MAN-FUE-MAN on TCX

Apologies in advance for no pictures in this report. This is due to me not being in possession of a camera at the moment.

TCX758K – 26/3/08
G-TCXA – Airbus A330-243
Seat: 18A
Scheduled Block Time: 09:45 – 14:10
Actual Block Time: 10:39 – 14:50
Take-off: 10:52
Landing: 14:46

Given I am currently at university, I was not able to go on the last family holiday to Spain with Jet 2, so this was my first holiday since last May when we went to Fuerteventura. Unlike last May, this holiday meant an early start and we had left our house by 06:15. Owing to some roadworks on the M56, we got to MAN about 07:15 where we parked our car at the FSS car park, which happens to be a handy place to spot incoming aircraft when runway 23R is in use. Whilst we were waiting for the minibus to take us to the terminal, I saw amongst other things, a US 333 and a VS 744, as well as some smaller aircraft from LH and BE, and the LGW shuttle. We got to the terminal about 08:00 and since TCX has its own check in area in terminal 1, we just queued at whichever had the shortest queue. Next to where we were checking in was a baggage drop for a TCX flight to PFO which had been delayed from the previous day. As we checked in, we were informed that our flight had a 45 minute delay and that we’d be boarding at 09:40, which wasn’t too bad, especially given what it turned out we would be flying on.

This was my first time at the airport since May last year, and since then, the terminal has been undergoing some massive overhaul, so what used to be a landside area which had a view of the runway, that now is all boarded up (apart from WH Smith next to what was the window, which is still open), and we got ushered straight through to security where my mum set the scanner off and had to be searched, and once she had been searched, we made it through to the departure lounge, and we were fortunate enough to to arrive at the only seats by the window in the departure lounge which were vacant, and also had the advantage of being right in front of the departure board. It was the perfect vantage point for me to see all the movements from/to Terminal 1 Pier C and Gates 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12 (there’s some work going on in that pier too). Among the movements I saw was A7-AFO of Qatar Airways, which is the only QR plane I’ve ever seen (it’s been in the last 2 times I’ve gone on holiday), my first ever Etihad plane in A6-EYH, my first ever Finnair Embraer E170 (?), the US 333 departing, and a fair number of charters, including a recently repainted G-MDBD and one of the A321s freshly repainted. Our flight didn’t have an allocated gate until about 09:30, when we were assigned gate 27. Now up until this point, I was still under the assumption that it’d be a 753 as it had told us on the ticket, but I looked out the window and to my shock, saw an A330-200 sat there, and not only was it a 332, it was the youngest one of TCX, G-TCXA. We went up to check out the brand new catering facilities, which looked very nice, and then we made our way down to the gate. On gate 26 was the massively delayed Paphos flight (18 hours late) and saw G-JMAA sat there, so I assumed that the 752 that was due to operate the PFO had gone tech, so they had switched -AA over to the PFO flight and since -XA would be sat idle all day otherwise, they put -XA on our flight to FUE. My biggest aircraft up to this point had been a 763 of (as it was then) Air 2000, so it was exciting to think I was about to board my biggest aircraft yet, and the A330-200 is the aircraft I’ve most wanted to fly on, as it’s my favourite looking aircraft, and now I was getting the chance to get on one.

Boarding was started at 09:50, just as a MON A300 (G-MONS) was departing to Calgary, and the PFO finally left 18 hours late. I already knew as soon as we found out it was the 332 we were on that we’d get seatback TVs (first time for all 4 of us), and we were all very impressed with the cabin. I sat down in the my seat and instantly said that there was not enough legroom. I’m quite tall at 1.85m, and the only I got any room was if I bent my legs so they were either side of the seat in front. Boarding finished around 10:30, with all 280 of us piled into economy (clearly, they weren’t using Premium Economy on this flight), but there was still loads of empty seats left, and my dad (who sat in seat D) had 3 seats to himself. The captain welcomed us on board and we pushed back just before 10:40, as we were having the safety demonstration, which was shown both on the seatback TV, and manually by the cabin crew, who were a mixture of MYT and TCX crews, distinguished by the different outfits they were wearing. We headed out towards runway 23L in the rain following a BD Embraer which departed just before we lined up on 23L. We waited for about 30 seconds before the engines were spooled up and we sped down the runway and we took off fairly quickly.

