ciphergoth | Back safe

Oh my god - and things were looking so promising when I left you at Luton.

See you both with

lolliepopp in the New Year sometime - we'll be driving... ;-)

Ah, low-cost airlines...

Easyjet will always be two hours late, minimum.
BMI will lose your luggage.
Ryanair I'm not sure, but I believe they have a significant chance of dropping out of the air.

Or, of course, you could travel Virgin Trains... See Easyjet for drawbacks there.

Sympathy.

I've never had a problem with RyanAir.

Air Lingus(sp?) on the other hand were a nightmare ...

Virgin trains got us from Manchester to London on time!!!!! (shock!!!) so much of a shock that we were a good 90 mins early for a meet up which we;d not guaranteed to make....

I think this is an anomalie, altho a very nice one.... We are also seeking out the fastest way of obtaining a vehicle of our own, no more heavy bags (which i am no longer allowed to carry) getting smoked at by nasty scary ppl, being shoved by ppl or TooManyPeople error on the crowded trains!

Yay....

I now know not to bother flying as an alternative then fneh.

Natalya

> Easyjet will always be two hours late, minimum.

Nah, that's BA. I have made a note not to fly anywhere with

ciphergoth and

purplerabbits though, as they are clearly cursed.

> BMI will lose your luggage.

Again, my experience is that this honour also goes to BA.

> Ryanair I'm not sure, but I believe they have a significant chance of dropping out of the air.

Ryanair keep getting investigated and fined by the Irish Aviation Authority over their safety standards, though they feature remarkably infrequently in incident reports. On the whole, though, I find them pretty crappy - cheap and nasty as opposed to the cheap and cheerful of easyJet (with whom I seem to be blessed with incredible good luck, for some reason because my experience seems to match no-one else's. There again, I only fly with them on average 15 times a year for the past four years, so I probably don't have enough experience to know that the average is like yet).

> Or, of course, you could travel Virgin Trains... See Easyjet for drawbacks there.

My experience of them is that they're on time these days, but very expensive and the new trains make me throw up even more quickly than the old ones. The trip to Leeds the other week was so bad that I'm not going back until some airline can hit a £70 price point between Edinburgh and Leeds/Bradford. And Brian Soutar has a significant interest in Virgin Trains - it's enough to make me consider applying for a provisional driving license and taking some lessons.

How often have you flown BA? You must have been dead unlucky, 'cos I had a great experience flying with them this year. I had some trouble over an e-ticket (the check-in lady told me to go to the ticket desk, the ticket desk lady sent me away). I accosted a BA lady as she was coming out of an office with colleagues, obviously on her way somewhere else, to ask her where I should go. She took me over to a free desk and sorted me out entirely including checking me in and everything - bear in mind she was on her way somewhere else and voluntarily sorted everything out for me, a not inconsiderable task. Then the flight left bang on time, was very comfortable and arrived on time (both ways), and bags appeared quickly. I guess you must just have been unlucky. I certainly will never fly with a budget airline again (I don't fly very often), and in any case flying with Go to Italy cost just as much as it would have done if I'd flown with a non-budget airline. And I'll fly BA wherever possible.

Only the four times, which was enough to make me decide that that only way I'm flying BA again is if it's Concorde, and then the connecting flight from Turnhouse to Heathrow will be with BMI.

autopope has done a couple of return trips more and agrees with me. I only suffered lateness and crappy service (

autopope suffered old, rattly planes and inapproproriate equipment), but I used to know a guy who worked for them who told me about the luggage loss figures BA would admit to - about 10% of luggage was lost or sent to the wrong place at that time. I never flew with Go because of BA cooties.

