Transavia is a Dutch low-cost, charter and holiday airline with its hub at Amsterdam Schiphol airport and with further hubs at Rotterdam The Hague airport and Eindhoven airport. They also have a few flights to and from Groningen.
Transavia is a subsidiary of KLM and is also wholly-owned by KLM and on some tickets you also earn points in the Flying Blue program. On top of that some flights are also flown in codeshare with KLM, especially from Amsterdam to a few holiday destinations such as some airports in Spain. However Transavia is not a member of the Skyteam alliance and the standard Flying Blue Silver, Gold and Platinum benefits are not honoured on Transavia. Nowdays there is also a French division of the airline called Transavia France.
Departure experience
The ticket was booked on the Transavia webpage and paid for using a credit card. I also decided to pay extra for a seat allocation at a cost of 6 euro, rather than being automatically assigned one by the system. I picked 05C, an aisle seat on the fifth row.
Check-in was done on the Transavia webpage the night before and the process was very straight-forward as I had already selected a seat at the time of booking. My boarding pass was downloaded and saved on my mobile phone.
I arrived quite early at Salzburg airport, already at 6 pm, well ahead of the 8.30 pm departure. On the tram to the airport I also got an e-mail from Transavia informing about a 45 minutes delay due to a late incoming aircraft. I later found out my aircraft was arriving over an hour late in the Netherlands from Chania (on the island of Crete) and was then to fly to Salzburg and then back again to the Netherlands but this time to Rotterdam, as the last flight of the day. So even if they were to make a very quick turnaround in Eindhoven there would still be a delay.
There were no check-in desks open yet for the Transavia flight to Rotterdam, they probably opened two hours before departure, but it did not matter as I had already checked in online and was only travelling with hand luggage.
There is a fairly new lounge at Salzburg airport which has only been open for about two years. However my Flying Blue Gold card was of little use as status benefits are not honoured when flying Transavia and unfortunately the lounge does not accept lounge cards such as Priority Pass.
However the lounge is open for pay-in visits, subject to availability and space constraints, but you need to register first at the ticket desk in the departure hall. The walk-in price is 36 euro, a bit hefty, but I had to have dinner anyway and as the incoming flight was 45 minutes late I had over three hours to kill at the airport. At least it made far more sense to pay this time.
The friendly woman at the ticket desk made a phone call to the lounge and although the lounge was apparently fairly full she got approval to admit an extra guest, especially one who was departing on a very late flight. I paid at the ticket desk and got a receipt to show at the lounge reception.
The lounge is located airside but in a separate part of the terminal building, which means there is also a separate security control for the lounge, which works pretty much like a fast track channel for premium passengers.
The Salzburg Airport lounge is very small with seating for no more than around 25 guests. But it is also a modern and stylish lounge and they have used the limited space wisely. There are comfortable armchairs, a TV, newspapers and magazines and even a nice apron view.
I was also surprised to find a surprisingly good and extensive buffet with food and drinks. And they actually served schnitzel for dinner, together with Austrian potato salad and lingonberry jelly. I was very hungry and had no less than three schnitzels together with a glass of a rather nice Austrian Riesling. Just the excellent schnitzel made the cost worthwhile.
Afterwards there were fresh fruits, pastries and a nice apricot dessert to finish off the dinner. Overall the lounge was much better than expected and after boarding had started for the evening flights to Frankfurt and Vienna around 7 pm the lounge got nearly empty.
Around 8.45 pm I could see the Transavia Boeing 737 land and park just outside the lounge.
Read the full lounge review here!
The flight
Salzburg-Rotterdam
Transavia flight HV 5606
Departure: 20.30
Arrival: 22.05
Economy Class
Boeing 737-800
Seat 05D
Boarding started just before 9 pm. Two gates with two boarding machines were used for the flight which certainly speeded up the boarding process a bit. But there was no such thing as priority boarding, even some low-cost airlines have it now, if you have paid for it.
There are no passenger bridges in Salzburg so all passengers walk the short distance from the terminal building to the aircraft. Two stairs were used, which also helped speeding up the boarding process a bit to minimise the delay.
First impression
A friendly Dutch purser greeted at the door. The cabin design was almost entirely in green (a rather strange green colour tone) which gave a rather odd first impression of the cabin. The flight seemed almost completely fully booked.
I quickly found my seat 05C on row 5 and immediately took notice of the tight seat pitch (more about that later). A young man took a seat in 05A and for a while it seemed like the middle seat would stay empty, but eventually, as one of the very last passengers to board, a man asked me to move so he could get to his seat, 05B.
The boarding process was completed in record time and both the ground staff and the crew should get some cred for a very quick and successful turnaround. They probably did it all-in-all in about 25 minutes, with baggage and nearly 190 passengers.
New estimated departure time on the screens was 9.15 pm and we actually took off at 9.14 pm, after boarding, safety demonstration and the taxi to the runway. Flight time to Rotterdam was expected to be around one hour and 15 minutes.
Seat and cabin
A Boeing 737-800 was used to Rotterdam with a 3-3 configuration and around 190 seats. And of course it was all-economy.
Naturally Transavia is a low-cost airline and the expectations were naturally adjusted accordingly. I did not expect the same kind of service, comfort and status recognition as when flying with the parent company KLM. But I have taken several flights recently on other low-cost airlines such as Easyjet, Wizz Air and Monarch Airlines (all reviewed) and none of these provided such a tight legroom. On Monarch, admittedly, I paid to get an extra-space seat (no such option was available on Transavia, for the records) but no such seat was booked on Easyjet or Wizz Air, where the seat pitch was small but still adequate and certainly not unbearable.
On this flight however the seat pitch was so small my knees were firmly pressed against the seatback in front of me during the entire flight, from the moment I took my seat in Salzburg until the moment I got off in Rotterdam, and that is without the seat in front being reclined. I could hardly move my legs for 90 minutes and there was absolutely no way I could reach for my bag under the seat to get something inside. There was simply no space.
Food and drinks
Once in the air food and drinks were offered for purchase with nothing free, of course as expected being a low-cost airline. As I had already had a proper dinner in the lounge and also enjoyed a few glasses of complimentary white wine and two cups of coffee at the airport there was no reason to buy anything from the sales cart.
The service
The cabin crew were friendly and cheerful and you could well recognise a bit of the spirit and the service attitude from KLM. But of course with nothing whatsoever for free and with not even the top-tier Flying Blue members being recognised (despite Transavia being fully-owned by KLM) there was very little the cabin crew could do unless you you wanted to buy something.
Arrival experience
The quick turnaround in Salzburg paid off, we made up some time during the flight and landed just 25 minutes late in Rotterdam.
Rotterdam The Hague airport is a small and convenient airport with short walking distances from the aircraft to baggage reclaim and to the bus stop, but there were actually two more flights landing at the same time which created some congestion.
With only hand luggage I was quickly landside and caught a bus and then the metro to downtown Rotterdam.
Final impression
Friendly crew onboard, online check-in worked fine and even though the incoming flight was late we made up some time. But the legroom onboard was really tight and unfortunately became a nuisance before the doors were even closed.
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