The airline that saves my relationship... (easyJet)

Member Name: DaftScotsLass

Product:	easyJet
Date:	10/02/03 (89 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, Friendly Staff

Disadvantages: No free food

Living in Scotland and being here while my partner works in the Netherlands is harder than I thought, but then I was given something to look forward to by purchasing my first return flight from Glasgow to Amsterdam Schiphol for a mere £33.16.

The booking system is not at all what you see is what you get. The taxes vary massively, and are usually dependent on how much you pay for your flight, i.e. you pay more tax on your £15.00 outbound flight than you would on your £25.00 return flight. I will put emphasis on this, though. If you're looking for massive reductions, book early. I mean a good couple of months early, then you're likely to get the ridiculous prices (i.e. the cost of my first flight to Holland, which cost me less than it would have cost me to get to the North of Scotland by train, but not back again). Book later, and it's still cheaper than its competitors, but you'll notice the difference. I paid £113 for a flight, booking only two days in advance. Finally, the sales. For a matter of hours only, they reduce certain flight prices, and I claimed my return ticket for £26.50. No vouchers needed.

Unlike the others reviewers, I don't dislike the free-for-all attitude at the likes of Glasgow airport. The sooner you check in, and the lower your boarding pass numbers, the sooner you get on the flight after pre-boarding those who need assistance. At the gate, you're neatly organised into rows of boarding pass numbers 1-30, 31-60 and so on, and you get on the flight accordingly. Not so at Edinburgh. Disorganised chaos because, unlike at Glasgow, easyJet haven't claimed their own part of the terminal. Numbers 1-30 are called, and everyone stands up. Needless to say, those who are chancing it are sent to the back of the line.

But yes, you get what you pay for. No free food, no free drink, oh well. At least people won't have the in-flight food to complain about. You can bring your own fo
od on, anyway, and on a short-haul flight, you don't really need more than that.

As for the punctuality records, I've only come across one mishap that the airline could have been blamed for - a crew shortage that resulted in an hours' delay, which the flight eventually caught up with, landing in Holland only 10 minutes behind schedule. My partner faced a delay of several hours on a return from Glasgow due to a technical fault, but the passengers were duly fed with sandwiches while they waited. Though the company claims to have one of the youngest fleets in existence (they previously used Boeing aircraft, but have switched to AirBus for the new fleet), technical diffculties are unforseen and unavoidable, regardless of the airline. If you subtract the total amount of delays I've had from the number of early arrivals, then I still have a total of around an hour 'in credit' with the airline.

Other delays I have encountered have again only been a matter of minutes, and due to blanket fog and snowfall at the Dutch end. You can hardly moan about that, can you? But then, as I'll go onto in a moment, I've seen people on the televison show from the English end getting full refunds on their tickets, accomodation, and return travel to their destination, albeit a couple of days late, yet still they moan (this was due to snowfall in Greece (I think), of course nothing to do with the airline). Some people are never satisfied...

The things you see on the likes of EasyJet's ITV show 'Airline' are minor disasters blown out of proportion, people wanting to get out of the country without a passport, you name it. The difference here is that eastJet choose not to hide their mishaps. Realistically, it's not them that lose the customer's passport, it's not them that set the ID regulations, and in general it's not the airline's fault when a bag goes astray. It's human nature to blow thing
s out of proportion when things go wrong, but forget to praise the good service.

Finally, the humourful staff. Some people may find it inappropriate, but on this full flight one of the attendants had us in stitches. "Those caught smoking in the toilets will be stunned with a cattle prod and thrown from the aircraft". That and various happy birthdays. Nothing like the sullen faced crew members I've come across on British Airways and Air Canada, how refreshing.

I wouldn't hesitate to fly with them again, because I know I can get to the check-in desk two hours before the flight departs, and get on the plane and get a decent seat. But not everyone knows this. I'm not a business user, but, going by the number of people I see stepping on the easyJet (and, previously, Go) flights, they must have saved a lot of companies a lot of money. There are no frills, but then you get what you pay for. I'm not looking for luxury, I'm looking for a reasonably priced and punctual way to get from A to B and easyJet does that and more.

Summary: