STN to AAR Ryanair Economy

Airline:  Ryanair

Flight #: FR7259

Route:    STN-AAR

Class:    Economy

Seat:     11A

Date:     Sunday 27^th August 2023

Unlike most years, in 2023 I had the August Bank Holiday free and with Beth at a festival, I decided to have a short trip away to a country I hadn’t visited in over two decades, Denmark. The country’s second city, Aarhus was my destination and as with many of my trips, this one started at London’s Stansted Airport.

With two days parking at the airport in the middle of the summer holidays costing something like £70, I instead had headed for Bishop’s Stortford and parked at the railway station’s car park. With the first Stansted Express of the day getting me from the station to Stansted in sufficient time, I saved around £50 as two days parking and a return train ticket cost just £19.05.

The first Stansted Express is at 0528 from Bishop’s Stortford and go me into Stansted’s underground railway station at 0537, 93 minutes before my flight was scheduled to depart. From stepping off the train to exiting duty free on the other side of security, it took just 15 minutes, aided by the fast-track security that I’d paid £8 for the privilege of. If you buy your fast-track direct from Stansted, you can pay an additional £2 and get fast-track plus which also provides a route to the departure lounge avoiding duty free.

With only 40 minutes or so before boarding would start, it wasn’t worth attempting to visit the lounge and so I headed to Burger King to grab some breakfast and some coffee. Whilst their breakfast was alright (the mini hashbrown bites are great!) the coffee was unfortunately a bit naff and so I headed for my gate with the intention of getting further caffeine when onboard.

For the first time in quite a while, my flight wasn’t departing from gate 40-59 and so I was saved from the 10-minute trek via the zigzagging walkway to that pier. This flight was departing from gate 87, at the far end of Stansted’s central pier and the easiest of the three to get to. From the Wetherspoons at the end of the departure lounge it is just a five-minute walk to the far end of this pier.

Our aircraft for the hour and 40 minute flight to Aarhus was EI-IGI, a brand new Boeing 737-8200 (or 737 Max 8) that had only been delivered to Ryanair on 22^nd March 2020, just over five months earlier. With the aircraft having been parked at Stansted overnight, there was no awaiting the inbound flight or waiting for passengers to disembark, and ‘boarding’ began at 0627, 43 minutes before departure.

I had managed to get to the front of the non-priority queue and with no-one having purchased priority boarding, it meant I was the first to have my boarding pass scanned and head towards the aircraft. Unfortunately, as with most flights with budget airlines, ‘boarding’ was in fact #BoardingNotBoarding and it meant I was also the first to stand in corridors for over 15 minutes until we were finally allowed onboard. With boarding having began at 0627, we moved from corridor to the external door at 0640, before being allowed outside to the bottom of the steps at 0642 and eventually getting onboard at 0645.

Following my own advice from my first flight on a 737 Max (read about that here), I had purchased a window seat in row 11 which has decent window placement and so boarding via the front steps I settled down in seat 11F for the journey to Denmark. With boarding complete, the flight was pretty empty, and I ended up with the whole of row 11 to myself. Unfortunately, as I’d found with the 737 Max on my previous flight, leg room is a bit tight but with space to spread out it wasn’t really an issue.

With the aircraft doors closed at 0657, we pushed back just over 10-minutes later with our taxiing commencing at 0716. Taking off from runway 22 at 0725, I was able to catch a glimpse of two UAE Government Boeing 747s parked up on the north side of the airport, before we took a left turn towards the coast. Just over 10-minutes into the flight, we crossed the coast near Sizewell just before a bank of cloud over the North Sea blocked the view.

With another dose of caffeine required, I purchased a coffee, bottle of water and a chocolate croissant for €9.40. The coffee on Ryanair is Lavazza filter coffee and so a lot more decent than the one I’d gotten earlier in the morning at Burger King. The rest of the flight across the North Sea was uneventful until we crossed the Danish coast at Esjberg where we encountered some light turbulence.

Passing over the city of Billund, I was able to see both the airport (to where I took my first ever flight with Maersk Air back in 2003) and the adjacent Legoland theme park. In the distance was the bridge taking the main E45 motorway across Vejle Fjord on the eastern coast of Denmark’s mainland. With our decent almost complete, I was able to grab a photo of the village of Rønde and the stunning coastline behind it as we approached Aarhus airport.

Touching down on runway 10R at 0936 local time, we had been in the air for just 71 minutes and our pilot brought the flight to an end with some very sharp braking to exit the runway via the nearest taxiway. Pulling onto stand 6 just three-minutes later, we parked a few stands over from ES-ATD, an SAS ATR 72-600 which was getting ready to operated flight SK1246 to Copenhagen.

As we exited the aircraft and crossed the tarmac I was a bit confused as we entered not the nice new terminal building, but a large marquee attached to it that formed some of the gate area. Seemingly the new terminal is still undergoing construction and these tents are part of a temporary solution whilst construction is finished.

This Ryanair flight was short but sweet, with just enough time to watch some episodes on Netflix and enjoy the cup of coffee. With a well-placed window on row 11, I was able to get some good views of both the English and Danish countryside and the 737 Max was reasonably comfortable mainly thanks to me having the row to myself.

Lounge              0*

Seat/Facilities     3*

Food               3*

Service             5*

Punctuality         5*

Overall Rating      16/25 (read about my rating system here!)