TRIP REPORT | INDEX
Date: September 4, 2020
Flight: JU365
I was originally planning to fly from Barcelona to Belgrade but as flights have not been resumed between the two cities yet, I rerouted myself via Amsterdam, since, for various reasons, this arrangement suited me best, even if it was not on a single ticket. My first leg from Barcelona to Amsterdam was with Transavia which was quite empty, while my second leg was with Air Serbia with around 110 passengers on board the A319.
Amsterdam Airport was not very busy. To my surprise, many people inside the Schiphol terminal were not wearing masks at all. I saw numerous airport staff without masks as well as some pilots and cabin crew walking around without them. Later I was told that the Netherlands is quite lax about these things. The Air Serbia plane from Belgrade arrived early, so I got a chance to take a few shots of it while it was taxing to the gate.
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| Quiet Amsterdam Airport |
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| Our gate |
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| Our ride to Belgrade |
As I said above, the load factor was rather high to my surprise. Because of work, I have been required to travel a few times over the past month, mostly between Spain and Belgium and almost all of my flights were empty. After taking my seat, the pilot came on to inform us about our flight details. There was a large group of Chinese passengers coming on board the plane and some of them were wearing hazmat suits, but they were mostly younger people. In the literature pocket there is the safety card, as well as the new September copy of the inflight magazine and the air sickness bag, which are all in one plastic sleeve. It seemed that this particular plane did not have wifi.
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| Boarding |
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| Some passengers in hazmat suits |
All passengers on board were wearing masks, as well as the crew who were with masks and gloves.
Due to corona, I wasn’t expecting much in terms of service. However, we all got a bottle of water and a bag of chips. In order to minimise contact between the crew and passengers, there was no sale of food and drinks through the Elevate Deli service.
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| On board snack |
The flight was mostly uneventful. Upon landing in Belgrade it was rather busy because there was a wave of Air Serbia flights that had all arrived within a few minutes of each other - Amsterdam, Zurich, Stockholm, Zagreb, Prague, Dusseldorf, Berlin, Stuttgart, Paris and Berlin if I remember correctly. In fact, all of these arrived within a 25 minutes timeframe.
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| Passengers preparing to leave |
The passport control area has been arranged a bit differently now with lanes set up. There is a “sanitary control area” and a sign that all passengers are getting their temperatures checked through infrared cameras.
After leaving the baggage claim area, there was no one in arrivals since people who are not travelling are not allowed inside the building, but it was busy outside the terminal building with family and friends waiting.
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| Only passengers allowed in the arrivals hall |
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| But people were waiting outside |
Overall, it was a good flight. I guess the notable things were that there was some sort of service on board (as far as I remember chips and water was what you got for free before the pandemic as well) and the flight was much busier than I thought it would be.
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