LiviLion

EasyJet is actually fairly pleasant. If it's sitting in a plane for 2.5 hours and EasyJet is £70 RTN and BA is £214 RTN then I'll keep the £144 per person difference and spend that at my destination.

Still, that's what I would do. What you do with your cash is entirely up to you and if you can afford the difference then fair play to you.

jamespvg

Legal action? For IDB! Good luck...

mad_rich

Intriguing. So they sold you a confirmed ticket & reservation (as opposed to placing you on some sort of unofficial standby list)?

I wonder what Mr O'Leary has to say on the matter. Ryanair's charter commits to:

(My empahsis.)

I have no problem with overbooking - in the long run it benefits travellers - but I would have a problem with an airline that says it doesn't overbook, then going and doing it anyway. (Except perhaps if I was the passenger they were doing it for ).

WHBM

Indeed. In fact if I recall correctly they said the word used by Ryanair was "chance", which presumably gets round the "no overbooking" comment by tautology. However, with over an hour to go before the flight they took the money, gave me a regular ticket, and I was able to check in, including hold baggage, and go through security with nothing to indicate anything other than normal status.

It was further explained to me that because of the Ryanair check-in system it is not possible to hang around until the 30-minute cutoff like other airlines' standby, because when they close, they close.

LeisureFirst

The Easyjet seat pitch is 29": The standard BA economy seat pitch is 31" which I find just bearable if there is no one in front of me, so I am quite confident that I simply could not fit my legs in on Easyjet. I have been in flights where I don't fit and I find it extremely unpleasant even for just 2 hours and I would gladly pay more money just to avoid this. (Although I must say when I look at the price difference it is usually much less than the example you give.)

The difference is a lot more in practice than just 2". On most BA flights it is quite easy for anyone who uses OLCI to get sufficiently far forward to be in the convertible seats with about 33" seat pitch; quite aside from the fact that as a Silver I am practically guaranteed an exit row, as well as rapid check-in etc.

The other big difference is what happens when things go wrong. BA are far from perfect but they make vastly more effort than Easyjet. Last year on August 10, I was due to fly out to Ibiza in the evening. My boyfriend, whom I hadn't seen for a month, flew out from Madrid on an early morning flight. You will recall that turned out to be the day of the terror alert and the ban on hand luggage. My BA flight to Ibiza made it out, albeit nearly 3 hours late. Easyjet just threw up their hands in resignation and cancelled everything. I had many friends travelling out to Ibiza at that time and those on Easyjet ended up being three or four days late. I asked myself at the time how much I would be prepared to pay to get there within a day or so (I looked into alternatives like Eurostar to Paris followed by an Air France flight) and the answer was around £2000 - an Easyjet ticket would have proved a false economy.

BA earnt a lot of loyalty from me on August 10 last year which it will take quite a lot of cock-ups for them to completely erode. (A back-handed compliment if ever there was one.)

spanishflea

We are in the same boat. I phyiscally do not fit into a Ryanair seat without lifting my knees towards me. As for the EZY 319s (737s aren't a problem) I can wedge myself into the seat without too much trouble. However the last sector I flew in one of these (LGW-BFS some years ago, so I've probably grown since then too!) my back was killing me for the next few days after the flight. Simply awful.

I vowed never to do both again and indeed I haven't. Taking things slightly OT, Virgin Trains Standard Class does exactly the same thing to me, and I haven't taken them further than a 12 minute ride since my one and only long distance experience either...

Flying Doctor

There surely has to have been some apathy on Easyjet's part.

They fly aircraft that accommodate over 120 passengers (if it was full). I would find it hard to imagine that out of all these passengers that someone would not give up their seat with £200 compensation if things were explained.

FD

WHBM

I find the comments about seat pitch surprising.

Easyjet and Ryanair both started in business with perfectly standard UK/European holiday charter flight-configured aircraft with 28/29" seat pitch, and have continued this style since then. This has been the norm since the 1960s when aircraft like the good old BAC One-Eleven with 119 seats, or the early Boeing 737 with 130 seats, were coming out for the holiday airlines. A whole generation and more of British (and Europeans) knew no other type of airline in the days when scheduled service prices were for business travellers only, and although not luxury everyone fitted in. Channel Airways even got 7-across seating, 3+4, in a standard fuselage in their Tridents (!), although this did not last for too long as the aircraft were sold again (to BA) and reconfigured.

