Internaut

I wonder if any of our assembled experts can give me a little info on this subject. I have the prospect of having to get a train from Hannover to Düsseldorf Airport tomorrow afternoon for a flight back to Manchester. Because of a change in travel plans, it is not going to cost a great deal more to simply book the direct Flybe flight from HAN to MAN.....

The only issue is (other than not getting miles towards BD*G re-qualification), my flight out was with LH and for my carry on, I took a small suitcase and a laptop bag. I can probably check the small suitcase in, sans camera bag leaving me with the simple question: How anal are Flybe about carry on baggage? Will a laptop bag plus small camera bag be acceptable?

nozmeister

flew at the weekend from JER-LGW with FlyBE. Very strict about hold luggage (ie one KG over = £12) but didn't check our carryon and this was over the weight limit but not number of pieces (at checkin)

Bit annoyed as BA had cancelled the flight we were going back on and moved us to BE who had a more strict weight limit!!

Noz

Smirnoff

OT - why does the flybe website contain such pi55-poor English? It all reads like it was written by an Slovenian intern studying English in Brighton.

http://www.flybe.com/news/1007/new_c...stinations.htm

Whats New? - where's the apostrophe?

So check out where you can be booking through flybe.com - rubbish English

As well as the history and tradition Vienna has a young trendy and creative side of all those budding artists - written by a non-native speaker

Is one of the worlds most beautiful cities - besides the fact you can't start a sentence with "IS", where is the apostrophe?

your one stop shop online portal - your what???

More Frequency! - should be Greater Frequency. More bananas.

When will change start to happen? - what?

mad_rich

I would expect BA to cover baggage charges (and the cost of an inflight bevvy or two) if you can be bothered to write in.

@Smirnoff - That really is a crime against the English language, and it's hard to imagine a native English speaker having proofed it. (Or should that be a native English speaker's having proofed it?)

dark_horse

I've flown a couple of times with FlyBe BHX-JER on a Monday morning (simply because I couldn't be bothered to get the train back down to London on the Sunday night only to get myself across to LGW). Your experience may depend on the type of aircraft they're using.

They were very strict regarding hold luggage and moving seats once on-board, mainly because it was a Bombardier Dash 8 turboprop and weight is a bit more critical than on a heavy jet. The overheard lockers are also notably smaller. My carry-on wasn't obviously checked though it was clearly just a laptop bag.

However, I'd agree with mad_rich that if BA have put you on a FlyBe flight then BA should pay for luggage costs that wouldn't have been there had you been on BA metal.

BA_Blade

I'd second that. I flew LGW-NQY-LGW on FlyBe at the weekend. They didn't bother about hand-luggage but were harsh with hold baggage and tried to charge us £12 to check in a beach cricket set separately as it was too long to put inside the hold bag - this despite the fact that collective weight of the two was about half the allowance. I ended up throwing it away instead as it had only cost a fiver!

Swanhunter

We'll give this a short run here before moving over to Other European Airlines.

Swanhunter
Moderator, BAEC

Internaut

Thanks all. We ended going for the train plus plane option (so Hannover to Dusseldorf Airport by train and then the flight to Manchester). Even this may force me to check in my main (Canadair regional jet) cabin bag but at least LH will allow me to remove my camera bag and carry that on board.

JustLanded

You have to give it to Flybe that they seem to be reasonably proficient at herding people like cattle and enforcing rules. This works well for them because they operate in markets where there's not much competition and, it could be argued that without that model the routes would not turn a profit (BA Connect).

Much as I have tried, I just cannot like this airline and avoid if at all possible. I find their pricing structure dishonest and they make broad claims about promotional fares in marketing literature that are often not available to the destinations you would want.

This also reminded me of this amusing mistake:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/...ds/7104113.stm

Maybe that's why so few planes actually operated out of INV when they started up there!

Smirnoff

Just priced up a return from one end of the UK to the other on the "UK's Number One Domestic Carrier": NQY-LSI on random dates in August. And the cost came to a staggering £449.

helahela

Well - could be worse. Try pricing IOM-LGW You probably run with an average price of £300 return for the next 4-6 weeks for an 1hour flight.

BOH

Have used them quite alot recently on EDI-SOU, SOU-AMS-SOU, SOU-DUB-SOU and just made a booking in early September for SOU-BRU-SOU.

Found them very efficient, I only had hand-baggage so didn't experience their excess bag procedures. Only frustration was the SSCI kiosks at AMS don'tt seem to be configured for Flybe use so an annoying 45 minute queue resulted just to pick up a BP 45 minutes queue, followed by less than 1 minute at the actual desk

As for their pricing, so far my flights taken above were boked with around 2-3 weeks notice and have all been around £90 each way. My upcoming SOU-BRU-SOU was booked 7 weeks out and this is £55 each way ^

Seats are very comfortable, it is frustrating they won't let you move around from the seat # on your BP when it is clear there are many vacant seats available. Although IIRC this is for load purposes as the a/c are quite small...

Fruitcake

I use Flybe quite often on London-Belfast as BA doesn't do the route . Also used them last week from MAN-NWI for the same reason.

Never have hold luggage on these journeys - can be a squeeze to get the hand luggage in their overhead lockers.

In terms of service, they are no BA but infinitely preferable IMHO to FR or Easyjet. They can be expensive too. They whinge that they don't do trunk routes and don't have the loads - well that's the business model you've chosen guys!

I had a flight cancelled to Belfast due to snow at the last minute in January and was disappointed at their evasive response (although at least there was a response!) - whereas BA over the ash cloud was miles better.

NSFU

Captive Flybe customer here, at INV. Use them a lot, not that there is much choice. They are infinitely better than they were in the early period after they took over the BA Connect routes.

They are by now pretty punctual. The new planes are more comfortable and the flight times shorter. At least you can buy something to eat if you're hungry, on the downside it's nasty, expensive rubbish, especially the stuff branded by some cheesy TV chef who will certainly never have had to eat it.

Prices are pretty much what BA used to charge on the same routes. Luckily I usually travel with only hand baggage. You can pay to choose a seat but if you wait until the airport to check in at a kiosk, some of them will give you a seat choice at that point. I've found that the cabin crew are pretty relaxed at letting you move to another empty seat provided that it is within the same 'zone' for trim purposes. Recommended that you ask first though.

Can't see myself building up enough points to do much 'free' travel though, especially when the first 35 flights of the year will now be going towards the lounge access card!

db7

They have improved greatly in the last year or so.

The embs are are great improvement over the 146s and teh DAsh 8 400s have cut journey times on many routes.

Can pre-book seats which is good, lounges are poor only wine and beer no spirits. Many lounges can now be accessed on priority pass (notable exceptions MAN and SOU).

Lounge card not much use and number of points needed has been raised to 35 - can't bring in guest. For 50 points can bring in same named guest each time.

They are good at refunds and notifications of delays.

Pricewise the are less than BA used to be most of the time.

Credit card looks cheap - have no experience of it