Neeeeeeeooooooowwwwwmm mm (that's my plane noise) (Thomas Cook Airlines)

Member Name: stuff10

Product:	Thomas Cook Airlines
Date:	23/10/09 (187 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Get your own seat numbers, leg room was good

Disadvantages: Can't use iPhone, drinks expensive, too interested in selling you things

I recently flew to Tenerife (and back) with Thomas Cook Airlines. Our holiday was booked as a package with Thomas Cook and our flights were on the company's own planes - no problem there, we've been with Thomas Cook many times before.

Arriving at Manchester Airport, we were greeted with one of the biggest queues we've ever seen - even though it was well before 7am. Thinking it'd take ages to check-in, we joined the queue but were pleasantly surprised when the queue started moving at a fair rate of knots... Thomas Cook had around a dozen check-in desks open, with one queue feeding them all, this meant that you didn't have to judge which queue was moving fastest and it was fair to everyone. Hats off to Thomas Cook on that one - although it was a long queue, it went down very quickly and was very well organised.

Boarding the flight was fairly quick and well-organised, boarding by seat row numbers (the back rows first). First impressions of the plane were fairly good - the leg room was acceptable for me, although I'm only about 5'6ish, so it may have been a bit tight for taller people (one of the advantages of being small). There was no seat-back TV or entertainment system, however we didn't really expect one as it was only a short-haul flight.

What annoyed me about Thomas Cook Airlines is how much they talk to you and try to sell you stuff. We'd barely been sat down 2 minutes before someone came over the tannoy telling us all about the duty free and the bar service... in great detail... just shut-up and let me enjoy the flight in peace! It was no better when we'd taken off, with them annoying you what seemed like every 5 minutes trying to sell you some duty free or a bloody scratch card. I don't like being sold to - especially when I'm on a plane and can't get away from it. Shut-up and let me enjoy the flight in peace.

Another thing for me to moan about is that the captain said you can't use iPhone on the plane - even when they're in flight-safe mode... why not? You can use them on Virgin flights. What's so different about Thomas Cook Airlines? Is an iPhone really gonna cause a plane to crash? I very much doubt it.

One the plus side, it's a lot more organised and dignified than the likes of Jet2, EasyJet and RyanAir thanks to the fact that people are assigned seat numbers rather than all boarding the plane at once and rushing to the best place. For this reason Thomas Cook Airlines gets 3 stars from me.

Summary: A middle-of-the-road kinda airline