Assessment: AEGEAN Airways Enterprise Class

Celebrating a milestone yr – 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 nations 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. Right this moment, the airline continues to develop its horizons, most just 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 airplane and route

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

Examine-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. Provided that we had been staying in Athens for simply 5 nights, the latter was greater than ample for us, so we had been capable of examine in on-line and head straight for the Quick Observe path to safety, with out the necessity to examine any baggage, though we did name on the desk simply to get printed boarding passes.

Lounge entry

From Manchester, AEGEAN fly out of Terminal 2, with Enterprise Class passengers getting 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 so forth.

Out of Athens, AEGEAN’s major base, there’s a comparatively new lounge (opened in 2022) that was significantly extra fashionable 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 services for decent 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 intensive extra meals choices – sandwiches, wraps, mini burgers, mini souvlaki and extra – in addition to chilled drinks.

Recliners will 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 either side of the aisle. The center seat of the three has a cabin separator, reserved as a central desk, which means 16 Enterprise Class seats in whole. In addition to this further width, the extra leg room is in fact a significant plus. The seats additionally recline round 4-5 inches, greater than sufficient to get a bit of slumber, and all you want actually for brief haul flights.

In-flight leisure

The AEGEAN Portal offers entry to free leisure content material, together with films, information, documentaries, music, a shifting map and a choice of video games, through WiFi. There’s free Stream WiFi possibility on board for Enterprise Class passengers, offering speeds of as much as 15Mbps. Together with your system flight-mode enabled, you’ll merely join through 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), nevertheless, so when you take a ebook or pre-load a tool with a film or two, you possibly can simply move the time. The present concern of the inflight journal, fly good blue, consisted of over 300 pages; unsurprisingly, maybe, there are many advertisements, however there are nonetheless a very good variety of articles, and this version included one detailing Athens’ new culinary initiatives, as properly in-depth items on Chios, Marseille, Vilnius, Andalusia, Rhodes and South Chania – all simply accessible through AEGEAN’s route community, in fact.

Food and drinks

For our outbound flight, breakfast on board consisted of a recent fruit platter with Manouri cheese, plus a selection of a morning roll or croissant, with butter and a strawberry marmalade. There was additionally a sizzling entrée selection by Government 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 might have probably been tempted by one!).

The Gastronomics group behind the AEGEAN Enterprise Class expertise contains a few of Greece’s most distinguished Government 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 possibly can journey Enterprise Class from Manchester to Athens and again for as little as €461.90 per particular person That is based mostly on a seek for subsequent January. In peak season, you possibly can count on to pay greater than €1,000 per particular person for a roundtrip Enterprise 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 varied advantages, similar to free flights, upgrades and different companies. This system is split into three tiers: Blue, Silver and Gold.

Frequent flyers may additionally prefer to look into the AEGEAN Cross which permits passengers to create their very own flight package deal and safe costs for a complete yr, with limitless ticket adjustments. You possibly can customise your AEGEAN Cross by choosing a route or group of routes that fit your wants, the variety of flights you favor, and the minimal variety of days previous to the flight’s departure. This can afford you extra distinctive advantages similar to the utmost Miles+Bonus Award and Tiers Miles for Financial system Class Flex fare with every flight booked.

The service and closing 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 capable of make it to the town centre. Enterprise Class passengers had been capable of disembark very quicly after taxiing to the gate and make their option to a bus that took simply the 16 of us to the airport constructing instantly, reasonably than ready for different passengers. This proved to be a significant plus.

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

General, flying Enterprise Class with AEGEAN had been a extremely satisfying expertise. The spacious seating and the superb 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 significant plus, saving us beneficial time and permitting us to begin our journey directly.

Disclosure: Our journey was sponsored by AEGEAN Airways.

Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson is Editor of A Luxurious Journey Weblog and has labored within the journey trade for greater than 30 years. He’s Winner of the Improvements in Journey ‘Greatest Journey Influencer’ Award from WIRED journal. Along with different awards, the weblog has additionally been voted “one of many world’s finest journey blogs” and “finest for luxurious” by The Telegraph.