Guess you booked well in advance, etc. for work I don't tend to get much time to book well in advance, so miss all the early bird cheap seats.
Depends where you're going to and how far in advance you book tickets. Geneva to London on EJ, booked at reasonably short notice (like a couple of weeks) is normally cheaper on Swiss and the difference in flight experience is massive. BA fly about the same routes as Swiss at almost identical times and are always more expensive. Even on the same planes, the Swiss seats are higher spec (more comfy) and you get a better snack. Indeed, BA last time I looked had done away with the coffee and croissant. If you want Central London, you don't want to go to either Luton or Stansted, so it's Gatwick. If you can fly to City, it's only a couple of quid into Central London on the DLR and Tube, whereas the Gatwick Express will already set you back another 20 pounds. And I won't bore you with one major EasyJet ordeal I had. Got home at 4:30 am instead of about 8pm. Still, I did fly EasyJet to Berlin in October for absolutely peanuts, (at short notice) so it's not all bad.
That's a brilliant story! I simply couldn't imagine Easyjet flights being worse, but indeed there are new lows I hadn't even thought of! I fly a lot, regrettably. Maybe 100+ times a year. I simply can't cope with the scrum (and some passengers) that typify Easyjet flights unless I can really avoid it. BA all the way. Checked in online, my own seat pre-booked, in advance, on the iPhone, Heathrow T5 is quite civilised - into Geneva - job done! £20 cheaper on EJ? No thanks.... Last year when we flew to Malaga (to go to Jerez) I had to go Easyjet. It was f-ing dreadful. They might as well have flown the plane directly to and from Essex - never seen so much peroxide and plastic. The girl in the seat next to us on the way back practically made a porn movie with her new boyfriend she had just met, she was so drunk/friendly! It was a long two hours..... Easyjet brought us cheap flights, they halved the cost of all air tickets - for which we are all grateful. But after doing so, they all lowered, and now we are all thankfully saved from having to use them too often, and can fly with whoever, for about the same money. "Speedy boarding"?! What's that all about ....? "Premium slum class" ?.... What, pay more to have a smaller fight in the queue with the mothers and toddlers at 7am for a seat?! No thanks....... (Obviously this is going to be location specific guys/gals - don't lambast me! I am fortunate to have the benefit of choice and all London airports within a 30 min drive)
Oddly enough, I've found that BA Business Class has occasionally been cheaper than the low cost airlines when bought with just a couple of days to go. I now only fly in BA Business Class, so much more comfortable and convenient.
We're moving away from the subject here, people. The point is that flights have never been cheaper - whoever you fly with - and yet fuel becomes more and more expensive. Something has to give. If you want super-comfy pre-booked seats, quality snacks and decent compensation in the event of minor problems, then you'll have to start paying more for your flights. Is that what you really want?
Generally when I'm flying, it's for a jolly. I don't travel by bus and I don't want 3rd world conditions in the air. I prefer to pay a few mre quid and go BA. That, and the first tie I flew EJ, they took my money to fly my bike over and then didn't bother to put it on the plane - overweight, like this flight. So not only was I on a cycling holiday with no bike, they had no idea where my £9,000 bicycle was. I had to chase it and in the end, the guys at the airport - not EJ, who I'd paid - told me it had arrived two days later. I went to pick it up at 2pm when it arrived rather than wait for it to be dropped off with the others at 11:30pm.
Not sure I'd be flying anywhere on the Dreamliner to be honest. Overcharging batteries suspected in Boeing 787 problems - Business News - Business - The Independent BA don't fly them and kindly gave me an upgrade to First on my next flight, (Rio for the carnival sounds good!) Problem is though I have a free partner flight too and the dilemma is can I honestly fly with anyone, each of us in different classes? Can't face sitting here in the bloody snow though.
If it stops some of the chavvy families with eight badly behaving brats from flying, it's a price worth paying.
Easyjet. They take your phone number and your email address, but it's beyond them to send you a frigging text before you get to the airport to say that your flight is delayed by 5 hours before you get to the airport. No, they check you in as if all is normal, take your luggage away, and then you find out that your aeroplane hasn't even left Gatwick on the earlier flight and has to do a round trip to Geneva before you are going to get on it. And what can you do about it now? Nothing. There is no Easyjet staff at Gatwick handling the problem or even to be ranted at, and their customer service number just rings engaged. Then when you finally take off at 10pm on your 4pm flight, midway you are told that Geneva airport is sadly now closed and so you are diverting to Lyon. Scheming bastards. It is true that Geneva airport closes at midnight (so the locals can get some sleep), but that is 11pm UK time and the flight from London takes 90 minutes, so before we took off, EasyJet knew that we wouldn't be going to Geneva but Lyon. Naturally they didn't let on. When we got to Lyon, we waited about 30 mins for coaches to show up to take us to Geneva. It's a 2 hour trip, but the coaches all had Swiss Geneva number plates, so they had set out no later (and probably sooner) than we had taken off from London. I'll never forgive EasyJet for their subterfuge, their incompetence and their downright lying. Needless to say, my letter or complaint went unanswered. Of course, you might say that as their flights are often cheap they should feel entitled to treat people like mobile parcels. You might, but I don't.