Of the full-service airlines, I was impressed with Lufthansa. Things went wrong, but they dealt with them efficiently. We made our connection to SFO at Frankfurt, but our luggage didn't, but when we arrived we were called to one side by a Lufthansa employee who had all the relevant forms already filled in, and just needed to know where to deliver our luggage and for us to sign it. The luggage appeared in our hotel room the folowing day. Aer Lingus seems to suffer from the Irish sterotype about the failure of the Irish-Mexican dictionary project because Irish has no word which captures the sheer urgency of 'mañana', but they have the honour of being the only non-budget airline on the list of those which haven't buggered up my special dietary requirements (mostly because they feed their passengers alcohol on short-haul flights) and they were £50 cheaper than Ryanair!

My experience of full-service airlines is that I won't use them for short-haul stuff unless there is no low-cost alternative, or that alternative is much more expensive. I see no point in paying extra to get a crap seat at the back of the plane (because I always check in in good time), a meal I can't eat anyway, and no difference in timekeeping.

travelling to Italy by GO! was brilliant. they were on time on the way there, and actually got us in half an hour early on the way back. And they had helpful and funny air-stewardesses, and nobody objected to me and

ciphergoth being sprawled over three seats watching the clouds.
They belong to EasyJet now though, so have probably become crap.

BMI were 4 hours late on the way down to london last time and 5 minutes early on the way back up. On the way down they gave us champagne, on the way back I had two double bloody marys. For £50 return I cant complain too much. I should never have texted

figg on the way down to say 'race you' when he got the train at the same time as I headed for the airport!

I always wonder which I prefer though. Both flying and the train take about the same time, it's a case of whether you start straight away on your journey or sit around in check in and a departure lounge, put up with delays and wait for your luggage at the other end. The cost is usually quite similar but planes have the advantage of free drinks and that rollercoaster ride like feeling when you take off. Then again, trains actually feel like you are getting somewhere instead of sitting in a mind numbing airport, have less security and are probably more comfortable as you can get up and wander around.

Other plus point for trains is you can get on any one with your ticket and not have to make specific times. Hmmmm, still undecided

For UK destinations, I think that's almost right - if something does go wrong with one line, there's usually an alternative route. Plus when you add in the cost of getting out to the airport at one end and getting from the airport into the city at the other, the train does begin to look more and more attractive. The cheapest train tickets do tie you to a specific train though.

For Europe and further afield, there are no sensible alternatives that do not cost a huge pile of money.

Mind you, I've never had a flight delay of longer than about 30 minutes.

Easyjet are fine for me -- but you need to know the rules. The second-to-last flight of the evening out of Luton on a weekday is always horribly late, for example, but the first flight in a morning is always on time and the last flight at night is usually okay. And IIRC if you are delayed more than three hours on any leg you are entitled to a refund. You might want to yell about that -- you might get some free tickets out of it.

(I've flown Easyjet about twelve times in the past year. We've had one, or at
most two, flights delayed by more than half an hour. But then, we had fun while we were learning the rules a couple of years ago ...)

Is that 3 hour rule for any airline?

All airlines. 'Tis the law and don't let Ryanair convince you otherwise.

Oops - just re-read what

autopope said. The law concerns refreshments after three hours. easyJet also has a rather generous refund policy - never been on the revceiving end myself, but I've seen some poor sods who suffered an appalling delay on the infamous evening flight to Luton get their (late) flight and a refund.

Does anyone know any *good* airlines? You always hear horror stories. I have a stock too, most recently from Buzz and Scandinavian Airlines. But who would people *recommend* flying with?

The only airlines I can recommend from personal experience are Canada 3000 and AB Varmlandsflyg. Alas, Canada 3000 has gone bust, and AB Varmlandsflyg is a rather small outfit that'll only be of use to you if you want to fly from Stockholm or Copenhagen to obscure parts of Sweden and find the idea of flying in a tiny, noisy plane exciting.

I do recommend trains though - far more reliable (yes, really, including Virgin), far less likely to lose your luggage, and much more helpful about getting you to your destination with no added cost to you if your connections go pear-shaped. I've never had to resort to super-credit-card-power to escape from train-related problems, but it seems such a regular occurence with flights that I price in an allowance for that when I'm comparing costs. Besides, trains are far more environmentally friendly.

-Doug.
(Eurostar fan)

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