LGW to BIO Vueling Space One

Airline:  Vueling

Flight #: VY6304

Route:    LGW-BIO

Class:    Space One

Seat:     1F

Date:     Monday 24^th February 2025

Back at the end of February, with the winter weather starting to get a bit boring, my next trip came around just at the right time to get a bit of winter sun. Bilbao would be my destination, located on Spain’s northern coast and as the Basque Country’s largest city, I was looking forward to a trip full of history and culture. But before I could start exploring the city, I had to get there and for that I was trying out a new airline for me, Vueling.

With a morning departure from London’s Gatwick airport, an airport I hadn’t flown from since starting Flights and Times, I had stayed overnight at a nearby hotel and caught a local bus back to the airport in the morning. Due to the bus timetables, I did end up at Gatwick’s South terminal really early, arriving around two and a half hours before my flight. Typically, having arrived early, security was a breeze and it took only 10 minutes for me to get from the bus through to the departure lounge. Inevitably if I had caught the next bus and arrived an hour later, security would have been a nightmare and I’d have ended up stressed.

With plenty of time to waste, I headed to the No.1 Lounge, located upstairs within the departure lounge with views out over the southern side of the south terminal’s Pier 2 as well as the taxiways around the start of runway 26L. This gave me great views of the aircraft that had been parked up overnight with a mix of British Airways, Wizz Air and easyJet Airbus narrowbodies awaiting their first departures of the day. With the timing of my flight, I mostly got to see the first wave of European flights departing from my vantage point in the lounge, however I did also get to see some long-haul widebody arrivals including China Eastern, Emirates, Ethiopian and British Airways.

I first flew from Gatwick back in 2003, aged 10, with Maersk Air (a former Danish airline owned by the Maersk shipping company) to Billund on what was my first ever flight. Between then and my most recent flight from Gatwick, a BA flight to Barcelona back in 2017, the airport had massively changed, and there has been plenty more change since 2017 as well. As I sat in the lounge, I was able to look to my left and see the new Pier 1, which replaced the original that my first ever flight departed from back in 2003. Its funny what things you remember!

At 0731 the aircraft that would be operating my flight arrived on the inbound flight from Bilbao. EC-MLE, an almost nine-year-old Airbus A320-200 has been flying with Vueling since new and, having watched it park on one of the Pier 2 stands, I set off from the lounge towards the pier. The gate was announced at 0740, around 50 minutes before departure, however I was already on the pier and pretty much at the gate by this point. Surprisingly boarding started pretty quickly, initially at 0752 onto the Jet bridge, however just a few minutes later I was onboard the aircraft.

For the two-hour flight down to Spain I had a window view from my seat 1F, one of Vueling’s front row ‘Space One’ seats. Vueling have installed USB sockets onboard their newer aircraft with 2 USB-A sockets per three seats, and there’s also Wi-Fi available onboard which costs €2.49 for messaging all flight, €5.99 (£4.97) for one hour of streaming or €7.99 for the whole flight for streaming. The front row ‘Space One’ seats have their tray tables in the arm rests, making the seats a bit narrower, however there’s plenty of leg room available. Whilst Vueling doesn’t block the middle seat in ‘Space One’, I was lucky that I had the trio of seats to myself, giving me plenty of space to spread out.

Boarding was completed 15 minutes before our scheduled departure and although there was a slight delay before we pushed back, we still pushed back at 0826, four minutes ahead of schedule. With my seat on the right-hand side of the plane, I was able to get a good view of the aircraft departing ahead of us, and also got a glimpse of abandoned McDonnell Douglas MD-82 I-DAVA on the south side of the airport. This aircraft was inbounded at Gatwick by the Civil Aviation Authority in 2010 following the non-payment of navigation fees by defunct Itali Airlines and was subsequently sold to the airport for use as a ‘tug trainer’. Unfortunately, in the 15 years the aircraft has been at Gatwick, it has seemingly never been washed, meaning it certainly looks a bit forlorn and worse for wear.

Taking off from Gatwick’s runway 26L at 0839, we continued pretty much in a straight line until we reached 22,000 feet over Eastleigh, where we made a left turn to take us south-west and out over the English Channel. Passing between Guernsey and Jersey at our cruising altitude of 37,000 feet, we then crossed over the Britanny peninsula, turning to the south over the French town of Pontivy. Onboard, the cabin crew had started with the food and drink service, so I purchased the breakfast deal for €10.90 which included a coffee, orange juice and a savoury breakfast box. This breakfast box consisted of some toast, cream cheese, tomatoes in olive oil and a lemon and ginger shot, so all in all not bad for €10.90.

Having crossed the Brittany peninsula, we flew directly south across the Bay of Biscay, and as Bordeaux passed by many miles to the east, we began our decent towards Bilbao airport. Continuing south until we reached 5,000 feet just to the north of the city, we made a right turn followed by a left turn to line up on the final approach to Bilbao’s runway 12. At 1108 local time, we touched down in Bilbao and just three minutes later had parked up on one of the airport’s remote stands. Unfortunately, the arrival process took a little while, as we waited for buses and then joined a slow queue for passport control, and at around 1130 I was through into arrivals.

For my first flight with Vueling, I was pretty impressed. The ‘Space One’ seat was comfortable and had plenty of space, and the added amenities of USB charging and Wi-Fi are nice extras compared to many low-cost carriers. The crew were all friendly and helpful, and the onboard service seemed to have a reasonable choice at reasonable prices. Even better, we landed early! For the return journey I’d be flying in a ‘Space Plus’ seat, so it’d be interesting to compare the differences.

Lounge              0*

Seat/Facilities     4*

Food                3*

Service             5*

Punctuality         5*

Overall Rating      17/25 (read about my rating system here!)