Background

Jet2.com is a budget airline, based in Leeds and founded in 2002. They fly from seven UK airports; Belfast, Blackpool, East Midlands, Edinburgh, Leeds Bradford, Manchester and Newcastle, and fly to 49 European destinations.

Booking

I won my flight, and will go in to more detail about this later, but because of this I never actually booked my own flights. However the booking process is really easy.

You can book online, at www.jet2.com. You enter your flight details on the left side of the homepage. You select your departure airport, and the place you would like to fly to. You then enter the dates, and how many people are flying. Alternatively, you can choose the 'View low fares by month' link, again on the Jet2.com homepage. Once you have clicked on this link you enter the departure airport, and where you want to go to, how many passengers there will be, and what month you wish to fly in. This will then show you the flight prices for each day during the month, and you are able to choose the dates where flights are cheapest, a very handy application if your dates are flexible.

When selecting flights, the prices shown are the 'base fares'. This is the base price, without any taxes or extra charges, these are shown on the right side of the webpage. Personally, I would much prefer the price shown to include all extra charges as it is much easier to see what you are actually paying.

After selecting your flights, you enter passenger details, and select extras, such as baggage. Hand baggage is free (10kg), but hold luggage is charged at £15.99 for 22kg. You then have the option of booking seats at a cost, and enter your payment details.

You will receive flight confirmation by email, and you are advised to print this off and take it along with you to the airport.

Check In

We flew from Leeds Bradford Airport to Tenerife with Jet2 back in January 2008. We were advised check in opened two hours before the flight. We always like to arrive as check in opens to ensure we get seats together. We arrived about two and a half hours before depature, and found that check in was already open. Great as it saved us hanging around, but annoying as if we had known it was opening early we would have got there earlier, and stood a better chance of sitting together.

Check in was very quick, and queues very short. The lady on check in was very friendly, and we managed to get seats together on the plane.

The Flight

The seat configuration of the flight was 3x3. This was the first time I had flown on one of the budget airlines, and I was expecting a very small amount of leg room, but this was not the case. The seats were not huge, but they were no smaller than any other aircraft I have flown on, and I did not feel cramped at all.

As this is a budget airline, you do not get a meal onboard. Food is available to buy, but is extremely expensive. I highly recommend buying something at the airport, and this is what we did. Food included sandwiches, paninis and snack food such as crisps and chocolate bars.
The crew on board were all very friendly, as you would expect. They came around selling food, and things from the Jet2 shop, and were always around should you have any questions.

Our flight left Leeds Bradford airport on time, and landed in Tenerife early. The return flight was also on time. Overall, very impressed.

Competition and Customer Service Experience

Jet2 ran a competition in 2008 to win return flights. Both myself and my boyfriend won return flights, and booked these to Tenerife. I was very impressed with Jet2 on this occasion, but with the flight itself and the competition.

In 2009, they ran the same competition. I decided to enter myself and my boyfriend again, as well as my Mum and Dad. We were all lucky enough to win, and were very excited about booking our flights. There was nothing but problems with the competition this time round, and I feel I have to mention this as part of my Jet2 review as it did taint my opinion of them.

The first problem was with receiving confirmation of our win. For some reason Hotmail blocked the emails from Jet2, meaning we never received confirmation, and had to wait for a letter in the post, which took 14 days. Those who were using other email providers received their confirmation straight away. You had to enter 3 choices of destinations, and the dates you wanted to go. Jet2 then booked the flights for you, depending on availability. This was done on a first come first choice basis. Those who had to wait for letters (us!) got a pick of whatever was left.

It took around 2-3 months for us to finally get any flights. We submitted over 60 choices of different destinations and dates before finally finding availability. I contacted Jet2 on several occasions and found the customer service to be very disappointing. They were not interested in my problem at all. It seemed there was only availability for competition winners on the more frequent flights, such as Amsterdam where they fly a couple of times a day. If you wanted to go to Sharm El Sheikh you had no chance.

This experience really put me off Jet2, the whole competition was a complete con from start to finish, and I know many, many others had similar experiences. In the end, I didn't bother with my flight, as I would have had to pay for luggage and did not want to give Jet2 a penny of my money. It's a shame as I was impressed with them first time round.

Conclusion

Overall, other than my competition experience, I did enjoy my flight with Jet2. They are not the cheapest of the low budget companies, but are still a low priced option. Personally, I will not use them again on principle, which is unfortunate as I had no problems with the flight at all.