As is usual my boyfriend and I gift a holiday as a birthday gift to each other. In 2025 Sam was early by gifting my ‘present’ trip to Crete in May as in late September we would be off to Japan.

Due to some trouble getting his time off at work confirmed Sam was forced to book very last-minute (a week before departure) and had trouble finding options. Eventually he found an option through booking.com that sold last-minute packages through Lastminute.com. We would be flying on Greek carrier Sky Express from Brussels to Heraklion, stay at the Blue Sea Beach affiliated by Melia in Stalis, a 5 star all-in resort and fly back home on TUI fly. 

Our confirmation mail of Lastminute.com explicitly stated that on our Sky Express flight checked-in luggage was included and as we booked the Fly Deluxe upgrade for our TUI fly return flight we decided to bring the bigger suitcase and check it in.

On the website of Sky Express we tried to reserve extra legroom seats during online check-in, but the system refused to give us these “we were not allowed” to pick these seats and pay €25 extra for them.

The online check-in also didn’t deliver us boarding passes with a barcode so if we would have travelled without bags we still would have needed to check-in at the airport for proper boarding passes. As we had bags to check in anyway, this didn’t bother us but I can imagine it would bother people travelling light. The IT systems of Sky Express where not very great in our experience.

Upon arrival at the check-in at the airport the check-in agent told us that contrary to our confirmation mail, checked in baggage was not included in our fare and we would be forced to pay an additional €110 for our bags.

Of course we weren’t very thrilled about this, but as the agent was working for the external Aviapartner handling agent, we obliged and paid as there was not much they could do. He did however give us the emergency exit seats for free after we asked them if we could get them after paying the supplement as we couldn’t do it online, as he felt bad for us having to pay for the bags.

After this long check-in procedure we had to rush to grab some breakfast at the Diamond Lounge accessed thanks to our Priority Pass card.

As we wanted to enjoy our breakfast a bit we were amongst the last to board the plane and boarded relatively smoothly.

Flight GQ851
From Brussels (BRU) 10:45 (10:56) to Heraklion (HER) 15:10 (14:47)
Flight Time 2 hours 51 minutes
Airbus A320-251N SX-IOG
Delivered to Sky Express in November 2020

This specific Airbus A320neo was originally ordered by Air Asia and built to their specification with a tight 186 seats in Economy class. The leather seats had a decent shape and weren’t extremely thin. We were however very happy to have extra room to stretch out in the emergency exit row as the 29 inch seat pitch in the “normal” rows was extremely tight. The bottom cushion of my seat was well-used and not very comfortable, I ended up getting a back ache halfway in the flight.

Upon boarding the plane was stifling hot, this only got better once the engines started. Thanks to it being a modern A320 neo the engines where relatively quiet which provided for a decent sound level throughout the flight.

As soon as boarding was completed we noticed there was no third person in our row and thus had ample place to spread out. Creating out own “euro business”

After take-off the crew first passed around with the buy on board, where we bought a can of an interesting pink mocktail, which was refreshing but leaving a slightly sticky aftertaste.

After the buy on board service they surprisingly came around with a complimentary service with a choice of water, orange juice or coffee and an olive oil cookie. Which is definably better than most carriers perform, but this might be due to the longer flights between mainland Europe and Greece. 

There was no in-flight entertainment other than an in-flight magazine (which is quite rare since covid). There were also no power ports due to the basic nature of the former Air Asia cabin. 

In the end the flight was pretty unremarkable. Next time to Greece I will however look into flying on Aegean Airlines as they offer a far superior product and service. The IT issues at Sky Express with the impossibility to pay for better seats and the payment for extra baggage left us with a bit of a sour taste.

We did contact both lastminute and Sky Express about the extra baggage charge, in the end Sky Express promised us that they would refund the baggage charge within 9 weeks as it was indeed wrongly charged.

However it is now over 18 weeks since the promise and we haven’t seen any refund.