Smartwings surprises with weird yet wonderful A220 service

It’s rare for me to fly a new airline these days and come away from the experience thinking “that was weird, but I’d probably do it again.” On a recent flight from Prague to Paris, Czech Republic’s Smartwings fit that description to a T. It’s a low-cost airline at its core, but with bits and pieces that feel truly premium.

Smartwings offers three fare products. The lower of the two confused this American traveler a bit. The Lite fare includes a large carryon bag of up to 8 kg but without a small personal item, while the middle-of-the-road Plus fare includes a checked bag, small personal item, and seat assignment.

I went for the higher Plus fare to ensure I was able to bring both my larger bag and a backpack on board. The seat assignment alone constituted about 50% of the upgrade to Plus.

When an airline of this caliber offers a wide range of pre-order meals in the booking flow, I approach it with equal parts curiosity and suspicion. Chicken and pork schnitzel? Braised beef cheeks? Roasted duck breast? Surely the food on board couldn’t be that good, or look as good as the images portrayed, or be a decent value. Right?

I had to find out, and so I ordered the “Hot chicken schnitzel (250 g) with vegetable garnish and bread slices” meal for $23.30.

I downloaded the Smartwings iOS app in the days leading up to the flight and quickly learned that it was completely useless aside from managing check-in and issuing a boarding pass. Smartwings does not have any sort of flight status webpage or view in its app, and only managed to pop up a little “on time” indicator for my reservation despite the flight actually being delayed nearly an hour. Thankfully the airport’s monitors accurately listed the delay, but maybe they shouldn’t have.

Despite the posted delayed departure time of 1:10pm, Smartwings seemed to be closing the gate nearly an hour before departure anyway. This came after a gate agent militantly enforced the airline’s rather low bag weight limit of 8 kg, going bag to bag with a handheld scale and only slapping a green sticker on bags that passed the test. I’ve flown a good number of low-cost airlines and have never seen such strict enforcement of bag weight limits at the gate.

Boarding began by standing on a crowded bus for about 20 minutes before finally being shuttled over to our Airbus A220-300 parked at a jet bridge at a different terminal.

This required a hike up the jet bridge stairs. I can only hope there was a different plan in place for anyone with mobility issues.

Once finally on board the Czech Airlines branded Airbus A220-300 the entire experience finally fell into place.

This seven month old all-economy aircraft is about as good as it gets for an intra-Europe flight.

Legroom was a bit on the tighter end, but not enough to impact my comfort.

Each seat is equipped with both USB-A and high powered 60W USB-C ports, with a personal device holder to match.

Smartwings claims to have a streaming entertainment portal, but once the wireless network finally kicked in I found neither entertainment nor connectivity.

A digital copy of the inflight magazine was available, but otherwise, entertainment content was nowhere to be found. The network gave out entirely after just a few minutes, anyway.

In these instances, it’s handy to have one’s own content at the ready.

The real star of the show, against all expectations, was the inflight service and meal. I’ve been burned plenty of times in the past by ordering a meal that doesn’t remotely resemble what was promised, or turns out to be a terrible value. Smartwings not only delivered exactly what was promised, but delivered a meal I would say was one of the best I’ve ever had on a narrowbody aircraft, including flights in premium cabins.

The portrayal of the chicken schnitzel dish during booking was nearly exactly what was actually delivered on board! Here’s how it was advertised.

And here’s how it looked on board. This is a tricky feat for even the most premium global airlines, let alone a small central European airline.

While it wasn’t the best schnitzel I had eaten even that week, it was far better than it needed to be to satisfy me on this flight. Smartwings could have stopped at just the schnitzel, but even the “vegetable garnish and bread slices” that turned out to be pickles, cherry tomatoes, and warm bread rolls were delicious.

My meal also came unexpectedly with an alcoholic beverage of my choice.

I wasn’t the only passenger to indulge, as I observed several other meals being delivered to other passengers, and even what appeared to be a bottle of sparkling wine.

Smartwings is a strange airline, but I’m glad I got to experience it. It wasn’t the cheapest option (that honor goes to Transavia and Ryanair), nor was it the most expensive (Air France).

It had elements of a low-cost carrier with the low bag weight and strict enforcement, but also elements of a premium carrier with its onboard product and catering.

Airlines with this kind of offering don’t usually stick around for long, as there is rarely a place for middle-of-the-road offerings. For the right price, though, I’d book it again if not just to try more of that fascinating pre-order meal menu.

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