easyJet (easyjet.com)

Member Name: hunnybabyuk

Product:	easyjet.com
Date:	15/05/09 (28 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Low fares, great service

Disadvantages: Handling agents in Stansted and Speedy Boarding a waste of time

My first thoughts of easyJet were when I was an addicted fan of the ITV show; Airline, the one about easyJet. As I work in the travel industry for the largest UK tour operator and during the summer my role now is airport controller overseas, I am a massive fan of the show and for some unknown reason it made me want to try easyJet, so I decided I would fly from Newcastle to London Stansted for a holiday in London I had planned rather than get a train like I usually would.

The fare was just over £40 for a return where as the train, with my student railcard would of cost me just over £60 it was a good saving, plus the flight is only 40 minutes verses 2 1/2 hours by train.

The website is extremely easy to use even if your new to the web, just put in the journey details on the main page in a small box and it'll search for what your looking for. Then they will show you the available fares for your selected journey, you can also select 'dates not fixed' and see the fares available for the route you wish to use for 14 days (7 days either side of your chosen date). This helps you to pick and choose the best fares if your travel dates are flexible a great way to help you save money.

From then the booking system is very easy, select the fares & journeys you want and then go through to enter your details, it will give you many optional extras like checkin luggage and speedy boarding.

Speedy Boarding is a total waste of time for your European journeys, especially here in Majorca as although sometimes the handling agents do shout out for any speedy boarding passengers, half the time you can get through first without needing it as the tannoys at AENA owned Spanish airpors are automatic and when I have been in departures here at PMI airport, and seen easyJet boardings, they hardly ever mention it.

You do need to pay for checkin luggage but thats the only main charge they make you pay, unlike stupid other lowcost carriers they don't charge you to use a checkin desk if you don't want to checkin online and their baggage charges are cheaper than others. The booking is then confirmed and emailed to you within 2 minutes.

Once at Newcastle Airport, I walked up to the checkin desk (this was before easyJet did online checkin as it was a few years ago), obviously easyJet hire a handling agent to do this, which at Newcastle is Servisair, the staff were very friendly and checkin was very quick, they had plenty of desks open for the amount of flights they had checking in at that time. I proceeded to departures and then onto the flight, they operate a open-seating system whereby you don't get given a seat number at checkin, this is standard practice with lowcost airlines as it helps to speed up boarding, you just get on the plane and sit where you want, just like on a bus. I was lucky as I got an extra leg room seat free as they don't charge for these.

The cabin crew were very friendly, smiling and generally pleasant even though it was about 0730am, they came through the cabin with the trolley but it's only a quick flight so I didn't buy anything but the prices were quite fair compared to others.

Just 30 minutes into the flight we started our decent into London, the captain and co-pilot flown the aircraft perfectly, had a tiny bit of turbulance for about 3 or 4 minutes but nothing too bad, the take off and landing were great so very good air crew.

So the outbound journey went great and I was very impressed, but then the return journey went horribly wrong.

It was the January where we had that massive storm in the UK a few years back, I'd been to London loads before so know my way to places but without going into the story as it's very long and irrelevant to this review, because of tubes & roads being closed I couldn't get back to Stansted until by flight at already landed back in Newcastle. So I stand in an extremely long queue for the sales desk, only 2 positions are available as they only have 2 computers, I stand in the queue for nearly 2 and a half hours, and when I am almost at the front of the queue they do a tannoy saying "we regret to inform easyJet passengers that there are no more flights for today and very strict availablity for tomorrow and passengers must ring the call centre to make a booking, the sales desk can not help you". I was fuming, my phone had died and they made us wait that long in the queue just to tell us that over a tannoy, this was disgusting customer service, I fully appreciate it not being thier fault, as I said I work in the industry, but simply telling us face to face would of been nicer. However easyJet had shot up their price and wanted £150 for a one-way to Newcastle the next day.

Apart from that experience with their handling agent at Stansted the actually service and quality of easyJet themself, i.e. cabin crew, pilot and their products/services are fantastic, great fares to many European destinations with many new ones all the time and I would deffinately recommend easyJet to anyone and will be using them again.

Summary: Fantastic lowfares airline that leads the way for other airlines