[Anonymous]

[MarkA380]

Flew Manchester to Vancouver October 2012.

This was my second trip to Vancouver with Air Transat and this time I got to experience Air Transat’s new style cabin.

Firstly, on boarding the aircraft you notice the new all leather seating, each fitted with seat back tv’s. This is standard on most long haul airlines these days so it’s nice to see it finally being rolled out by Air Transat across their entire A330 fleet.

The seats themselves are pretty comfortable, more so than the ones used in their older cabin. I would say there is slightly more legroom too, not much more, but every little helps!

A very noticable feature of the new cabin is the mood lighting, designed to reduce the effect of jet lag and create more of a relaxed mood in flight. On boarding the aircraft, the cabin had a cosy blue lighting which was quite relaxed. Once in the air the lighting then changed gradually from blues to purples, to reds, pinks and greens. A nice feature, but one which I soon forgot about.

The cabin service starts with the sale of comfort packs and headsets. This is then followed by a snack service and then finally a bar service. In economy soft drinks are complementary but alcoholic drinks are not and are charged for at $6 each.

After this, a hot meal is served. Have to say the food isn’t the best, but then the prices on Air Transat are so much lower than their competition so you can’t expect it to be comparable. The nice thing however is a small complimentary glass of wine offered with your meal.

Plenty of further drinks services were followed, and the crew didn’t seem to stop much at all on the 10 hour flight. You never went thirsty.

A light snack was served about an hour before landing, which was a small pizza. Perfectly nice.

Above all the flight ran on time and was pretty comfortable. For the price you can’t ask for more.

To conclude, having experienced their old style cabin I can say that their new cabin is of course better, but let’s not get carried away – the introduction of new seat back tv’s and some coloured lighting is the only noticable difference and something which most airlines have been doing for years.

The experience, whilst pleasant, will not feel new for most people used to flying on scheduled airlines and the configuration of 3-3-3 on an A330 still means the seats are narrower than what many will be used to.

[andystock]

3-3-3 on an A330 must be be very unpleasent, even 2-4-2 is not the best flying experience on the A330

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