This trip report is a review of Aer Lingus flight EI580 from Dublin Airport (DUB) to Malaga Costa Del Sol Airport (AGP). This trip occurred in July 2023 and the flight was on an A330-300 with the reviewer sitting in economy. This report is based on the reviewer's memories and all mistakes are my own which I accept responsibility for. The account is accurate as far as I can remember. Please be aware that your travel experience may be different to mine and you should not base any decisions based on what you have read in this report.
The trip started at Dublin Airport, terminal 2 at bag drop. It was 4 am and since terminal 2 only opens at 4 am it was very busy. There was a long queue but it kept moving. We used an automatic bag check-in for our hold baggage. This was similar to my last trip report. We placed our luggage on a scale, scanned out boarding pass and a machine printed a ticket for it. This was helpful when checking in and since there were a lot of these check-in stations it helped reduce queue times.
After the bag drop, we went to security. We had fast-track security which was excellent. There was no one else in the fast track lane and we were through security within 5 minutes. I would highly recommend fast-track security, especially if you know you will be travelling through Dublin Airport at a busy time and don't want to wait. We were through security by 4:30 am.
Having passed through security we made our way to the departures area. We went to different shops to pass the time. We went to Butler's Chocolate which was very nice. Since it was very early I didn't go for a big meal but opted for a hot chocolate and a muffin. Our gate was 417. This was near the U.S. Pre Clearance area of Dublin Airport and our aircraft had just arrived from New York JFK that morning. We made our way to the gate area and watched planes while we waited for boarding to commence.
Our aircraft was an Airbus A330-300 and as a result, boarding took quite a long time. My seat was 32A - a window seat. Once everyone had boarded, the Captain announced that we were delayed because engineering was looking at a problem and was putting something back together although he didn't tell us what. However, engineering must have done a great job as to my knowledge nothing went wrong during the flight.
We pushed back and taxied to runway 28R - this runway was opened just last year. However, since our gate was quite far from the runway, we had to taxi for quite a while. A lot of flights were taking off at the same time, all from the same runway which delayed our departure time even further.
We took off from runway 28R towards the west coast of Ireland. We then turned south and flew over Cork, over the Bay of Biscay, and Spain before landing in Malaga. Our cruising altitude was 39,000 feet.
During the flight, there was a choice of food and drink but I did not buy anything. Each seat had a seat back screen however, I felt there was a poor choice of movies and TV shows to watch. However, even if there was something you wanted to watch there were no headphones provided on any of the seats. This may have been because it was a short flight-less than 3 hours as I know that Aer Lingus do provide headphones on transatlantic services. There was a selection of games you could play on the IFE which I had fun playing. The total time of the flight was 2 hours, 41 minutes. The cabin crew were professional and friendly.
We landed at AGP on Runway 31. This meant we flew over the airport, over the Mediterranean Sea before turning round to land. After landing we taxied to our gate.
As we were deboarding there was music playing in the plane. This reminds me of holiday carriers such as Jet2 and this makes sense since Malaga, in the middle of summer, is a popular holiday destination.
We exited the plane and made our way to passport control. There was a long queue but it kept moving. Once we made it through we went to baggage claim. This was at belt 41 which was at the far end of the baggage collection area. After we collected our baggage we exited the terminal to continue our onward travels.
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