overdone it on lounge snacks, maybe...)!
Other airlines on similar length flights give you tiny snacks, and micro-sandwiches, and while Austrian's offering wasn't enormous, it was tasty and the quality was among the best I've recently seen on a European short-haul flight.
Austrian's catering is provided by a company called Do&Co, an Austrian hospitality company specialising in high end food service, catering for large events, and now airline catering. Apparently, they are also responsible for the production of many BA Club Europe dishes.
The seats were quite comfortable, with excellent legroom, plenty of stretching room without knocking your knees into the seat in front. The only complaint is that there isn't that much elbow room in the window seat, and the arm rests have very squared-off ends of the arm-rests, which is fairly typical for the Avio Interiors seats. If you're anything above a small child or a waif-like model, they tend to dig in your thighs!
I think the legroom better is because Austrian have reconfigured certain F70s for flying the LCY route. I'm guessing it's because they can't sell all seats because of takeoff or landing weight restrictions at City, so the 5.5% certified aircraft in the fleet have had the extra seats pulled out. It looks like OE-LFP is somewhat dedicated to the LCY flights, as it was the same plane to operate the inaugural.
Speeding across Europe, we were soon passing over Frankfurt, and heading for Brussels and Ostend, after which we descended toward London City, passing over Southend before setting up for a smooth landing on Runway 28 at City, with the enormous lift dumpers/spoilers on the wings popping up to slow us down without the use of reverse thrust once the main gear was on the deck.
The Fokker 70 is the biggest plane that currently operates into London City, and until the A318 was certified, the biggest that was allowed to do so. I had wondered how the approach would be. I thought it felt as smooth, and definitely more controlled, than approaches in the Avro RJ/BAe146, except that there seemed to be quite a lot of power changes during the approach, and for some reason, the ventilation system on the Fokker 70 is quite noisy on descent (makes lots of air 'rushing' noises with the power changes), which I remember from my Fokker 70 flights on KLM.
The Fokker 70 even parks the same way as the other aircraft at City, self positioning on the stand, nose in and then performing a very sharp (140 degree) turn to position in the parking box at an angle. I wondered if we'd have to be positioned by a tug, but no! It's a tight squeeze, totally filling the parking box, but it works, and being a bit longer, standing taller, with the greater wingspan, it looks a cut above many of the other planes which fly into City.
Luggage took about 10 minutes to be delivered on the belt, which is a bit longer than normal for City, but maybe they are still getting used to working the Fokker 70.
Very impressed with the Austrian service on this flight, and I hope that it proves to be successful, as I'd happily use it again, especially as Austrian have a good connecting network to Eastern Europe, and VIE seems a much nicer place to transit through than FRA, while not as sprawling as MUC or ZRH. So, I hope the load factors improve a bit so that the flights stay viable.
