JMC Airlines a 1000ft Above The Rest (JMC Air)

Member Name: Andy_The_Writer

Product:	JMC Air
Date:	12/04/03 (2541 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Service, Good Food, Good Price

Disadvantages: None

What makes an airline service good? Is it comfort during the flight? Is it the friendliness of the cabin crew? Perhaps you even feel the in flight entertainment is the deciding factor? I am a firm believer of having to look at all these factors to get a more complete picture of the quality of an airlines service. Which brings me too JMC Airlines.

Over the last three years I have been lucky enough to have flown out to Florida twice, each time using JMC. On both occasions the service was phenomenal, everything was perfect, I could pick no faults.

The Planes

JMC has only recently started to fly their own planes (as they were originally just a travel company), so all there planes were built from 2000 onwards. Within their fleet they have several A30 Airbuses, and a lot of the Boeing 74 range. For flights to Florida JMC use their A30 Airbus fleet to wing their passengers across the waters.

The A30's may appear thin from the outside, but you should never judge a book by its cover. On the inside these planes are huge, and offer plenty of room for the 300+ passengers onboard. On a JMC A30 Airbus there are two types of seating, JMC Economy and JMC Plus. The Economy seats are the lower grade of seat (which take up the majority of the plane), and the Plus seats being the upper class seats (contained within a small section at the front of the plane).

Over the two flights I have flown in both Economy and Plus, and both offered a fantastic amount of legroom (with Plus offering an extra 6 inches), which easily allowed for me to stretch my legs during the 9 hour flight. The Plus seats are great, apart from the benefit of having more leg room you can look forward to more padded seats, a foot rest and an adjustable head rest.

The planes across all the fleets are constantly maintained and checks are done on a regular basis. Nothing has ever slightly gone wrong on the flights I have been on, and I felt very safe
on those flights across the Atlantic.

The planes have a generous amount of toilets which dramatically cuts the time you have to wait to use the toilet. Along with the generous number of toilets, is an equally generous number of exits (heaven forbid should anything go wrong). So no matter whether you are flying Economy or Plus, the seats are bound to be comfortable and spacious.

Cost

When considering the quality of the planes JMC is a cheap airline. I would love to give you an idea of the costs, but having only been to Florida with JMC, I know very little of how much it costs to travel elsewhere.

When looking at other airlines first class prices, JMC makes them appear very costly. With a £50 increment on the Economy seating, you are treated to the lavish JMC plus seats (where you can be paying up to £1500 to travel first class on Virgin).

Service

The cabin crew on both of our flights have been fantastically friendly, polite, and helpful. Whatever you ask them for, whether it be a drink, or for a bag of KP nuts, they will do their level best to help you. The cabin crews on our flights have been a combination of young and old, and male and female, giving the crew more diversity.

This leads me to another benefit of flying JMC Plus, you get your own cabin crew. The A30 Airbuses contain around 300 seats, 280 of which are Economy, leaving 20 Plus seats located at the (quieter) front of the plane. There is a crew of around 10 which serve the interest of those in Economy seating (dealing with 280 passengers), and a crew of around 6 serving those in the Plus seating (20 passengers).

So as you can imagine service in the Plus section is flawless, fast, and friendly. Having said this, the cabin crew dealing with the Economy passengers do their job well, and just as good as those in Plus, it is just simply the fact they have a lot more passengers to deal with.

When night time falls on
your flight JMC account for the fact that people are going to want to sleep. So JMC have a lights out time, for approximately two hours, giving people plenty of time to rest up to lessen the effects of jet lag. Also if people wish to carry on reading they can do by simply popping on their own private reading light. So again JMC has considered all the options and delivered superbly.

In terms of flights leaving on time JMC is up their with the best of them. We have never experienced a delay of over 5 minutes with them, and very often they will leave right on the dot. So you can be sure of a prompt time, and also a very fast crossing to you destination flying the smallest possible route.

Food and Drink

Whether your flying Economy or Plus the food is the same, but the difference lies in drinks. Firstly looking at the quality of food, it is basically your typical aeroplane food, apart from the fact that JMC seem to offer a bit more choice in meals than other airlines. On the A30's and on the journey to Florida they offered around three choices of a main meal, and a variety of vegetarian meals to accommodate for vegetarian guests.

After pondering what to have I chose the Roast Chicken meal, and was pleasantly surprised at the quality, which in my opinion was better than other airlines. On any flight JMC have meals to account for Breakfast, Lunch or Tea, so you will never miss a meal on a JMC flight.

JMC haven't simply devoted all their attention to meals either, offering a massive range of snack products (from crisps to chocolate and sweets), for really low prices. These snacks as with drinks can be purchased at any time throughout the duration of your flight. Great if you start to feel a little peckish.

Secondly the drinks, a major advantage for flying with JMC. The range of drinks that JMC offer is massive. They have drinks to satisfy any preference you may have, whether it be flat juice drinks
(such as Ribena or Robinson's), whether it be Alcoholic drinks (such as Teachers Whisky, Jack Daniel's, Vodka), or whether it be your main stream fizzy drinks (such as Pepsi, Tango, Coke), JMC can supply the goods.

When travelling in Economy these drinks come at a price, however on selected flights travelling in Plus entitles you to free drinks, with the exception of alcoholic drinks. These free drinks are great, especially if he flight is long.

In Flight Entertainment

JMC really are on top of their game here offering a huge selection both TV channels and Radio stations to listen too. There are around 7 films to choose from at any one time, music channels and radio stations playing music of all genres, children?s channels much like the popular kids channel Nickelodeon and a few others.

If you are seated in the Economy section of an A30 airbus then you will have a shared TV hanging somewhere in the aisle as with most other airlines, so there is a limit on the choice of what you can watch. Having said that JMC do their best to keep the mixture of what they show to be varied, so there is at least one program or film during the flight to suit your tastes.

This is really where the main benefit of flying Plus comes into action. With your own (quite big) TV in the back of the seat in front you can choose what you want to watch when you want to watch it, giving you a massive freedom in your choice.

I was extremely impressed with the selection on the flight to Florida. I watched Bend it Like Beckham, Spiderman, My Family, Mr Bean, Frank Skinner Show, The News, MTV, and a few other channels, so this shows what a great variety is available to Plus customers.

Check In

Although this is perhaps more to do with the company than the Airline itself thought I?d add a little about it here. The check in for JMC is quite a lot quicker than other companies I have flown with before (Britannia, Virg
in etc), so don?t expect to have hours of waiting in line.

Plus passengers have their own check in desk, and we queued for 5 minutes and then we were ready to be checked in. This service was great and worth the small extra cost of flying plus alone. The check in staff was very helpful, and polite, and went about their job quickly and efficiently, so I was very happy with their service.

One other advantage of flying Plus

Priority Baggage is another advantage of flying with JMC Plus. When we were told that if we went with the Plus service our bags would be first off at the other end, I was a little sceptical. However, when we arrived in Florida, to my surprise, our bags were amongst the first off, and JMC had delivered the goods again.

Conclusion

JMC offers a great all around service, with great staff both in flight and on the ground, a flexible costs system with so nice prices and deals, a great selection of snacks and drinks along with in flight entertainment, and a fantastic first class option at a very small cost.

If you have never flown JMC before, give them a try, I?m sure you will not be disappointed.

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