[caption id="attachment_95" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Athens Airways Checkin"][/caption]

Today I flew to Mitilini for the weekend on the new regional airline in Greece, Athens Airways.

Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures onboard because I forgot the camera in the overhead compartment and we weren't allowed to get up because of turbulence.

There was a cloud of mud (sand and rain) in the air as we lifted up out of Athens. There were also strong winds in Athens so take-off was very bumby and swervy, I felt kid of nauseous.

The aircraft was an EMBRAER ERJ-145 named "Νίκος Εγγονόπουλος" after the greek painter. It has 49 seats, three to a row, one on the left, two on the right. The cabin ceiling was extremely low for me, I just couldn't sit up straight anywhere! But the seats had good leg room (well I was in the emergency exit seat and with no one sitting next to me). Athens Airways currently has 4 of these aircraft at the moment, all named after greek painters.

Each seat was equipped with a bottle of mineral water, a coco-mat pillow, a coco-mat cloth envelope containing 1 kit-kat chocolate, 1 unidentified candy and a wet towel scented with chamomile. With the exception of the low ceiling everything was stylish and comfortable overall.

[caption id="attachment_102" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Boarding Athens Airways flight ZF 454"][/caption]

Unfortunately there was too much turbulence to serve beverages. Also I don't know if it was related to the turbulence but the stewardess didn't let me use my laptop after take-off.

The weather in Mitilini was windy, 25 knots. The approach was very bumpy, and if i wasn't looking outside the window constantly I would have been sick. The pilot did a very good job though and got us to the airport. Honestly I thought he would have turned around and headed back to Athens. There was a big applause from the passengers once we were taxiing down he runway :-)

Update on the 6th of March 2009

On my return flight today there was fine weather so I got served some beverages and managed to take some pictures of the plane and the view of Mitilini and Lesvos from above.