You are joking, of course. Ha-ha. Given that the eight hypothetical kids are human beings too, who might grow up to be you or me, you would not really want to deprive them of the opportunity to travel abroad just because they're in a lower social class than you think you are, would you?
Wouldn't I? I don't think anybody should be allowed to travel unless they know how to behave on a plane or any other such vehicle, and sadly, chavvy parents do not bring their little darlings up properly. Then again, nor do a lot of middle or upper class parents. So, maybe the solution is to ban children from flying. That's a big reason why I now travel in business class.
Flying back to u.k from India some years ago, about half way through the flight a klaxon siren suddenly starts screaming, and some of the flight attendants rush through the plane looking very worried. They pulled some curtains to shut off the galley area, and I could hear some panic occurring,and then over the P.A the pilot announces " sorry about all that, there has been a fire in the galley, but there is no need to worry it's all under control" Normal service seemed to resume, until about an hour from scheduled arrival the Pilot come on the P.A again and says " Due to Heathrow/Gatwick ( can't remember which) being fogbound we are diverting to Manston airport in Kent. I thought that's bollocks; having done a parascending course the year before at Manston, where I remembered being told that Manston had a very long runway that was equipped for emergency landings, I put 2 and 2 together and came up with the conclusion that the 'fire in the galley' had obviously damaged some critical part of the plane and we were about to crash land in Kent! I braced for the impact as the pilot made an attempt to land in Kent. Next thing I hear the pilot comes on the P.A again, " sorry about this, but Manston is too fogbound to land we will divert to Manchester, and coaches will be arranged to take you down south" I'm thinking how much fuel in the tanks, surely we will run out, they haven't planned for this eventuality. A while later, again braced for impact, I 'm convinced I can make out the symptoms of fuel starvation, and consider for a brief moment renouncing my atheist beliefs. I strained my eyes looking out the window, but all I can see is fog and I know that I am about to die! Suddenly there is a scream of the engines revving and we hit the tarmac and eventually the pilot wrestles the beast to a standstill. The coaches arrive, and I find myself sitting behind a couple with screaming kids who just won't shut up, needless to say I was feeling a tad fractious after all the trauma. The coach sets off in the thick fog, and we crawl along at about 20 mph, suddenly there is a crashing ripping sound , the coach stops. The driver had driven into the crash barrier and torn off most of the bumper. Some of the passengers disembark and help the driver to tear off the wounded bumper , and we continue the painful crawl to Gatwick, kids still screaming, parents shouting at the kids, by this time I have gone into a Zen like trance in an effort to stop exploding. Eventually after an age we arrive at Gatwick and I throw myself off the coach, vowing never to travel again, i take a train to Horsham, and walk through the icy cold to where I left my car about 3 months earlier. I discover my car, totally covered with ice, locks frozen. I manage to heat up the door key with a fag lighter and eventually open the door. No way is it going to start so I leave the car and go in search of somebody to help me bump start it. Luckily some air-cadets are just leaving their hall, and I commandeer them for a bump start. Eventually the car starts and I drive another 13 mile home to my very cold house. As I walk in the front door I turn on the central heating and run upstairs to the loo. Suddenly there is a huge bang, and I run downstairs to find one of the heating pipes has blown out from the frozen boiler and covered the kitchen with dirty brown water. No heat for me tonight, I crawl into my freezing bed and search for the escape of sleep. Not the best journey!
I recollect that several of my travels in India also ended in running upstairs to the loo, a huge bang, and a lot of dirty brown water...... Hopefully that's not too much information.
BA for me:- Was on a flight in Hawaii, Boxing day 2004 just watched the news in the lounge re the Tsunami, boarding a flight to SFO, it was quite full. As we were taxiing out to the runway at Honolulu the cabin starts to fill with smoke, so the Stewardess calls the captain who then announces that we are returning to the stand. As you can imagine everyone was a little in shock given the images from the TV's in departure, our own mortality was very much front of mind and we were asked to disembark. After a 3 hour wait whilst they checked the aircraft we were then re-boarded which took us about another hour & 1/2, the reason? roughly 1/3rd of the people wouldn't get back on the aircraft, we all had to walk along the side of the plane identifying our luggage which had been offloaded so that only those flying had their luggage carried. Eventually we get everyone on board, the pilot gets a slot and we take off without incident. As we get into the cruise the pilot comes on to say that he and the airline would like to apologise for the fault and resulting delay, it was one of their panels which had to be replaced as it had shorted out and (as it was their back up) they decided to replace both it and the original which was also faulty. By way of apology they were opening the bar on a complimentary basis as it was Christmas after all. Roughly 6 hours later a not so worried and quite well oiled group of passengers departs safe an well in San Fran. I think that's one of the reasons I still fly British Airways, the only exception when they code share with Qantas, I'd rather remove my eyelids with a rusty razor blade than fly Qantas, so Singapore and Cathay do quite well out of me on Eastern journeys. This was a code share with US or American, can't quite remember which, but excellent service.
