Posts Tagged ‘flights’

We flew to Iceland with Icelandair. How original. It was the most expensive airline we have ever flown with. It was a little over £600 for return tickets for the both of us.

Seat reservations

This was a disaster. We pre-booked our seats so that we could sit together. However, when it came to checking in online, our seats were changed so that we were no longer together. I spoke to both the baggage drop-off people and the people at the gate, but none of them could help. In the end, the woman sat next to me was kind enough to swap with Elina so we could sit together.

However, what is the point of having a seat reservation system that you do not honour. It is actually worse than having no seat reservation system as at least in that case you would know to check in straight away.

Ryanair have a brilliant seat reservation system. It costs you some cash, but we had a whole stewardess whose entire job seemed to be guarding our seats so that nobody else sat there. When Ryanair blow you out of the water for customer service, maybe you should take a look at what you are doing.

We had no problems on the return flight and received the seats we had booked.

Delays

On the outgoing flight, we boarded on time. However, we then sat on the tarmac for an additional forty minutes before going anywhere as the luggage was loaded, then unloaded, then loaded into a different part of the plane.

On the way back, our flight time was pushed back by one hour fifty minutes. This worked out well for us, as we were notified beforehand and meant we could sleep in a little bit longer, but the fact that it was changed was still annoying. Even after this, it took off twenty minutes late.

Entertainment system

Every seat comes with a built-in touch-screen entertainment system. This was pretty annoying. Before the flight takes off it shows adverts for the whole time. Elina finds flickering screens irritating but there was no way to turn it off.

Once the flight started it turned off automatically. You then had to turn it back on and watch another two minutes of adverts before it let you do anything. It then had a limited range of media available. There were maybe a dozen TV shows to pick from, including three episodes of Friends and three episodes of Family Guy. There were also films, a flick tracker, some games for the kids and a few other features.

Economy comfort

Our outgoing flight was economy comfort rather than economy as by some bizarre twist, this worked out to be the cheapest option. I think it was a mistake to do this because it was much nicer than flying coach and now that I have experienced it, I do not want to go back.

On Icelandair you get a bigger, nicer seat. It is only two seats each side (coach is three) with a generous armrest in the middle that you can put things on. You also get a blanket, a bottle of water, a pair of headphones and hot food and drink included, including alcohol.

Economy

On the way back, we were back in coach. This was fine, the leg room was pretty standard for a plane and having nobody in the seat next to us provided us with a great place to put our coats. You still get the entertainment system and free soft drinks.

Flying to Dublin we had to go with Ryanair as I couldn’t find anyone else doing the flight times we wanted.

I think it’s quite an expensive airline in comparison to Jet2. We wanted to sit together on the flight, but to reserve seats cost us £10 per person, per flight, so that was £40 down, and just to pay for the flight (on my Visa as they don’t accept American Express) cost me £6 per person, per flight, so that was £24 as well. Altogether that is an extra £64 added on top of the price, which is a lot.

The outgoing flight was then delayed by almost an hour, which is basically the entire flight time.

Thanks to a legal requirement to have emergency exits on planes though, I did get enough leg room to stretch out fully.

In February, I went to Paris.

However, despite having paid for reserved seating on my flight out there, we ended up getting moved to a different part of the plane to balance out the weight. It didn’t exactly fill me with confidence that a jet airliner could be so fragility held in the sky that someone sitting in the wrong place could bring it down, but I went with it.

That said, I was rather aggrieved that I had paid for reserved seating and not been given it. So, on my return I wrote a letter of complaint to Jet2 as they don’t seem to have email and I would need to take a personal loan out to fund phoning their premium rate customer service line. So I went old school and wrote a letter.

I’m pleased to say that a month later I have received a letter back from them saying that they will be refunding the money I paid for allocated seating, within the next two weeks.