An overnight flight, on a small and tired aircraft,
with an underwhelming crew and meal service and a cranky group of passengers made for
a wonderful experience on this flight down to Sao Paulo. The full trip report is coming up.
A very good evening from Bogota’s El Dorado International Airport once again.
This time though, just passing through on my way to Sao Paulo. First though, let’s talk about
Aviation Youtuber Bingo. What is it? It’s a fake bingo game I made up of what has become 25 cliche
videos in the past decade. If you watch a lot of trip reports, all of this will make perfect sense.
Today, I’m coloring in a new square for declaring Avianca as “the worst”
or at least, close to that. If none of that made sense to you, my apologies, we’re moving on.
Despite being smack central in the terminal,
I managed to walk past the lounge twice while looking for it. Head upstairs and
you’ll be in the lounge which reminded me of a really nice hospital cafeteria.
Drink selections were okay, but the food was a bit of a doozy.
Yes, that is pasta with nacho cheese sauce on it and no I didn’t do that,
that’s how it was handed to me. Needless to say, I had three of these salads.
Lucky for us, the part of the lounge that was closed actually looked
quite nice and relaxing and comfortable, oh well.
I couldn’t stay there long though anyway as my next flight was coming up quickly.
A few moments later it was time to board and realize my mistake in selecting my seat.
The leatherish recliners came stocked with a blanket and pillow on each of them.
While legroom in the bulk head is kind of limited, it’s a tradeoff for being able to get out of the
seat if you need to. Let’s look at the layout of this 30 year- oh wait I’m sorry 5 year old Airbus
A319. Honestly, 5 years old is tough to believe. There are three rows of Business Class up front.
Besides the reduced legroom which is fine, the front row also has the IFE screens in the
center console which makes it a good 4 inches wider and making each seat 2 inches narrower.
Because of the layout, unless you are a child,
I promise you'll change the volume or hit the call button with your thigh at some point.
At least though were were individual air vents and seat or I guess wall pockets that kinda held
everything I needed them to hold and each seat had it’s own semi-universal outlet.
If you truly want to know how big Brazil is, take this flight. Tonight we’d be taking off
from Bogota’s runway 13L up to 37000 feet for this almost six hour flight into Guarulhos’s runway 9R.
Pushback was just about on time as we taxied to
the runway with all of the lights on throughout, which I’m not a fan of.
A short taxi later we were lining up with runway 13L for this
takeoff to the southeast. The spool up is coming up next.
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My neighbor wasn’t too keen on following the posted signs.
13. The IFE is decent, it has enough content but my screen and my neighbors
would always turn off intermittently if you used it as a touch screen.
Meal service was up next on the not so substantial tray table.
We had, well to be honest I still not not quite sure. They called it a cheese sandwich-
sure enough it has cheese, but also sun dried tomatoes and I think chicken. I hope chicken
and absolutely no sauce. Imagine you went to a salad bar and blindly put together a sandwich.
You’d almost be guaranteed to come away with something better than this dryness.
At least this time though, the chips were inside the box, so I guess the box served a purpose…
The blanket and pillow were fine. Actually no, the pillow was really good- and the amenity
kit was the biggest shock of the flight. It was actually pretty good. There was simply
no room for me to shoot it on board so here we are taking a look while in Hotel Unique.
The bathrooms were clean throughout but nothing special- though I suspect that
sunrise would have been something special had we stayed above the clouds a bit longer.
We approached Sao Paulo from the north of course and found our way to Guarulhos
in the far north of the ginormous city.
Landing again with all of the cabin lights on and getting just a peak of the daylight to come.
Immigration and baggage was super quick at this early hour and soon
we were on the hour long drive to the city center.
That’s all there is to write so let’s get into the Flip Flop Score. The seat, lounge
and food were the low points. This same flight during the day would probably be a bit better,
but an overnight red eye on a baby bus is just not fun no matter that class you’re flying in.
Overall, it’s a 66 out of 100. As I mentioned in my last video, Avianca is fine if you’re on one of
their 787s. Otherwise, try to stay away. Despite the lackluster experience, I do hope you found
the report useful. If you did, please subscribe for two new flight or hotel reviews every week.
Join me next time for the very posh and unique, Hotel Unique.