We climbed out over Knutsford and headed down through central England before heading out towards the Atlantic, crossing over the Channel. One thing I’d missed on IFE had been the interactive map, which I’d not had on any flight since Airtours had it back in 1998, so that was the option I went for and it was fascinating watching it. The crew came round with the drinks service just as we were passing over the south coast of England, from which I had a bottle of water and a bag of Maltesers (in other words, what I always have!). We passed over the Bay of Biscay as the meal service came round, and the meal on this flight was chicken in a creamy sauce topped with sundried tomatoes. The chicken itself was alright, but I hate tomatoes, and these were poor, and spoilt the creamy sauce which would otherwise have been very nice. Also in the pack we got (something inherited from MYT) was a brown bread roll which I left (I hate brown bread), some crackers, some cream cheese (bit like Philadelphia cheese spread) and a fudge cake which I gave to my sister. We put our rubbish in the little rubbish bags that were provided in each pack and these were tidied away as we passed over Lisbon and headed out towards the Atlantic again. We passed down the western coast of Africa as the duty free service came round, from which we got nothing. As this happened, I flicked through the winter TCX magazine which was an enjoyable read, and I did some of the exercises advised in it, as a way of circulating the blood around the body.

We started our descent into FUE around 14:15, as we were descending from 41,000 feet, so we started our descent just north of Lanzarote. Our descent was very steep as we got down to about 10,000 feet pretty quickly, and then descended further as we turned out to sea, before turning back towards Fuerteventura (this is the standard approach to FUE), and we headed back up the coast towards FUE. We passed over Caleta de Fuste (in which our aparthotel was situated and I could see from my seat), and descended into FUE. Having arrived at FUE before, and seen the height planes come in at, we were still alarmingly high as we approached the airport and every time the captain spooled up the engines, I thought we were going to have a go around. The wind was also an issue and it was clear on final approach the captain was struggling, and almost managed to make the wing make contact with the ground until he adjusted it just seconds before we touched down. As it was, we touched down almost half way down the (very long) runway and full reverse thrust was applied (it’s fair to say that loud would be an understatement). We turned off at the very end of the runway and taxied back to our gate (followed by an XLA 738 with winglets and a FCA 752) and we parked up at one of the 2 remote stands at FUE. The airport/handlers clearly weren’t expecting an aircraft of the size of ours to turn up (the 753 is the largest aircraft seen on a regular basis at FUE), as the set of stairs they did bring to our plane didn’t reach far enough to reach the door, so there was a short delay as we waited for them to bring a set of stairs that did fit. It was at this point that we bumped into the Thomas Cook entertainment team for the summer season, including the 5 who would be at the Broncemar Beach with us, and one up in Corralejo was at Broncemar Beach last year when we were there). We disembarked the aircraft and boarded the buses and passed underneath the airbridges as we headed towards arrivals. Other planes on the ground were G-FCLA (headed for GLA), G-XLAN (arrived just after us), G-OOBA (arrived just after us), G-JMAB (headed for LGW), 9H-AEN (headed for EMA) and an IB 320. The luggage was already going round the belt as we passed through passport control and we pretty much got our luggage immediately and went through to arrivals where we got a taxi to the Broncemar Beach.

Our holiday:
Staying at the Broncemar Beach means that I could indulge in a little bit of aircraft spotting as it is literally 30 seconds flight time from touchdown at FUE , and among the ones I saw were many Condor 753s and 320s (at least 3 a day on everyday except Wednesday), and few Air Berlin 737s and 320s (a mixture of the old and new liveries), a few Ryanair 738s, the odd EZY 319, quite a few TUI aircraft from Sweden and Germany, a couple of Novair 321s, peculiarly, a Eurocypria 738 coming in from Warsaw, loads of Iberia, Spanair, Air Europa, Futura, Islas Airways and Binter Canarias planes.

