easyJet.com
 

Hi there!

I'm trying to get a ticket from the UK (preferably BHX or EMA) to VCE in October. A friend of mine told me about easyJet.com. I've found a great flight at a great price. My question is.. does anybody know if there are restrictions buying tickets from the US on this intra-Europe airline? I've searched the site and cannot find any information. (their FAQ is not helpful or robust at all .. FYI)

Also, have you had good/bad experiences with them?

Any help would be greatly appreciated :D

Welcome to Flyer Talk!
I fly easyjet all the time and it's ok. No frills sort of like southwest. You need to travel from Luton Airport which is about a 45 min train ride from Kings Cross. A bus takes you from the station to the airport. I buy at easyjet.com with a CC and have had no problems.
Arrive early as it is by boarding number. There are some nice areas to wait outside of security.
I like them to AMS it really cheap :)

I also bought tickets on easyjet.com from the US and had no problems. Have fun!

Not necessarily. They also fly to VCE from STN which is slight (but not much) closer to London and which has a direct train link.

Edited to add: And they fly from EMA too - which is one of the airports the original poster was looking for.

You can also fly London Gatwick LGW to VCE on EasyJet.

It might be worthing checking out some of the proper airlines that fly from the UK to Venice, as they often offer highly competitive fares - sometimes less than the LCC's themselves. Alitialia (AZ) have offered some especially discounted fares recently.

You may niot get service from the Midlands, but there are plenty of flights from LHR/LGW on BA and AZ amongst others.

If you want to fly to Venice from Birmingham or East Midlands then you can get there from Coventry (sort-of halfway between the two) with Thomsonfly.

This is the low-fare offshoot from Britannia Airways, the long-established UK holiday airline. They fly Boeing 737s from Coventry to Venice daily. And they fly into the proper Marco Polo airport in Venice, not into Treviso airport, a long, long way down the road.

www.thomsonfly.com

You find lots of Americans (and others from overseas) on the UK low-cost airlines. Your credit card is very welcome on their website!

The only time I flew EZ my back didn't appreciate it. Admittedly it was probably the longest flight in their network (LTN-ATH) but their seats are a bit of a joke.
Anyway in this instance I will agree that you can only choose between Easyjet and Thomsonfly unless you're willing to fly MAN-MXP for which Alitalia sometimes offer ridiculously low fares!

Thanks so much for all the great info! It has been very helpful :D

One other question.. a friend of mine mentioned that some of these LCC have baggage restrictions. Restrictions that are so heavy that sometimes it's cheaper to by a seat next to you and strap your luggage in there. Is this correct? I'm not that familiar with LCC in Europe and want to make sure that I don't want make my aunt pay through the nose just for her luggage.

Much thanks...

We flew easyjet last year with some extremely cheap tickets bought on thier website. Puchasing online was no problem at all (we're in Canada).

Just like any low cost carrier, the flight was fine, check in was early, and seating was done according to check-in.

Their motto was something like "We hold the plane for no-one!" LMAO Loved it! :D

:eek: Low fare offshoot of a charter airline, sweet mother of god, if the OP is looking for cheap it can't get any less than this!

Coventry?? I didn't even know there was an airport there!

You can also fly BMI from LHR-VCE, and often the fares are competitive with the low-cost carriers. http://www.flybmi.com

However, having

You can also fly BMI from LHR-VCE, and often the fares are competitive with the low-cost carriers. http://www.flybmi.com

However,

You can also fly BMI from LHR-VCE, and often the fares are competitive with the low-cost carriers. http://www.flybmi.com

However, having flown

You can also fly BMI from LHR-VCE, and often the fares are competitive with the low-cost carriers. http://www.flybmi.com

However, having flown BMI

You can also fly BMI from LHR-VCE, and often the fares are competitive with the low-cost carriers. http://www.flybmi.com

However, having recently flown BMI on LHR-CDG in business class, and having also recently flown two EasyJet flights, I don't think BMI is worth a penny more, other than if you can save on total costs.

I took EasyJet this summer from Gatwick to Barcelona. Carry On is limited to 5kg. I don't recall offhand what the checked luggage limit was, I think 11kg, but you should be able to find the specifics on the easyjet website.

I checked in early so was one of the first to board, was able to grab a front row bulkhead seat which was fine for a 2 hour flight.

Luggage on Europe LCC
 

Don't plan on taking cruise type luggage on a Europe LCC. We really messed up last year. Booked EasyJet to get us back to London after a cruise. WELLLL, only one of our bags (out of 7 bags for 4 people) met the requirements. It was something like 40 pds. pp. We ended up throwing away the plane tickets and we all got on the train. The over weight charges were more than the clothes, including some expensive evening gowns. IE Ridiculous. Don't know whether you can buy another seat. I don't think any of us asked.

