Good morning from Calgary International Airport!
My name is Alex, and welcome back to the channel.
Today, I’m off to Montreal with Air Transat, on a brand new aircraft type for me -
the Airbus A321neo!
Air Transat is Canada’s third largest airline, and until fairly recently,
they actually weren’t flying at all.
Their focus is on leisure and vacation travel, so as you can imagine, the last several months
have not been so kind to them.
They also don’t have much of a domestic network, so starting in April, they actually
suspended operations for nearly four months.
As part of their relaunch, they had some very enticing one-way fares between Calgary and
Montreal, with said A321neos!
Now that’s actually pretty significant, because Air Transat is the only operator of
any Airbus A320neo family aircraft in the entire country, since Air Canada, WestJet,
and Sunwing, all went with Boeing.
With all the appropriate personal precautions in place, I thought it was worth a shot - to
fly Canada’s only ‘neo’ and to see how Air Transat is handling Covid flying.
Waiting at gate B36 was my aircraft for today -
a one-year-old Airbus A321neo, registered as C-GOIE.
This was Air Transat’s first Airbus A321neo, delivered to them in April 2019, and by definition,
this is also Canada’s very first ‘neo’ as well!
Now, this is where the name gets strangely complicated.
For all intents and purposes, it is an A321neo according to the Canadian Civil Aircraft Register.
However, it’s a longer range variant that Airbus markets as the A321LR.
For further confusion, Air Transat calls it the A321neoLR, so I guess, all three names
are still accurate somehow.
Regardless of what you call it, Air Transat ordered 15 of these to replace their aging
Airbus A310s, which were sadly retired earlier this year, just weeks after I flew it myself.
Now obviously it’s not the perfect one-for-one replacement, going from a short widebody to
a long narrowbody, but I am curious to check it out.
Unlike WestJet and Air Canada, Air Transat actually boarded the aircraft from back to
front to minimize people walking by.
I only had to remove my mask for photo ID purposes, but I was kind of surprised that
they weren’t doing temperature checks at any point.
That said, CATSA did start doing those at security for every traveller leaving Calgary
just a few days after this flight.
My seat for this four hour flight to Montreal is 5A, in the front of Air Transat’s
economy class cabin.
Air Transat’s A321neos have a fairly generous 31” of pitch.
For someone who’s 6’8”, that doesn’t look quite so generous, but it’s just fine
for this domestic flight.
The engine view here though is fantastic!
The legroom in the window seat is slightly reduced thanks to this IFE box, but there’s
also a universal power outlet.
These seats are quite similar to those on Transat’s A330 fleet,
although much less narrow!
The headrests are adjustable too.
There’s also quite the large seatback pocket, with plenty of space for a water bottle.
As I boarded, the crew gave me one of Air Transat’s “Traveller Care” packages,
which I’ll take a look at later on.
The crew members at the door were wearing face masks, but they also had face shields
on top of that which felt... quite dystopian.
Then again, what part of 2020 hasn’t?
At the very least, it’s keeping them safe, even if they only used it during boarding
and deplaning.
It’s also worth noting that Air Transat does not block middle seats.
However, I did notice that the cabin crew were actively reseating people who had been
given middle seats anyway.
By my estimate, the flight was maybe 40% full, so everyone had plenty of space regardless.
I’ll take a better look around the cabin after takeoff, so here’s our departure from
Calgary, into some beautiful clear sky, off of runway 35L.
After that fantastic sounding takeoff, let’s take a look at the rest of the seat.
Each seat has a personal in-flight entertainment screen, which wasn’t working initially.
The crew eventually reset the system and that seemed to fix the problem.
On today’s flight, they had a somewhat small selection of movies, but plenty of TV shows.
Unfortunately though, the moving map just didn’t work at all.
The screens do tilt for better viewing, and there’s a USB port and headphone jack built in.
Although it’s a relatively new aircraft, Air Transat doesn’t have wifi on board,
which actually kind of fits into the whole “vacation airline” thing,
when you think about it.
