Tunisia is a year-round sunny destination that is just 2.5 hours from the UK. It feels like another world with North African food, culture and sunshine. For many, Gatwick is the gateway to this jewel on the southern edge of the Mediterranean. We flew Tunisair from London Gatwick to Tunis for our 2024 trip on one of their newest planes. Here is our review of Tunisair A320neo Economy LGW – TUN.

Airport Experience

Tunisair has a few desks in Gatwick’s South Terminal. We decided that I just checked bags were included, we would avail ourselves of the service. It wasn’t too long of a queue and it moved quite quickly so we were done in about 15 minutes. The check-in staff were friendly, but slightly distracted by another passenger who was shouting. I think I’d have been the same if someone was screaming at one of our check-in desks.

As this was part of a press trip, we got to know our fellow group mates as we made our way through security. Then it was time for breakfast, that good old airport staple, Wetherspoons. Saying that, the food was pretty bad and a lot more expensive than we remember.

Mr Fluskey got the medium breakfast which was about half the size of the large breakfast despite costing only £2 less and he felt distraught. We were so busy laughing at him and chatting that we didn’t realise our gate had been announced. I had been checking every few minutes up until the food arrived and then time just seemed to fly.

The group hopped up, ran to the bathroom and then hotfoot it to the gate. -15 to push back and I was high level stress! Well, we arrived at the gate and they hadn’t even opened it yet. Typical! The plane boarded and finally pushed back from the gate at around 11:05. This short delay is apparently not too bad, as Tunisair has a bit of a reputation for running late.

Inside the Tunisair Airbus A320neo

The Seats

The seats were in three different colours which was quite pleasing. Each had a little headrest cover sporting the logo. They had good padding, much better than your average low cost carrier. It was definitely worse for though.

Tunisia has a seat pitch of 30 – 32 inches which is pretty standard for its economy passengers. Apparently their business class is around 34 inches which seems a little tight for long haul, but maybe this is only on the Airbus A320 which does the shorter trips?

Every seat had a USB a port in the seat in front, which was a nice touch.

What I didn’t like so much was the cleanliness of our seating area. On both legs, our tray tables weren’t properly cleaned. On the return. Karl had someone else’s rubbish in his seat back pocket when we boarded and it was mucky. It is probably the dirtiest plane we have been on so I didn’t touch my seatback pocket at all.

Entertainment

There was a inflight magazine which was in Arabic, French and English. As they had to cram in so much text, it was quite a fast read. However, what I adored was the two kids pages with fun games. I was tempted to fill them in but thought better of ruining them for future kiddos.

There was a sticker above us that gave instructions about connecting our devices to the entertainment. It took me a moment to figure it out, but then my phone opened a new page and there it all was. As well as the all important flight map, there was a reasonable selection of films and TV shows to choose from. I think they were around 10 films in each genre, including newer blockbusters and I enjoyed watching a few episodes of The Big Bang Theory. On their long haul flights, there are seat back TVs. Let’s continue our review of Tunisair

Amenities

The bathroom’s on the Tunisair Airbus A320neo are quite small which I know can’t be helped. Mind you, we have just flown on a PLAY airlines near and they had extra mirrors which really opened up the space. My gripe with the bathrooms was the way they were kept. They were not super clean and the toilet roll hadn’t been replaced, neither had the hand towels. This was the same on both of our flights and shows a little carelessness on the part of the crew.

Food

Amazingly, Tunisair feeds its economy passengers, even in our short flight from London to Tunis. We weren’t expecting it at all, hence the Wetherspoons brekkie. The food arrived half an hour into the flight, record time! No choice was given so I guess everyone had the same thing unless they had a special meal request.

It was just a few minutes after the breakfast/lunch cut off so we got a proper lunch. For our review of Tunisair on our tray, we got:

• A roll which was a bit dry. There was no butter.
• A salad with kind of a Tuna Niçoise vibe. It had tuna and egg on the leaves. We discovered during our trip that these are common additions to Tunisian salads. It was nice enough but I’m not sure giving a tin can full of people tuna and egg is a good plan.
• Chicken, veggies and potatoes. I’m not sure what the thin, yellow sauce was but it was swimming in it. The chicken was quite dry and in general it was all very salty…but I ate the lot…for science.
• The dessert was a light and creamy cake. I couldn’t tell what the flavour was beyond, “sweet” but it was delicious and the best part of the meal by far.

Along with the food, we were offered a selection of soft drinks, followed quickly by tea and coffee, served black.

On the way back, the flight was earlier so we got breakfast. There was a tasty yogurt, a decent croissant, a chocolate muffin and a distinctly dry roll with cream cheese but again, no butter.

We kept the muffins, thinking about our trip to Iceland just the next day. Food in Iceland is very expensive so having a free breakfast we could take with us was a win. Sadly, when we descended and the air pressure changed, the muffins squashed really easily and we had two packets of reasonably tasty chocolate mush.

Final Thoughts on Our Review of Tunisair

Overall, our review of Tunisair is that they were pretty decent. It was lovely to be presented with food, have included luggage and the kids maze, of course. They really need to focus on their cleanliness though. The dirty tray tables, seatback pockets and poor bathroom maintenance were all a bit icky. This doesn’t matter so much on a short flight but if I were to fly long haul with Tunisair, it would bother me a lot more. It is also worth mentioning that we were due to take two internal flights with Tunisair whilst in the country, but one flight was cancelled outright, and the other delayed by five hours. It seems that this unreliability with their internal flights is pretty normal. I am going to give them a 6.5/10.

Rosie xx