In the past few weeks, both EasyJet and Ryanair have changed their policies. Read their web sites to see what it is.

EasyJet said on the web site that weight didn't matter so long as the item was within particular size limits. In my experience a couple weeks ago they seemed to be weighing carry-ons and limiting to 10 kg. Fortunately my carry-on was 10.0 kg and I didn't need to check any luggage.

well...

http://easyjet.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/...gage+allowance

Thanks for posting that. That was what I meant about no weight restriction - I was referring to the carry-ons. Nevertheless, EasyJet did weigh the carry-ons and seemed to be looking at the 10 kg limit. They did not measure them, and I was a bit concerned about being 1 cm over, but that didn't matter ultimately.

40 pds? You mean 20 kgs? Baggage allowance on most EU carriers is 20-23 kgs, so EZ wasn't much of an exception to this rule.

I'm looking at flying Easyjet for the first time. How early should I be checking in? (I'm looking at the BCN/MAD - ORY flight)

EasyJet closes down check-in 30 minutes before flight time. I'd recommend at least an hour before flight time.

I try to check in 2 hours before flight time for low-cost carrier flights, and that gives me a low number so I can board earlier than most of the passengers.

I'd say two hours? anyone else?

If you get there two hours before you spend an hour in the queue.

If you get there 90 minutes before you still join the end of the same queue but you only spend half an hour queuing.

If you get there an hour before then, with a bit of luck, there will be no queue at all.

Having said that, I tend to aim for 90 minutes to give myself a bit of leeway.

Check-in:
My experience with EasyJet was that they had a limited number of queues available, and the one for my flight (STN -> CPH) didn't open until about 90 minutes prior to the flight--until then, it had been for a different flight altogether. I was surprised at how not-terribly busy the EasyJet counters were at STN; although there did become quite a line for my flight once they opened the check-in counters, it was extremely calm. I usually can't stand being in lines at airports, but this one seemed tolerable.

Baggage allowances:
Having first flown Ryanair, who's extremely diligent about charging for baggage overages on their flights, we were expecting to pay through the nose for our overweight bags again. However, EasyJet allows more than Ryanair (20kg on EasyJet vs. 15kg on Ryanair, I believe), and even though our bags were all slightly overweight at check-in (about 22-23 kgs each), there was no mention of the surcharges by the desk agent; she just put the "Heavy" tag on the bags and handed us our boarding passes.

Despite getting in line two hours before, I've never spent an hour in the queue for a low-cost carrier. The most has been ten or fifteen minutes. Airports I have used low-cost carriers with: Stansted, Torp, Orly, Schoenefelde

Then you've been extremely lucky. I've queued an hour for Ryanair flights, both at STN (which I use a fair bit as I live nearby), and on a recent flight home from SZG.

Thanks for the responses!

I've used Ryanair and Easyjet before and all I can say is you get what you pay for. For a flight up to two hours it's perfectly acceptable and, to be frank, no worse than the ORD->SEA flights on an MD80 I'd end up doing throughout the year.

At STN, a large proportion of passengers arrive by train. As a result, the queues are much longer for the 10-15 minutes following the arrival of a train. Personally, if I fly from there, I get the train, go and grab a coffee, have a ciggie, then check in. It usually ends up taking the same amount of time.

I agree. The Ryanair and EasyJet 737 planes are not any more uncomfortable than an Alaska Air MD80. The main downside to low-cost carriers is if there is a cancelled flight, which is quite uncommon.

Has anyone had to deal with a cancelled flight on a low-cost carrier?

Not personally - but have heard/read plenty of horror stories, especially about Ryanair.

There is now a web site that is collecting them.

There's this story too:

http://www.aftenposten.no/english/lo...icle517434.ece

Admittedly, people do have problems with cancelled flights and lost luggage and check-in times with major carriers also.

...but remember that MXP (Malpensa) is not just round the corner when you´re headed for Venice!!! :D

Ok.. so another question.... 0:-)

If you had to choose between the following, which would you choose? I'm trying to make this flight the least painful for my aunt and her friend she's visiting in the UK (living in west midlands - soliwell)

1) EasyJet - East Midlands to Venice leaving at 1:20pm arriving into Venice at 4:40pm Cost = 42.99 GBP (about an hour drive)

2) ThomsonFly - Coventry to Venice leaving at 1:35pm arriving into Venice at 4:50pm Cost = 64.99 GBP (about 30 minutes drive)

It sounds like EasyJet is decent. How is ThomsonFly in comparsion?