This flight was the last leg of an epic three airline, four sector journey from Sydney to Dublin back in 2008. I am quite succinct in this one and only took two pictures, which shows just how tired I was!
MA622 – Budapest to Dublin (BUD-DUB)
10 August 2008
Boeing 737-800 – HA-LOH
Seat: Business 1F
Departure: 18:55 Arrival 21:00
I arrived in Departures and went out for a little air for a while. It was lovely to be outside after 30 hours travelling, and I enjoyed it. There is some kind of small aviation viewing park next to the Terminal, but I didn’t go down as I was exhausted, quite frankly! That’s something I want to do next time as there are some cool Russian airliners there.
Budapest Check-In
The flight to Dublin wasn’t on the board as available to check-in as it was still 4 hours to departure, so I went to the London check-in and told the agent I was in transit and could she check me in now so I could get to the lounge. She had no problem with it, and after much typing synched up the baggage (which had been checked through from Sydney) and handed me my boarding pass. Score! I was so pleased about that – go Malev!
Straight back through Passport control and into the lounge, where I sat about in various states of coma reading a book until it was time to board.
Malev Business Class Seats
We boarded on time, and horror of horrors, the 737-800 has shitty Economy-esque Business Class seats. 3 x 3 – total contrast to the 737-700 which has proper J class seats in a 3 x 2 arrangement. I wasn’t at all happy with that, the seat was not at all like my outbound sector.
Anyway, I had no-one next to me (but row 1 has no armrests you can move up – so it’s a bad spot all round), and business class was maybe 5 out of 12 seats full. Pre-take off orange juice, followed by the aircraft buttoning up, safety demonstration in Hungarian and English on the drop down screens, followed by us leaping into the air.
Dinner Time
A white cloth was laid on the table, followed by pre-dinner nuts and a drink.
We flew on and arrived in Dublin on time.
Overall Thoughts
Cabin service was excellent, and once again a “poor cousin” of oneworld shows they are excellent in this way. The food service is also well up to alliance standards.
Anyway, thoroughly enjoyed my flights – though I have vowed to fly direct with QF or BA or CX or JL next time rather than doing so many sectors. It’s quite tiring! Hope you enjoyed the report, and all the other ones from this trip! Thanks for reading, and feel free to comment – I’ll answer any questions.
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So that was how I reported it at the time. It is very short because I had been flying an itinerary which was Sydney to Bangkok, Bangkok to Amman, Amman to Budapest and finishing Budapest to Dublin. Plenty of time between flights meant for a very long journey!
Did you ever fly with Malev business class and what was it like? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image by Dmitriy Pichugin via Wikimedia Commons.