TCX758L – 02/04/08
G-JMAA – Boeing B757-300
Seat: 28C
Scheduled Block Time: 15:40 – 19:55
Actual Block Time: 15:34 – 19:41
Take off: 15:43
Landing: 19:36

This holiday was one of the best ever, but all good things have to come to an end at some point and so we had to go home. So, on the morning of the flight home, we packed and took our baggage to the holding area and we went down to the pool for the last time, and I could do a little bit of spotting. In the morning, it was almost entirely British flights that were coming in, a XLA 738, FCA 752, 321 and 752 of TCX, a 738 of Ryanair, a 733 (I think) of TOM and a Binter ATR which was being weird as it came in at a ridiculously quick speed for an ATR, it was too low, and the undercarriage was still up, so I’ve no idea what that was doing. But at 13:00 we got on the coach and headed towards the airport. The airport comes into view almost the minute you head onto the main road which is right outside the Broncemar Beach and I could see it was British dominated. As we got closer to the airport, a Latcharter 320 passed over our coach and touched down on the runway just as a TOM 752 was taxiing down to depart back to the UK. We soon got to the airport and we headed inside to find that TCX had 8 desks open for all flights, so we just got in one queue, and I saw behind the check in a Spanair MD-80 and FCA 320 and 321 leave.

We quickly got through security and got into the departure lounge which is excellent. There is a wide variety of shops/restaurants, and the front of the building looking onto the apron is entirely glass all the way along, so you get fantastic views of the apron from the terminal. The Latcharter 320 as it turns out, was subbing for Air Malta and was heading back to EMA. We moved our stuff to by gate 7 as this had the best views. The first of the TCX GLA flights (G-FCLK) arrived about 45 minutes late and taxied to gate 9. The next one to touch down was a TCX 753 at 14:35, but given that the LGW and MAN flights were both on a 753, we didn’t know which one it was, but at that moment, the departure board was updated and it was our plane that had landed, and it taxied in. I was eager to find out which of the 2 753s we’d get, having had both of them twice before (MAN-ALC-MAN for both), and saw it was G-JMAA, which means that I’ve now been on G-JMAA more than any other aircraft, as this was my third flight on this flight. Ironically, given we’d moved out stuff to outside gate 7 about 30 minutes before -AA arrived, it parked up at gate 7 some 35 minutes behind schedule, meaning we didn’t have to move at all. The sister of -AA arrived about 15 minutes later and was operating the LGW flight, as it had been the previous week. Then the second flight to GLA arrived and it was G-FCLA, which had operated the first GLA flight last week, at which point G-FCLF left for BHX, and the Latcharter 320 departed. As G-FCLK was pushed back, it was running some 90 minutes late, and as it was pushing back, we started boarding, and unusually, for a foreign airport, they called our plane by rows, and given we were towards the back of the plane, we were one of the first to get on board.

My sister and I have an agreement that whoever has the window seat outbound gets the aisle seat inbound and vice versa. I found that the seat pitch on the 753 appears to be larger than on the 332 (may not be the case, besides the 332s will be getting a 33 inch seat pitch from next month), as I could keep my legs straight and not be in pain! Boarding took quite a while as this flight was completely full, there wasn’t an empty seat on it (I checked!), but we were all on board by 15:25, and the doors were closed. This surprised me as I always thought the 753 needed more than 1 hour to turnaround the aircraft to let the brakes cool as they have to work harder on a 753 due to the heavier weight of the aircraft than a 752, but no, we pushed back 6 minutes ahead of schedule, which is an achievement in itself given the plane arrived on stand 35 minutes late, so the aircraft had been turned around and pushed back in less than an hour, which on such a long plane, is an achievement. A manual safety demonstration was carried out (unusual as we had a video demonstration 3 years ago on the same plane) and we started the long taxi out to runway 01 for our departure back to MAN.