Since aircraft configured like this came onto LCC services, with flight times only a fraction of those to Greece or The Canaries, there are comments that people "cannot fit" into the seats. Why the difference ?

Jimmie76

For really important events such as weddings etc. I usually try and be there the night before and book a room at the hotel. I have only once had to travel on the day of the wedding and that was a short domestic to Glasgow. The whole family was travelling together, had only hand luggage and we left a big buffer zone to allow for the flight being delayed etc.

If sleazyjet or anyother airline want to start plugging BA as a better airline I can't see BA being too miffed about it. (although I bet it isn't company policy)

ttjoseph

1) There was no FlyerTalk back then. It's possible that the number of complaints per passenger hasn't increased but it's easier to read them now.

2) Without reference to any particular person (especially those posting here), the population in Western countries is getting fatter. Unfortunately, the UK is duplicating the American trend in this respect.

LeisureFirst

It is also getting taller.
Notice that I complained about pitch not width. I am 6'5" tall. My waist size is 32". I am quite certain that there are far more people around now of roughly this height than there were even 15 years ago, let alone 40-50 years ago.

I am guessing WHBM is short and therefore fits on the charter planes he or she describes. I did once take such a plane to the Canary Islands, quite a number of years ago. I ended up spending most of the journey sitting in the galley. On the way back I made sure to check in first to get an exit row, which was ok.

IAMORGAN

I absolutely agree with you; sometimes circumstances dictate that you have to fly on the morning of the funeral -personally, given a choice, I would go out on a flight the previous day.

As far as the alleged comment regarding BA is concerned, I can believe it was said, but probably was said as a spur of the moment thing, but to be honest, I would be annoyed in those circumstances (if they are as reported), and would probably do the same.

I can appreciate easyjet customer service being poor -last year I flew with my parents from LPL-BSL -paid £20 a head MORE to fly EZY because my parents hate LHR. To cut a long story short, the flight was delayed by just over 6 hours, yet the ground staff at LPL were shocking; the supervisor shouted at passengers who were complaining because no vouchers had been offered to them after this wait. It transpired that EZY had known about the delay the previous day and had chartered an a/c from 'Hello' in switzerland. Essentially EZY waited for the flight from BSL-LPL to be operated and then operated LPL-BSL -thus causing a 6 hour delay. There was absolutely nothing to drink on the flight to BSL because "easyjet refused to load any catering". This is not a joke, I saw the captain of the 'hello' plane assisting the one person loading the bags to try and speed up departure! But the comment from the supervisor that day that will stay with me forever was, in a loud, liverpudlian accent, the supervisor shouting at a passenger who was asking why the old flight number EZY was not EZS - "I don't work for easyjet, I work for servisair". OK, so she works for servisair who handle easyjet and wear easyjet uniform...

IAMORGAN

I agree with you -if i had to worry about the cost of air travel, then for that type of difference in fare i would go EZY every time. However, you may be suprised at how little difference the BA cheapo ticket and the EZY ticket actually sell at. Certainly if comparing to airlines like thomsonfly, who charge £6 for bags etc, then the difference may be more like £10RTN/person -then I would pay the difference.

However, EZY win because many people would rather go say EDI-holiday than EDI-LHR-holiday or EDI-Virgin Train-EUS-TUBE-LHR-Holiday.

I have found BAs customer service to be better than EasyJet's and certainly, when booking last minute, EZY and BA price out to be roughly the same on certain routes. As always, if you are 'price driven' then the advice is to shop for the best deal, because they really do fluctuate at the cheapo-ticket side.

WHBM

Not really, 6'0". But you are correct that at school I was one of the taller ones and would not be so nowadays at all.

"He or she ?". Oh come on now, how many women are silly enough to be geeks about old aircraft seating pitches ? Some things never change

LeisureFirst

Just like I said. Veritably dwarven.