My wife and I recently flew one of the the longer Wizz Air flights and it certainly had its interesting components! Here is our flight story.
Wizz Air Flight – Wow!
In case you don’t know, Wizz Air is an ultra low cost carrier, or ULCC. This means that they are in the same type of flight setup as Ryanair. In other words, you are going to get to your destination and you may do it very cheap – but everything is going to cost you. And, being an ultra low cost carrier, there may be some, well, oddities with the passengers along the way. 🙂
When you hear of mid-flight disturbances in Europe on flights, most of the time it is on a low cost carrier. Many of those flights are to/from holiday destinations so you get people that are either bummed about leaving that end up getting a little riled along the way or very excited about going and they get slightly over-exuberant.
My wife and I recently flew one of the longer Wizz Air flights – from Tenerife on the Canary Islands to Vienna, Austria. I have flown Wizz in the past but it was only for short haul flights. This flight, being over 4 hours, was quite a bit longer!
For starters, after we got onboard and to our seats, a female passenger got on the plane with her iPhone out, taking pictures of everyone as she walked the aisle. I mean, leaning in to take photos. I turned away and when I turned back, she was still there with her phone up taking photos in my direction. This is something that is not allowed in Europe under their privacy laws but it didn’t seem to bother other passengers (and she did the same again at baggage claim – not entirely sure why!).
After take-off, that is when the fun started! 🙂 Apparently, people took the Wizz Air name to heart and immediately lined up in the aisle to use the bathroom. I’m not sure if it was that people had made sure they drank a lot before getting on the plane (since even water costs onboard Wizz) and now they had to relieve themselves or what. But, there was a line of 10 people or more in the aisle for the bathroom – the entire flight! Some passengers were up to go again and again.
But, wait, it gets even better! Many of these people and others on the flight, were standing in line for the bathroom with bare feet! That’s right, they were going into this airplane bathroom with nothing on their feet. Speaking of bare feet, I’ve never seen so many bare feet in one area before.
People had their shoes/socks/flip flops off all over the plane and were draping those bare feet anywhere they felt like it. The seats on Wizz don’t recline so there were some people with their feet on top of the seat in front of them. This meant that I could just look around the cabin and see bare feet pointing up all over.
People were also putting their bare feet in between the seats of the passengers in front of them. More amazing was that it didn’t seem that anyone was getting upset about it! Fortunately, no one tried to do that to us though my seat mate to the left (I was in the middle) was also on Team Bare Feet – and decided to pick in between her toes during the flight.
Then there were the people that took their shirts off for a bit. One passenger near us also decided to change shirts upon landing so he took one shirt off and starting hunting around for another to put on.
Lastly, I am used to the phenomenon where people have to jump up while a plane is still approaching its final destination – I cannot understand it but I am very familiar with it. This went to a whole other level! As soon as the plane touched down on the runway, passengers jumped up and began dashing around the cabin to retrieve their bags from various overhead bins. I mean – like 15-20 people running around while we are still streaking down the runway. The flight attendants’ calls to have a seat didn’t do anything. It was not until people had grabbed their bags that they returned to their seats and held their bags to their chests.
All in all, it was an entertaining and slightly disturbing flight! But, since Wizz doesn’t provide seat-back entertainment units, maybe this is part of their pitch to entertain passengers on their longer flights? 🙂
It was certainly an experience and one that really does not make me want to flight a longer Wizz flight again. My wife and I just kept looking at each other in semi-disbelief at some of the behaviors, but I guess you get what you pay for!
