For European travel these days my wife and I use BA almost exclusively. Yes, there are charters and lo-costs around travelling to most parts of Europe but, at 6' tall and 20 stone (280 lbs) I don't do 28" -29" seat pitch, and a mad scramble for seats on boarding, at all well. I also find that, generally, the charters are more expensive than BA/GB.
In this case we were travelling on a flight/hotel package sold by Sunspot / Mercury travel ( http://217.41.241.67/sunspotpages/ or 01580 720295 ) who use scheduled airlines in the most part. Very good travel service. I recommend them to you.
Outbound.
We arrived at Gatwick on the 14th May (my birthday, the significance of that comes later) for our 0725 scheduled departure, having checked in online and selected our seats the previous day. I had chosen 21A/B for us as the A320 seat plan on the check-in page showed them as being long legroom seats behind the escape doors midway down the aircraft.
That plan went tits up when BA/GB Airways promptly put on an A321 !! The exit seats on the 321 are row 23A/B. Oh well, at 31/32" pitch and a reclining seat it was still quite comfortable.
Departure was delayed from 0725 to a final pushback time of 0905 because some dipstick had managed to put 12 bags in the hold that had not been x-rayed. All the bags had to be taken off and re-scanned. Now, I'm all in favour of security and safety procedures but, hey guys, shall we do it right the first time ?
En-route we had the usual half reasonable cattle-class airline breakfast and soft drinks service, but about 25 minutes of the flight was disturbed by turbulence. This meant that the drinks service was suspended in favour of the duty free sales ( which no-one used ! ). Remember I said it was my birthday ? I'd been looking forward to an inflight large brandy and champagne which didn't happen. Mind you, I made up for it that night at the all-inclusive hotel !!
Inbound.
24th May, 1200 hrs. I called the BA desk at the airport the prevous day and confirmed that they were indeed using an A321. Armed with that information I went online to check in but found that the 23A/B seats were already booked. To my surprise however I found that no-one had noticed that the front pair of seats at row 3A/C had not been taken. These are probably the best economy seats on the aircraft, next to 23A/B especially if you travel as a couple, as you have a Club Europe width seat, a space between each of you for books, camera etc. and a good amount of legroom due to the lack of the third seat.
We left on time with a minor delay waiting to leave the transit bus due to a larger than normal number of special needs passenger boarding before us.
A very comfortable flight with a surprisingly tasty lunch. This time I got my drink but had to limit it to a single measure as I was driving on arrival at Gatwick.
Next planned flight is in September, longer haul with ThomsonFly in Premium economy to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Had a very good experience with First Choice in their Premium economy last February, let's see if ThomsonFly can match it ?
In this case we were travelling on a flight/hotel package sold by Sunspot / Mercury travel ( http://217.41.241.67/sunspotpages/ or 01580 720295 ) who use scheduled airlines in the most part. Very good travel service. I recommend them to you.
Outbound.
We arrived at Gatwick on the 14th May (my birthday, the significance of that comes later) for our 0725 scheduled departure, having checked in online and selected our seats the previous day. I had chosen 21A/B for us as the A320 seat plan on the check-in page showed them as being long legroom seats behind the escape doors midway down the aircraft.
That plan went tits up when BA/GB Airways promptly put on an A321 !! The exit seats on the 321 are row 23A/B. Oh well, at 31/32" pitch and a reclining seat it was still quite comfortable.
Departure was delayed from 0725 to a final pushback time of 0905 because some dipstick had managed to put 12 bags in the hold that had not been x-rayed. All the bags had to be taken off and re-scanned. Now, I'm all in favour of security and safety procedures but, hey guys, shall we do it right the first time ?
En-route we had the usual half reasonable cattle-class airline breakfast and soft drinks service, but about 25 minutes of the flight was disturbed by turbulence. This meant that the drinks service was suspended in favour of the duty free sales ( which no-one used ! ). Remember I said it was my birthday ? I'd been looking forward to an inflight large brandy and champagne which didn't happen. Mind you, I made up for it that night at the all-inclusive hotel !!
Inbound.
24th May, 1200 hrs. I called the BA desk at the airport the prevous day and confirmed that they were indeed using an A321. Armed with that information I went online to check in but found that the 23A/B seats were already booked. To my surprise however I found that no-one had noticed that the front pair of seats at row 3A/C had not been taken. These are probably the best economy seats on the aircraft, next to 23A/B especially if you travel as a couple, as you have a Club Europe width seat, a space between each of you for books, camera etc. and a good amount of legroom due to the lack of the third seat.
We left on time with a minor delay waiting to leave the transit bus due to a larger than normal number of special needs passenger boarding before us.
A very comfortable flight with a surprisingly tasty lunch. This time I got my drink but had to limit it to a single measure as I was driving on arrival at Gatwick.
Next planned flight is in September, longer haul with ThomsonFly in Premium economy to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Had a very good experience with First Choice in their Premium economy last February, let's see if ThomsonFly can match it ?
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