Skybus Trip report
Wednesday, April 2nd 2008
CEF-CMH-CEF i.e. "Hartford"-Columbus
I purchased my ticket about 8 weeks out, and paid $20 plus taxes and fees for $36.50 all-in.
The Chicopee, MA airport is adjoined with Westdover Airforce base. I was flying out on flight 52 at 11:48am, returning later that evening, but the parking lot attendants wouldn't let me park in short term parking for $3. About a block away is long term parking where I had to prepay $5 for the day's parking. A shuttle bus is provided to take pax back to the terminal, and I climbed aboard but would have done better to walk the short distance rather than wait for them to pick up more pax . The passenger terminal had one counter with 5 employees working, but I headed right to a kiosk to print my boarding pass. The check-in was very easy, and the kiosk is on par with NWA's self check in. It also offered to check me in for my afternoon flight back to CEF. There is a one-seater bathroom in the check-in area, no bathrooms beyond the TSA check point.
I showed up about 50 minutes before my flight, took 2 minutes to check in, 5 minutes to wait for obvious infrequent flyers to navigate the TSA checkpoint, and was in the Departure Lounge just as a delay of 30 minutes was announced. The CEF Departure Lounge is room large enough to hold about 120 chairs, cinder block walls painted light blue and a coke machine and vending machine with chips. As a nice touch FREE wifi is offered! Using retractable straps they have an area for boarding groups 1, 2 & 3. I didn't pay the extra $15 to board with group one so I was in group two. With 30 minutes before were are supposed to take off I count 36 pax waiting for a plane that holds 150.
While waiting it was interesting to overhear several pax talking about Skybus, the new flights that they are adding out of CEF, now to Florida and Greensboro; at least one couple had flown them before and were relating their experience to another pax sitting next to them. Basically they complained that flights were always delayed, but you get what you pay for.
10 minutes after we were scheduled to take off, I used the wifi to check skybus.com to check flight status, which still indicates our flight was on-time.
The incoming flight from CMH landed at 11:59am and quickly offloaded 43 Pax. The GA made several announcements including a request to board quickly as they had a goal to turn the plan in 23 minutes. Group 1 boarding was called, and 7 pax who had paid the extra fee boarded, the GA then boarded two families with lap children, then general boarding. I was about 7th in line for group two and was surprised to see how many people had crammed into the first few rows, I was able to get an aisle seat in the exit row (row 10). Only one other pax had selected the exit row at this point, taking one of the window seats. The back half of the aircraft had no more than 12 people. In total 56 pax board the aircraft.
The pilot got on the intercom just before the door closed with general announcements about the weather, and asked that we "tell your family and friends, and even people you don't like about us, as that's how we keep ticket prices low"
As the only flight in and out of CEF, once the door was closed, it was the shortest taxi I can remember. The three FA's hardly had time to finish their safety briefing and get seated before we were airborne.
FA's wore black pants with black long sleeve t-shirts with the Skybus logo, as well as a pinned on set of gold FA wings.
The amount of items for sale was quite impressive. 6 in 1 travel game for $10, airplane backpack for $10, craft kits for $10-20, blankets for $10, headphone splitter for $5, perfume $35-60, watches up to $200, Bagels or Blueberry Muffins for $3, Snack boxes and sandwiches for $8, Drinks $2-5 and candy $2. The in-flight sales were quite efficient; FA's carried a small hand held device to take orders and swipe credit cards, and walked back to the galley to bring each purchase, so there were no carts in the aisle. FA's were polite and efficient. I would estimate that 80% of pax bought something. Despite the policy of not bringing food onboard, no one said anything to the guy in my row who brought on his own bottle of coke purchased from the vending machine in the departure lounge.
My first flight was on the aircraft with the Nationwide livery. The width in the exit row seat (row 10) was tight, but the seat reclined and the pitch was very generous. The seats are quite thin, but covered in gray leather and were fine for Skybus's mostly short flights. The aircraft must have been quite new as instead of a lighted "No Smoking" sign, there was a "Turn Off Electronics" sign next to the fasten seat belt sign.
Because we left late, and had a strong headwind on the way there we landed 50 minutes late.
I spent my 5 hours in CMH by having lunch at Charlie's Subs in the airport, then catching the free shuttle to the Hilton Easton. I walked to the Easton mall area and visited Barnes and Noble as well as a Panara Bread to use their free wifi, I stopped at a few more shops and then caught the shuttle back to the airport, had a salad at Max & Erma's, took about 10 minutes to get though security and was at the gate an hour before my flight.
At CMH people lined up to board a lot sooner than they had at CEF; a whole half hour before the flight people were already in line so I kept my seat and was the last to board the aircraft after boarding was called. The flight to CEF had 45 people on board, and I overheard a FA say that 80 tickets had been sold meaning there were 35 no-shows.
The flight back was on a much older and much dirtier A319. Dark blue leather seats in the layout as shown on seatguru.com. All six seats in the exit row were taken, but I was able to claim an entire row to myself in the back half of the plane; there were quite a few rows with nobody in them. One big surprise on the flight back, there was IFE! I noticed pushing the channel/volume button on the armrest light up the display, so I plugged in my head phones and was shocked to find a dozen music stations available to listen to.
Like my morning flight we had an incredible fast push back, taxi and take off, and landed in CEF 10 minutes ahead of schedule. Rather than wait for the shuttle I walked the 2000 feet to my car and even though I was the last pax out of the plane I was the first person out of the parking lot.
Would I fly Skybus again? Certainly Now that they will be flying from CEF to Florida I'll be on the look out for more $36.50 all-in fares, and I would fly them as long as their price as at least half the cost or lower of NWA or another airline I can earn frequent flyer miles on. I'm still willing to pay more for an airline with a larger flight schedule in case things go wrong.
Final thoughts: The web site still showed my first flight as "on-time" even when it was already over a half hour late.
The boards in CMH are a bit confusing as in some places the flight is listed as "Chicopee" and in other places "Westdover" No where is it listed as "Hartford" even though that's how they market the flight as.
The FA's are not pushy with their sales pitch at all ^
The seat width and pitch on the two planes seemed no worse than flights I've taken with AirTran or Frontier