I’m not convinced that easyJet is a budget airline.

I’ve never flown with them before, so know little about their punctuality, reliability, onboard service etc, but their prices are never right for me.

When Andy and I flew up to Glasgow with bmi earlier in the month, we paid £54 for each return ticket. However, easyJet wanted more than that to fly from Luton. Also, a flight to Edinburgh back in December was more than British Airways. Even when booking 8 weeks in advance, they wanted £84 return from Gatwick, whereas BA want £67.80.

Could it be that because easyJet are more recognised for having low fares, that all their lowest fares sell out before the other traditional carriers, whose fares have been dropped in recent years to compete? easyJet usually get me back to Scotland for less than £40 (usually £36) return including taxes. I don’t think that BA or BD have fares that low available at any time on the Scotland routes, do they? easyJet cannot afford to sell all its seats at the lowest fare, just like every other airline can’t afford to. They, like all proper airlines, use a very complex revenue management system to make sure they are selling their seats at the right fare at the right time on the right routes. I don’t see how they can’t be called a low-cost airline. 🙂

I would have to say the best I have flown would be Monarch Scheduled (I know what you’re thinking!! :p ), but I have no beef with easyJet whatsoever. Always had good service etc with them.

My top 5

1. Monarch Scheduled
2. easyJet
3. bmi (do they count?)
4. Flybe
20. Ryanair 😀

Perhaps SOU to somewhere else in Germany with a prior tourism recognition or somewhere that can offer a good number of connections would work better. I wasn’t slagging SOU, per se, more the unusual city pair of PAD/SOU. Berlin is so up and coming, I think it would have been a good choice of route from SOU. I also think that EDI or GLA (or both) could make do with a decent BER service.

Airlines are more or less obliged to refund taxes for unflown sectors as they are not payable by the airline to the bodies that they collect them for (govt, airport etc), unless the passenger actually travels. However, guess what? Allegedly, Ryanair’s way round this is that although they do refund the taxes on bookings, they also charge a service fee for making the refund that is equivalent to the total tax amount on the booking. Therefore, the refund owed to the passenger and the service fee that Ryanair charge the passenger for making the refund, completely cancel each other out and Ryanair keep all your money! Great, isn’t it? :rolleyes:

I wouldn’t expect Ryanair to refund anything under any circumstance other than the flight actually being cancelled by them.

Woo-Hoooooo!!

Excellent news! We get some excellent staff travel rates through work with Virgin. I’d love to go to Australia and I love Virgin. I feel next year’s holiday coming on! 😀

Nice report BY738.

I would like to see flyglobespan expand even more and do very well in Scotland. Anyone any news on any new routes from them?