Just finished my first long haul flight with Eurowings from Bangkok to Prague via Duesseldorf and it was somewhat of an adventure. There were 2 reasons to pick Eurowings for this trip: First it qualified for 100% miles accrual with United’s Milage Plus frequent flyer program according to the webiste wheretocredit.com and second, the price was a lot cheaper than competitors fares for January.
When I wanted to add luggage on Eurowing’s website while managing my booking the first clouds foreshadowed a flawed experience. It created errors and ‘not found’ error pages. I was able to circum-go the errors of their faulty site by downloading their app to my ipad. Picking a seat after upgrading from Basic to Smart fare didn’t work either. My choices were voided each time I had made them. Turns out I had to add a payment method and pay the amount of 0 Baht to confirm my seat selection. Online check-in wasn’t available for my flight EW 1107 either. I had to check-in at the airport. However, that went like a breeze and I walked down to the gate in concourse E. The Airbus A330-200 departed with 1 hour delay.
After takeoff passengers were served with a small snack. A choice between cheese sandwich and cake was offered. It was a cardboard box with a miniature cake and water. Throughout the flight water was served. The flight attendants were hardly noticed during the flights. The cabin staff was friendly and professional, but not very attentive. They refused to take away rubbish outside of their service turn. About three hours before scheduled landing dinner was served. I picked chicken with rice. The meal was served in a very hot tin form, very hard to open without burning fingers. The flimsy plastic kitchen ware made it difficult to shuffle the otherwise edible food into my mouth.
Unfortunately, the captain of flight EW 1007 had not tanked sufficient fuel supplies for the flight to reach Düsseldorf. We had to make an unscheduled stopover in Budapest for refueling. It took around 2 hours on the ground to get the plane back in the air. By the time we arrived in Duesseldorf my connecting flight to Prague from Düsseldorf had left already. I was offered an overnight stay at the Maritim Duesseldorf airport hotel with dinner and breakfast included before heading to my final destination Prague, where I arrived with almost 12 hours delay.
While luck wasn’t on my side with my first Eurowings booking, the pricing was reasonable with the basic fare. Considering that I added the smart option with meals, drinks and baggage, the price rose to a level where better airlines like Finnair operate with better service and higher reability. A few days after the flight 50% Miles were deposited into my United Milage Plus account, only. It’s hard to find reliable information on milage credit since Eurowings does not provide any information on booking classes while booking or confirming flights. Let’s take as much Miles as we can get. These days we must learn to appreciate smaller mileage credits for discounted economy. For that 50% isn’t terribly bad.
Would I fly Eurowings again? Maybe yes, if the price was really cheap..
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