The tray tables are nice and sturdy, although they’re a little bit small.
It does rest pretty high up though, so it’s not too bad on my knees.
In the seatback pocket, Air Transat just had their safety card and an air sickness bag.
That’s quite the contrast to their normal literature packages which would sometimes
have 4 or 5 different things in a plastic sleeve.
Air Transat’s “Traveller Care” package came with a couple of sanitary wipes, a pair
of gloves, an extra mask, and some hand sanitizer.
On today’s flight, I was pleasantly surprised to see an actual buy-on-board service!
I ended up buying a turkey sandwich and a can of Pringles, and they handed out free
bottles of water as well.
I did like how the sandwich was packaged, in terms of being able to eat it without having
to touch it, and it was pretty tasty.
Although they didn’t have printed menus, they had one on the IFE system.
For the record, you are allowed to remove your mask briefly only for eating and drinking.
Although the selection was slightly limited, it was refreshingly normal to pay far too
much for airplane food again!
For a one-year-old aircraft, the cabin still looked immaculate!
As this was a daytime flight, we unfortunately didn’t get to experience Transat’s classic
purple mood lighting.
Air Transat seats 199 people on their Airbus A321neos, in a two-class configuration.
At the front are three rows of Club Class, which is essentially Air Transat’s Premium
Economy, in a 2-2 configuration.
Club Class on this flight though was completely empty, and the cabin crew were using it to relax.
Economy Class makes up the rest of the aircraft, with 187 seats in the usual 3-3 configuration.
Air Transat’s A321neos were all delivered with the “Airbus Cabin Flex” configuration.
That means they removed one of the larger cabin doors in favour of two A320-style overwing exits.
That allowed them to put in an extra row or two, rather than have some wasted floor space
on a full-size exit that they’re not so likely to use.
This is also the same configuration that allows Wizz Air to violate the Geneva Convention
and fit a whopping 240 passengers into their A321neos.
I’m quite glad Transat didn’t go that route.
The Economy Class lavatories are all behind the wing, and this one by the mid-aft exit
door is pretty cramped.
The other lavatories can be found in the aft galley, and Club Class has their own one up front.
I had actually booked myself in row 4 for some extra legroom, but Transat switched the
aircraft on my original flight for a normal A321, so I had to change it to a different
day, and settle for the standard legroom.
With the empty middle seat, that ended up being just fine and the flight went by pretty quickly.
Soon enough, we began our descent into Quebec’s largest city, for a windy arrival on runway 24L.
Overall, this was a really good flight with Air Transat!
Compared to the A310, Air Transat’s A321neo is certainly a step up.
In terms of seat width, there’s almost no comparison - the A310s had a pretty tight
3-3-3 layout, but these had the standard A320 family economy class width,
which itself is pretty decent.
The legroom was alright, any average height person would be just fine in these seats.
But if I were to fly this again on a longer flight, I’d definitely go for the extra
legroom rows, or maybe even Club Class.
The in-flight entertainment was also much improved, and these screens were very quick
and responsive.
One thing I think the A310 did better though, was how heavily padded those seats were.
These new ones had very little padding on the backrest, and it did feel stiff after a while.
On today’s flight, I thought Air Transat handled the Covid stuff pretty well, the aircraft
did feel clean, and the ‘Traveller Care’ package was a good idea.
The lack of any temperature screening was a little surprising though, but I think that’s
since been resolved.
The crew on board were quite friendly as well, and were more than happy to let me get all
of that extra cabin footage after the flight.
In the end though, while it might be a bit of a downgrade for us aviation enthusiasts,
Air Transat’s A321neo is a pretty sweet ride.
I think Transat made a great call choosing the A321neo, and I’m looking forward to seeing
where it’ll take them.
*ding, video's over*
Thank you very much for watching this trip report with Air Transat.
As always, if you liked the video, please give it a thumbs up, subscribe if you’re new,
and I’ll see you next time.