FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Big Trip 2012 – Hong Kong, the UK and the South of France on CX, BA and EZ!

Jul 29, 2012 | 4:50 am

#123

matthandy

Join Date: Jul 2008

Location: Kent, UK

Programs: BA Gold, SPG Platinum, Marriott Platinum, Hilton Diamond

Posts: 3,809

The next morning we were to travel to Gatwick and board a flight to Nice. My friends aren’t very relaxed travellers so despite the fact that our flight was due to take off at 11.50am and the airport was only an hour’s drive away, my friends wanted to leave at 8.30am. Sigh.

I woke up at around 7.15am and after a bit of breakfast and a bit more packing it was time to hit the road. The weather was pretty awful, so I was glad to be getting away. As predicted, we arrived at Gatwick at 9.30am, one hour after leaving and pretty much two and a half hours before our flight.

I should mention that Gatwick holds some very fond memories for me as it was my childhood ‘holiday’ airport. Of course, things have really changed now, but the main departure lounge area is still pretty much the same.

We had pre-booked long stay parking so had to find a spot and then wait for the bus. This is definitely the worse thing about driving to the airport, the bus.

Our flight departed from the South Terminal and we made our way inside to find it very busy indeed. This was the weekend of the Diamond Jubilee so I suppose that it was to be expected.

Check-in, this was going to be a new one for me. No priority check in for me and we’d decided not to bother with ‘speedy boarding’ passes so I queued up with everyone else. It was about 10am at this point.

Welcome to the South Terminal

Check in queues

Check in took about 20 minutes and after a quick chat with a surly agent my bag was on it’s way. I met up with my friends and we went through security. I have to say that compared to Heathrow T5, security was an absolute breeze, they even had signs telling you which lane to go to for the shortest waiting time. Brilliant.

Soon we were out into the very busy departure area and it was time for some breakfast/lunch. Where else but Pret (again!). No really, my friend likes the porridge there so it wasn’t my choice. This time around I managed to get my favourite baguette, the ham and Swiss cheese, yum.

My breakfast/lunch

We didn’t have long here as the gate was showing as ‘final call’ at about 11am, which I knew was rubbish but it got my friends all panicked so we hastily made our way to the gate. Of course, we found a reasonable queue and lots of people waiting the holding area. It looked like this was going to be a full flight.

There was already a queue forming, I really hate the whole idea of having to scramble for a seat. I really doubt that it makes boarding quicker. If anything, because people take so long fussing over which seat to choose and trying to sit together I’d argue that it makes it worse.

At 11.30am boarding started. We were due to push back at 11.50am so it was already clear that we were going to be delayed.

London to Nice – Easyjet

Flight: EZY5067
Carrier: Easyjet (U2)
Aircraft: Airbus A319 – G-EZIV
Scheduled Departure Time: 11:50
Scheduled Duration: 2h
Scheduled Arrival Time: 14:50
Travel Class: Economy
Seat: N/A (seat plan)

Easyjet board their ‘speedy boarding’ customers first (which is a separate queue) along with families with children. I did see a number of families taking this a little bit loosely, with some older children in tow. Eventually it was our turn and we all scrambled down the air bridge before being given the decision to go to the back of the aircraft, which we did. We needed to get three seats together and felt that there was a much better chance of achieving this at the back.

The weather was still pretty rubbish and it was raining as we made our way out onto the tarmac. I do like boarding at the back as you get to appreciate the size of the aircraft.

We got three seats together on the A side in approx. row 23. There was plenty of room in the overhead lockers so we had no problems storing our bags. The legroom was pretty standard, nothing special but the seat seemed comfortable, which was the main thing. There was enough room in the seat pocket to store my small laptop, as I wanted to carry on sorting out the photos from my trip during the flight. I noticed that Easyjet had taken a leaf out of Ryanair’s book and had started advertising on-board. There were seat back adverts promoting alcohol and other drinks.

Boarding

Leg room

Raining

The cabin

Boarding continued and it seemed to take literally forever. The Captain came on at about 12.00 to announce that we would be delayed whilst the crew sorted out a baggage reconciliation problem. Great.

After 20 minutes are so we finally pushed back. The crew performed a manual safety demonstration (no video screens) via use of a recorded message. The actual message itself was a bit odd and I found it rather long winded and patronising.

We had a reasonably short taxi out to the nearby runway for take-off which was itself rather bumpy with lots of turbulence as we ascended. After a few minutes though all was calm and as we burst through the clouds, sunshine filled the cabin and we were in fact, on holiday.

The cabin service started promptly with the crew explaining a little bit about the menu and the hot sandwich choices that were available on board. I had a look at the menu and decided to splash out on a small bottle of Champagne for us three. I flight is not complete without Champagne afterall! Unfortunately, when the crew arrived, after much scrambling, the Champagne could not be found so I had to settle for a much smaller bottle of luke warm prosecco.

Through the clouds

It was great to actually fly with other people that I know, something that doesn’t happen very often for me unfortunately.

After about an hour and 15 minutes we started to descend and to my amazement, the crew did another trolley run, suggesting that passengers might want to grab a bottle of something to take off the plane.

We had the most amazing descent, sweeping over the beautiful coast line and touched down ever so smoothly at about 15.00pm local time. The sun was shining and as soon as we stepped off the aircraft we could feel the heat. This is why people come to the south of France.

We made our way towards baggage claim, going through immigration, which basically consists of waving your passport at the man on the desk. My bag was out reasonably quickly and then we headed off to collect our rental car.

On stand

The car rental desks have recently been moved at Nice airport and finding them was quite a mission. The signs are very poor, effectively leading you into the car park and then not making it obvious where you have to go from there. After asking a couple of people for directions we eventually found the car rental complex. There wasn’t a queue so we stepped up to the nearest desk. The woman serving us was doing her best to keep up the stereotype of rude and arrogant French service. They had ‘upgraded’ us from a nice Golf to a mediocre Peugeot 308 diesel estate. Her attitude basically was ‘do you want the car or not’, where ‘not’ meant ‘bad luck there are no more cars’. We fought back to which she seemed a little surprised but given that nothing else was available we had to accept the situation. As it turns out, the car was brand new and was actually very nice indeed. We then made our way out of the airport and towards the Best Western Golf Hotel Valescure in Saint-Raphael.

Up Next

A few days in the south of France including a day trip to St Topez.