Traveling from Eindhoven Airport – Some Tips!
Today we traveled from Eindhoven to Kos (Greece). Of course by airplane. And while I traveled frequently from our own Eindhoven Airport, it’s been a while! Our plane was scheduled to depart at 15:40 and we had to check –in 2 hours before that. That’s 13:40! 2 hours of doing nothing…
This time I was already glad that we didn’t lose a day by traveling to Amsterdam Airport and going to all the long rows over there. This way we still had the morning for ourselves, to do some useful and productive stuff.
The good thing is that more and more airplanes allow to check-in online beforehand. And because we flew with Transavia I already checked in the day before and arranged 2 good seats way in front of the wings, so that you’ve got less noise from the engines which a roaring to the back. I also took in mind that we were flying south east in the afternoon, which meant that the sun would be shining on the right side of the planes. So, I selected seats on the left side, so we could leave the sunscreen on the window open.
Of course my seat was next to the aisle, so I could make optimal use of the aisle itself as leg room. One learns a few tricks if you fly a lot. After selecting the seats I printed the check-in vouchers so that we could avoid the long check-in rows at the airport itself.
Now that we already checked in, we saved ourselves 30 minutes because you have to check in your main luggage 90 minutes before departure. So our deadline to arrive at the airport was 14:10 instead of 13:40. We ordered a taxi for 13:45 and we arrived at the airport at 14:00. We dropped our baggage and the baggage drop-point, which had no people waiting and walked away from the long line of people who were waiting to check-in at counter 8.
Because of all these new stupid flying rules that say that you can’t bring your own liquids any more on the plane, we decided to sit down and drink our cans of Soda. Otherwise you would have to throw them away. What a rules! Just a commercial rule that makes you buy drinks in the airport shop and in the plane.
Until now we managed to avoid any rows of people, but customs is unavoidable in Eindhoven. No VIP treatment here! As always I removed everything, including my belt, to make sure we weren’t delayed over there by some stupid body or baggage check, but this time my shoes were the problem. After removing my shoes and putting them under the x-ray, everything was okay.
It’s clear that Eindhoven airport is not prepared for busy season! What a mess behind customs! Completely filled with people and no place to sit. And that because of the 4 planes that were going to depart in the next 2 hours. Note to Eindhoven Airport travelers: Wait as long as possible before going through customs! There is nothing to do behind customs besides a café and a shop. Just wait in front of customs and you can still get some fresh air by walking outside and have a few more shops and café’s to choose from.
After a slow walk around we found a empty table in the corner of the café. We dropped down and we had to wait. Thank god the Tour de France was on TV! Time Trial day, so I had something interesting to watch. After 45 minutes it was boarding time. Everybody ran to make a nice new row at the gate and I always wonder why! Do people really think the plane leaves without them, or that they won’t have a seat? As always we just stay put at our table. After 15 minutes the row was gone and some last people were walking towards the gate. That was the sign to go to the gate for ourselves as well. Again avoided a row of people!
As an extra bonus, we also avoided a row entering the plane itself. Because everybody was already seated in the plane, we just could walk into the plane, but our stuff in the overhead compartments and sit down. Too bad the only row left was a lot of airplanes: the sky was very busy and we had a 20 minute delay for departing!
Avoidable Rows:
- No Traffic Jam because of traveling from Eindhoven Airport instead of Schiphol Amsterdam
- No Check-in line because of internet check-in from home
- No Gate row because of going last
- No row while entering the plane because of going last
Unavoidable Rows:
- Customs at Eindhoven
