Budget Travel - Short review: Flybe

For those of you living in Europe I am sure most have come across Easyjet, Germanwings and the lovely Ryanair. Anyway more recently I flew with Flybe from Manchester to Dusseldorf. I have to say they are excellent. While like the other budget carriers they charge extra for food the overall standard of service and attitude from staff was much higher than many other carriers, in particular Ryanair. I would not say Flybe are the cheapest budget carrier but they do offer in my experience slightly more legroom and given they fly smaller aircraft this was quite a surprise. They were also on time!

One of the main advantages of Flybe is that they fly to major airports such as Frankfurt and Dusseldorf, as opposed to secondary often in the middle of no-where places such as Frankfurt-Hahn or Dusseldorf-Weeze. This means that it is much easier to actually get to the airport and you can avoid the need for an overhight hotel airport stay or a silly early start in the morning.

In general I would recommend them and as a result will be flying with them again later this week. I first flew with them in 1998, so it is nice to see that they have kept their customer ethos but now have a slightly more modern fleet of aircraft :)

I have done 22 flights with them this year and they are always cheaper than the likes of Ryanair, far nicer to deal with and have a FF scheme thats pretty good. Pity they got rid of the jets back to BA though, these were great

I flew them three times this year (DUS-MAN-DUS; FRA-BHX) and will try to avoid them in the future. DUS-MAN was late, MAN-DUS was a nightmare (worst turbulences I ever experienced in my life, including beers of the stag party on board flying around etc.) and FRA-BHX should have been FRA-MAN but was cancelled so I had to go to BHX, take a Bus and be three hours late to a very important customer meeting.

Their service was below average and the prices were above (paid considerably more than on my usual BA-LHR trips).

Thanks, but no thanks.

I have done 22 flights with them this year and they are always cheaper than the likes of Ryanair, far nicer to deal with and have a FF scheme thats pretty good. Pity they got rid of the jets back to BA though, these were great

They got rid of the old, (and in my opinion wonderfull) Bae146's, but they now have Emb 195's which are great.

Cheers Larry.

They got rid of the old, (and in my opinion wonderfull) Bae146's, but they now have Emb 195's which are great.

Cheers Larry.

Unfortunately I only had the pleasure of Dash-8s... I expect the Embraers to be a lot nicer.

I flew them three times this year (DUS-MAN-DUS; FRA-BHX) and will try to avoid them in the future. DUS-MAN was late, MAN-DUS was a nightmare (worst turbulences I ever experienced in my life, including beers of the stag party on board flying around etc.) and FRA-BHX should have been FRA-MAN but was cancelled so I had to go to BHX, take a Bus and be three hours late to a very important customer meeting.

Their service was below average and the prices were above (paid considerably more than on my usual BA-LHR trips).

Thanks, but no thanks.

now 24 flights this year all on time, great service and and never any stag parties, great prices, I bookes this monday to fly wednesday and only paid 112 uk pound which 72 pounds was UK rip off tax

Unfortunately I only had the pleasure of Dash-8s... I expect the Embraers to be a lot nicer.

Embraers all gone back to BA now

wanted to add that Sue who works in the lounge is amazing, she is the best lounge dragon I have ever met

They seem to have somewhat mixed reviews above. I flew again with them from Frankfurt to Birmingham recently and have to say again that the service was very good, polite staff, ontime and the aircraft has much more legroom that other "budget" carriers.

I have not flown with them as much as some of the other people on this forum, but so far so good.

53 sectors here in the last 12 months.

From very unpromising beginnings when they first took over the old BA Connect routes they have improved immeasurably. That is not to say that they are perfect. In my experience reliability is now good, up from 'non-existent' and by now better than the old BA service. The new planes are clean, semi-comfortable and flight times a bit shorter.

Food - at least, unlike BA s/h, you can buy some, but in my limited experience the quality is pretty dire. The FF program has no concept of status, you just collect points to redeem for flights but you can also redeem points for a year's lounge access. Lounges are generally spartan when they exist at all, but the Servisair lounge at INV is really pretty decent!

I would not call them cheap. There are some lowish fares to be had if you book well in advance but overall I'd say I'm paying about the same as I used to with BA.

Overall - a solid 'B' - if you have to use them, as I do, it could be a lot worse.

Lasts week booked Monday to fly MAN EDI wednesday and back Thursday for 112 quid, cost to drive 200 quid at least, train, well prices range from 160 to 500 quid and I dont have all week to try and find the lower fare on the stupid train websites. JUst one other point, they never have online check at foriegn aiports or seem to have lounges. The week before I was however asked if I would like to use the BA lounge in Frankfurt