We were soon lined up ready to go on 01, but ATC made us wait for about a minute before the engines were spooled up and after a very long take off roll, we were in the air. It was at this point as the cabin crew were released that they were wearing brand new uniforms, and as I looked in the excellent new magazine, they’ve introduced a new uniform to coincide with the merging of TCX and MYT. It looked very smart and I was impressed albeit, as it was an all female cabin crew, I didn’t get to see the male uniform in person. The Scottish first officer came on the PA and told us about our flight today, saying we’d be cruising at 34,000 feet and travelling at 546 mph (the magazine said the maximum cruising speed for a 753 was 510mph), and told us of our route back to MAN, which was pretty much the same as the flight out, except we’d be descending over home instead of going up through central England. He also implied we’d be arriving on 05L in MAN, as the winds were from the north at the time (this must have changed since that announcement, we arrived on 23R). The crew came round shortly after take off and as always, I got a bottle of water and a bag of Maltesers. The movie being shown on the TV screens was The Golden Compass, which I had no interest in so I opted to read the new inflight magazine, which I found a hugely enjoyable read, and it was interesting to note that it’s been updated with the new aircraft types entering the fleet (the illustration of the 763 was basically a 332 without the winglets), and that on the map, they’ll be serving lots of new bases in the UK, such as Cardiff and Liverpool. Overall, this inflight magazine was one of the best I’ve seen, and it’s clear they’ve put a lot of effort into it. The meal came round about 90 minutes into the flight and it was sausage and mash (with peas and gravy), which was quite nice, but not as nice as the chocolate fudge brownie (with custard) which was delicious (I had 2 as my mum gave me hers). Soon the meals were taken away and duty free came round which I got nothing from, but my dad got a big bottle of brandy for my uncle. As the flight progressed, the first officer came on again and told us where we were, our route, and still insisted that we were landing from the south, and informed us that we had taken several shortcuts which had made up some time.

With about 20 minutes to go, we started our descent into MAN. There were rather a lot of clouds so we didn’t see much at all before we suddenly came under and saw how low we were. It was also at this point that I realised that we were landing on 23R rather than 05L, as I recognised the general area, including the taller buildings. We came in low and quickly over the main road going to Wythenshaw, and we touched down smoothly level with pier B and reverse thrust was applied. We were landing as a City Airline E145 was departing on the other runway which was interesting. We exited near the end of the runway and started to taxi in towards our gate at terminal 1.

We passed the AVP, which, to my amazement, still had people on the mounds watching, despite the fact it was nearly dark when we landed. We taxied in past G-TCXA (our outbound plane) and saw in the distance a FedEx MD-11 parked up at the end of the apron. We taxied in to gate 23, and disembarked the plane, heading through to arrivals where the luggage took 40 minutes to come through. Once it had come through, we went through to arrivals to wait for our FSS bus back to the car park to collect our car and go home. As we waited, I saw the evening EK 773 being prepared for it’s flight back to Dubai, and a FCA 752 come back from somewhere nice and park up, just as the bus got here. When we got to the car park, there was just time to see a couple of Monarch Airbuses arrive and then we left for home.

Overall, I thought TCX was impressive, albeit the seat pitch on the 332 was small, but this is being rectified as of next month. It was a huge, and very nice surprise to get a 332 with seatback TVs, and I wasn’t let down by the 753 either, though I had more of an idea of what that’d be like anyway. The cabin crew service was friendly, and the meals were of good quality, and hopefully, my next holiday will be with TCX, hopefully to Fuerteventura, which is quite possibly my favourite holiday destination after Florida.

Once again, I’m sorry for the distinct lack of photos, but I tried to make the report more detailed as a result, it’s perhaps a bit too detailed, but never mind, I hope you enjoy it.