Flew them over the weekend for the first time in several years, so interested to see whether the new friendly face made then any better.

The cabin baggage thing is a sham. Made to gate check on the outbound, only to find on boarding that there was plenty of space for more bags. Likewise on the return, but this time, I demanded to know why. First I was told that the overheads were full - until I pointed out that nobody was yet on board so how could they know. The story then changed to we were the last to board, until I pointed out that we were approximately in the middle of boarding - lots of people in front but lots of people behind. At that stage she started to claim that they were waiting for a subsequent flight, until I pointed out that the next flight from that part of the terminal (according to the big sign beside here) showed that the next flight was in 6 hours time.

Finally, I got the truth out of her. FR policy is that only the first 90 past the bp scan at the gate are allowed to take their rolling hand luggage on board. This doesn't seem to apply to large squishy carry-ons, or certain privileged people (off-duty staff perhaps) further back. Moral: take a large squishy bag and you'll be ok.

Onboard, it's tighter than I've ever seen on a plane and the seating area was very dirty in both directions. No room even for a magazine rack, so you need to keep everything on your knees. Endless announcements about passing through the cabin selling one thing after another, with different items on special offer. Fortunately, my fellow passengers ignored it all and didn't buy. The only announcement that would have been nice but never came was the one apologising for being late.

In short, FR is actively unpleasant to be on, with the staff being directed to make it such.