Easy Peasy (easyJet)

Member Name: mynameisrui

Product:	easyJet
Date:	01/08/08 (175 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap

Disadvantages: Boarding is like herding cattle

I recently flew from London to Croatia on Easyjet and thought I'd share my experiences.

Easyjet are one of these no frills airlines where you basically pay for the ticket and that's it! On other airlines you will be able to put baggage in the hold and have a meal on the plane and this is all included in the price of the ticket. When it comes to Easyjet, the basic price you pay is the price for a basic seat on the plane.

So, from the beginning, the first thing you do after you have chosen your flights is to look at the extra's available. The first thing that comes across is whether you want to put baggage in the hold. There is a charge for this obviously but, for most people, it is generally a necessity so there isn't much you can do about it. It is also worth noting that the maximum weight allowed per bag is 20kg which is lower than every other airline I've used so beware of that.

After this is done then you come down to travel insurance. This is automatically added to your journey so beware of this as you will need to remove it if it is not needed. You are then given the option of whether you want to add "Speedy Boarding" to your flight (I'll come onto this later) and, for us, it was an extra £15 each for this.

Once all this is done you need to put in the usual details and pay for the flight. You are then emailed an itinerary which has all your information on it including flight times which you are asked to take to the airport when you check in.

We made a slight error in that we missed out a letter in my girlfriends name (extremely stupid I know) so we had to ring them up and ask them to change it. They were very polite and said it wasn't a problem as it was just a spelling mistake and we wouldn't have to pay any more money because of it.

When it came to the day of departure check in was not easy! Our flight was at 6am and so Easyjet open check in 2 hours before departure meaning we had to be there early. It is worth noting that if you only have hand luggage then you can check in online at which point you are given an 'A' Seat (I'll come onto that with the Speedy Boarding.) but for us we had to queue up like everyone else. When we got to Gatwick at about 4am we dragged ourselves to the Easyjet area and realised there were about 7 check in desks open but these desks were there to accommodate about 5 different flights. We decided to join the shortest looking queue and about 20 minutes later we were eventually checked in. The woman who checked us in was fairly polite but considering the time we just wanted to sit down somewhere. Check in was very fast and we were eventually given our tickets and we were in seating class B.

This is probably a good time to talk about seating classes. With "proper" airlines (e.g. BA, Virgin, etc) you are assigned a seat upon check in. With Easyjet you are assigned a seat class. These can either be an A, B or none (I don't think there is a C but I may be wrong). This is used to determine your order of boarding the plane. What they do is to first ask for people with Speedy Boarding to board the plane and find a seat they like. They then ask for people with seating class A to come up, then B and finally everyone else. Your class is determined by how early you checked in. I think its along the lines of the first certain percentage of people to check into a particular flight get group A, the next percentage get B and anyone else doesn't get anything.

So, after check in we went and had a drink and waited. The plane came up with the gate quite quickly so we eventually wandered over. When we got to the gate we realised that it wasn't going to be easy to board. At the time there was no one actually by the walkway to the plane but as soon as someone arrived and sat down, it was like a wave of people just got up and moved forward. They eventually asked for the people with Speedy Boarding and those who needed assistance to board first. It was then time for the A people to go up and due to everyone just standing by the desk, people couldn't get through so they had to ask people to move. When they all boarded it was time for the B's which I think was a good chunk of the people there. It then became like someone was herding sheep. Everyone was pushing and trying to get on the plane first so they could get a seat. It was not a pretty sight!

We eventually got on the plane a found a seat together. The seats are what you'd expect in terms of quality and space but you pay for what you get. After going through the usual safety messages and demonstrations we took off. The staff then came round with the food (which you obviously have to pay for). Prices were astronomical as you can imagine and we paid £6.60 for 2 hot drinks and 2 small tubes of Pringles but they can charge whatever they want so its probably best to eat before you get on the plane.

Cabin crew on the plane weren't the best though. I often thought that they were more interested in keeping each other amused rather than looking after the passengers. The one thing that I was pleasantly surprised at was the captain. He introduced himself as they do but he was very polite and friendly unlike the usual drab voiced pilots you often found.

The return flight was much the same as the one out there expect we had A tickets so were able to board quickly once we managed to get past everyone standing in our way!

Overall we were quite happy with Easyjet. Don't get me wrong, this is no rival to any of the major airlines but for what you pay compared to the major airlines, it's a very good deal. I think the best way to describe Easyjet is to use the phrase

"You get what you pay for"

Summary: You get what you pay for