Assessment: AEGEAN Airways Business Class

Celebrating a milestone 12 months – its twenty fifth in enterprise – AEGEAN Airways has seen robust progress since its inception in 1999 when it had simply two plane and flew to solely two locations from Athens. Now flying to 47 international locations and priding itself in selling lesser-known Greek locations and native merchandise, this Star Alliance member caters for the nonetheless undiscovered Greece in addition to the well-known. Immediately, the airline continues to increase its horizons, most lately ordering 4 A321neo LR plane which might cowl distances of as much as 7.5 hours, making the Persian Gulf, India and Central Africa accessible from Greece.

The aircraft and route

We flew Business Class on an Airbus A320-200 on a direct service from Manchester (MAN) to Athens (ATH), in addition to from Athens to Manchester.

Verify-in

There’s a beneficiant baggage allowance of two x 32kg circumstances for the maintain, and a 13kg bag plus a private merchandise on-board. On condition that we had been staying in Athens for simply 5 nights, the latter was greater than ample for us, so we had been in a position to verify in on-line and head straight for the Quick Observe path to safety, with out the necessity to verify any luggage, though we did name on the desk simply to get printed boarding passes.

Lounge entry

From Manchester, AEGEAN fly out of Terminal 2, with Business Class passengers gaining access to the Escape Lounge.

There’s a prolonged bar (in addition to a smaller one which was closed on the time of our morning go to), loads of cooked breakfast choices, in addition to fruit, yoghurts, pastries, tea/espresso, and many others.

Out of Athens, AEGEAN’s main base, there’s a comparatively new lounge (opened in 2022) that was significantly extra trendy and extra spacious. Once more, we had an early flight and I believe it had not lengthy since opened after we arrived, so it was very quiet and felt very spacious.

There was a big island with muffins and pastries, and amenities for warm drinks.

There are additionally a variety of seating choices – snug sofas in addition to tables with extra upright seating,extra suited to doing a little work.

There have been additionally in depth extra meals choices – sandwiches, wraps, mini burgers, mini souvlaki and extra – in addition to chilled drinks.

Recliners could be discovered overlooking the airport apron – good for anybody needing some relaxation if going through a delayed flight or a extra prolonged layover.

The seat

On every flight, there have been 4 rows of enterprise class seats on this service, with three seats on both sides of the aisle. The center seat of the three has a cabin separator, reserved as a central desk, that means 16 Business Class seats in whole. In addition to this additional width, the extra leg room is after all a serious plus. The seats additionally recline round 4-5 inches, greater than sufficient to get a little bit slumber, and all you want actually for brief haul flights.

In-flight leisure

The AEGEAN Portal provides entry to free leisure content material, together with motion pictures, information, documentaries, music, a shifting map and a choice of video games, by way of WiFi. There’s free Stream WiFi possibility on board for Business Class passengers, offering speeds of as much as 15Mbps. Together with your system flight-mode enabled, you’d merely join by way of aegeanwifi.com or scan the QR code displayed on the again of the seat in entrance of you.

It’s only a brief flight (lower than 4 hours outbound), nonetheless, so when you take a ebook or pre-load a tool with a film or two, you may simply cross the time. The present situation of the inflight journal, fly good blue, consisted of over 300 pages; unsurprisingly, maybe, there are many adverts, however there are nonetheless an excellent variety of articles, and this version included one detailing Athens’ new culinary initiatives, as effectively in-depth items on Chios, Marseille, Vilnius, Andalusia, Rhodes and South Chania – all simply accessible by way of AEGEAN’s route community, after all.

Foods and drinks

For our outbound flight, breakfast on board consisted of a contemporary fruit platter with Manouri cheese, plus a alternative of a morning roll or croissant, with butter and a strawberry marmalade. There was additionally a sizzling entrée alternative by Govt Chef Lefteris Lazzarou of Omelet with Smoked Hen, Leek, Mushrooms and Thyme (pictured) or Omelet ‘Stourgato’ with Smoked Salmon and Spicy Tomato Sauce.

For our return, we had the choice of pastries.

There’s an everyday drinks service, too, with a choice of drinks to select from, together with native drinks of ouzo and tsipouro, plus eight completely different Greek wines to select from (had it not been morning, I’d have probably been tempted by one!).

The Gastronomics group behind the AEGEAN Business Class expertise contains a few of Greece’s most distinguished Govt Cooks, together with Christafaros Peskias and Alexandros Tsiantinis, Pastry Chef Stelios Parilaros and Grasp of Wine Konstantinos Lazarakis.

The associated fee

Out of season, you may journey Business Class from Manchester to Athens and again for as little as €461.90 per individual That is primarily based on a seek for subsequent January. In peak season, you may count on to pay greater than €1,000 per individual for a roundtrip Business Class fare.

Miles+Bonus – AEGEAN’s personal frequent flyer program – rewards loyal clients with miles for flights and different actions. Members can redeem these miles for numerous advantages, reminiscent of free flights, upgrades and different companies. This system is split into three tiers: Blue, Silver and Gold.

Frequent flyers may also prefer to look into the AEGEAN Move which permits passengers to create their very own flight bundle and safe costs for a complete 12 months, with limitless ticket adjustments. You may customise your AEGEAN Move by deciding on a route or group of routes that fit your wants, the variety of flights you like, and the minimal variety of days previous to the flight’s departure. This can afford you extra distinctive advantages reminiscent of the utmost Miles+Bonus Award and Tiers Miles for Financial system Class Flex fare with every flight booked.

The service and ultimate ideas

As anticipated, the cabin crew had been pleasant {and professional}.

The arrival in Athens was very environment friendly and made an actual distinction with how rapidly we had been in a position to make it to town centre. Business Class passengers had been in a position to disembark very quicly after taxiing to the gate and make their approach to a bus that took simply the 16 of us to the airport constructing instantly, fairly than ready for different passengers. This proved to be a serious plus.

After we reached passport management, there was no queue in any way, so we had been via customs and making our approach to the centre of Athens in a matter of minutes.

General, flying Business Class with AEGEAN had been a extremely pleasing expertise. The spacious seating and the wonderful high quality of the lounge in Athens had been two key attributes that basically stood out. The swift and environment friendly arrival in Athens was additionally a serious plus, saving us precious time and permitting us to start out our journey directly.

Disclosure: Our journey was sponsored by AEGEAN Airways.