South to the Sun with Air Transat to Cancun

Welcome to my first flight and what better way to officially kick this blog off is with a recent travel experience I had with Air Transat. I flew with Air Transat from Calgary to Cancun, Mexico during my reading week.

The Mighty Airbus A330-200

As with most charter flights to the south, they leave super early in the morning and my flight was no exception. Transat 762 was scheduled to depart for Cancun at 6am and required me to be at the airport by 4am. I've been on early flights before, but never this early before. To add to my enjoyment, a freak winter storm had blown in the night before, which had me worried about my drive to the airport in the morning.

3 am and surprisingly, my alarm didn't have to wake me, somehow I was already awake and ready to go. Within 15 minutes I was out the door and on my way to the airport. The roads that morning weren't too bad, slushy but in pretty good shape. I arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare to walk to the terminal and await my flight. I was quite surprised how busy the airport is for that time of the morning., but when there's over 400 people departing all at once, you want to capitalize on that opportunity. Check-in wasn't as efficient as I've seen with other airlines, taking well over 20 minutes, even for web check-in customers.

The winglet of Transat's A330 over the US

At 5:20am, boarding was called for Transat 762 as we walked down the jet-way to our awaiting Airbus A330-200. I have coined the term "The Mighty 330" for any A330 I see now and there is good reason I call it that. The A330 is a powerful long range aircraft and is one of the most common "heavy" type aircraft the come to Calgary. "The Mighty 330" is also the backbone of Air Transat's fleet and are used on most runs to the the south.

We boarded and settled into our seats and we were lucky as we had gotten on of Transat's refurbished cabins with leather seats and seat back tv's. At 5:55, we pushed back from the gate, deiced and began our long taxi out to Runway 34. 20 minutes later, the Rolls Royce engines roared to life and we were off into the early morning sky bound for Cancun. Within the half hour after take-off, the flights sprang into action, pouring glasses of champagne and passing out breakfast. It was a smooth flight, just over 5 hours till we would be soaking up the sun.

Because we were flying on one Air Transat's newly refurbished planes, I had the chance to sample their seat-back televisions. The system is much like Air Canada's but doesn't offer the same amount of content. The movies and tv shows were very current, although their music selection could have been better.

Cancun Control Tower

At 11:45am local time, the "Mighty 330" started its slow descent into Cancun and made a smooth touchdown on Runway 12L. Of course this is Mexico and what's the first thing I see, A giant advertisement for Corona on the side of the Control Tower. Good way to get people thinking about drinking.

Leaving the plane was much slower than boarding due to Mexican officials checking everyone to ensure they had their forms filled out. Now you thought Canada or US customs was bad, you haven't seen anything yet. It took nearly a half hour just to clear immigration, than another half hour to claim our baggage and get through their customs line. This line consists of you having your baggage screened again and pressing a button. If you get a green light, you are free to go, but if you get a red light, you get secondary inspection and boy that can be fun.

Overall I was very impressed with Air Transat, their new tv's and leather seats really show that they are committed to improving their in-flight product. The onboard champagne, hot breakfast and really friendly staff made it a great start to my vacation and would highly recommend flying with them when heading somewhere warm!