TRIP REPORT: Wizz Air, Ohrid - Milan

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Written by Ivan Dejanoski

This is a trip report about the very first flight on the Ohrid - Milan(o) Malpensa route (and back) - flights W67779/7780.The dates were March 19 and 23, 2019, respectively. There was nothing special on the inaugural flight, because TAV held the package ceremony right before the first Malmo inbound flight the previous day.

Scheduled departure time was 17:55, so we arrived at the airport at about 15:30, giving us enough time for a short coffee break. Check-in counters opened at around 4 pm and it took minutes, since there were no other flights and about one third of the seats were occupied.

Waiting for the inbound flight and boarding went pretty fast since I saw a few familiar faces and, to be honest, I was surprised that they went as tourists and not as workers. Most of them returned on the next flight and after that I also found out that many locals used this service for a weekend trip to Milan, which is interesting and a positive sign at the same time as most other flights, as we all know here, have a different customer base. Some of my neighbours here, that work in Alto Adige region, also use this flight frequently. The remaining passengers were from Albania, to be exact from Elbasan and Korca areas, about half of them. At the time, Wizz was still not flying to TIA.

We took off almost on time along the lake (rwy.19) like most departing flights here and so we could catch views of the beautiful scenery above the lake and the town, especially if you are seated on the left side and the sun has gone down. The fare was around 30 euros (priority boarding and seat selection included).

The flight itself was pretty smooth, uneventful and took about 1:45. I had luck in getting extra legroom on both flights since I selected a row behind the emergency exits and as nobody was sitting there the crew asked if I wanted to move to the exit row so I gladly accepted :)

Twenty minutes into being airborne and the crew started offering snacks/beverages. I can tell that they got some good buck as a lot of passengers got coffee/sandwich etc. Hats off to the crew. They were very polite, professional and calm, keeping in mind the conduct of some customers.

Landing at MXP was at about 19:40 (there was an ASL A319 at the terminal, got a not so good quality photo but for the interest of exyu), and after 15-20 min we were in the bus heading to the terminal. It took another hour and 40 minutes for passport control. I think it was an endless queue in which of course ex-yu's were trying to outsmart the others by jumping over the strips or even playing sick...

Back to the story, finally at about 21:45 we exited the terminal to find our ride to Milano Centrale. Travel time was about 50 minutes. We took Malpensa Shuttle (there were 3-4 other bus companies) and they had a service every 20 minutes throughout the day.

On the way back, there wasn't a big rush at MXP. There was some endless walking through duty free shops, but everything went faster so I managed to look at the airport in another way. There were about 120 passengers on board. Same calm flight, flying route over Venice and, I think, Split from what I could guess from the air. Beautiful scenery over the Adriatic, Boka/the Montenegrin mountains and 30 minutes after that we were landing back home.

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