Currently slaving away at the University of Cambridge. Estimated time of arrival of next opinion: Tu...
Currently slaving away at the University of Cambridge. Estimated time of arrival of next opinion: Tuesday 10th April, 2046
Member since:19.08.2000
Reviews:69
Members who trust:5
Normally, my parents book flights well in advance, and up until now we have always flown British Airways. This Summer, however, we left it much later before booking a holiday, partly because many people say it is cheaper to book late, and partly because we had already booked a flight to Rome in October, making the Summer holiday slightly less important (normally we stay at home during October and have our main holiday in Summer). However it soon became apparent that we were not going to get a decent holiday at any price, when we went to numerous travel agents with no luck. Finally, we settled with what was probably the best option, which was a charter flight with AirTransat to Toronto, Canada (Departing from Glasgow, A bit over 2 hours away from where I live in Aberdeen).
I was not looking forward to the flight as I'd heard that you had to pay for drinks, that you had to purchase the headphones and that the seats were cramped (which can increase the risk of Deep Vein Thrombosis, an uncommon, yet fatal condition caused by long periods of inactivity). The only real good point was that the flight cost under half of what an equivalent British Airways flight would cost.
The journey did not start well, with the flight being delayed two hours because of a technical difficulty. But, after hours of tedious waiting we got onto the plane, and took off quickly and smoothly. It turned out that soft drinks were free after all and that AirTransat were giving out the headphones for nothing because of the delay. The seats were also relatively good although a little narrow. The most annoying thing about the flight was that the light above me didn't work, which made playing my Game Boy Advance (my only form of entertainment for the 6+ hour journey) close to impossible (and there was no way I was going to watch the in-flight films, which were too bad even to write opinions about).
Overall, though, the flight went OK, until about forty minutes away from landing when we got a nasty surprise. "Hello, this is your captain speaking. We're about forty minutes away from Toronto airport, and there's a thunderstorm so we can't land. Unfortunately, we don't have enough fuel to circle round." That doesn't sound good. Is our holiday going to end...prematurely? "So, we're going to fly to Montreal airport. We should be there in about half an hour."
Well, we landed safely in Montreal, and the captain announced that we would be ready to fly back to Toronto in five minutes. Fifteen minutes later the captain told us we would be leaving in another five minutes. Only one hour after we had landed did we finally take off.
Despite the problems with the flight, the holiday went very well. We spent three days in Toronto, before spending another three days in a country cottage overlooking a huge lake (where I caught 41 of my first fish), then went to Ottawa, the nation's capital, for four days, and then down to Niagara for the remainder of the holiday.
The flight back was better than the flight in, except, once again, my light didn't work (and neither did those in the seats in front of me and the seats behind me.
I would say that, overall, AirTransat is a perfectly good airline, and that the problems in my flight were really down to bad luck. It certainly doesn't come near British Airways in terms of comfort but at half the price it's much better value for money. For anyone flying to Canada, AirTransat is a great choice, but if you have the money, go with British Airways.
----IMPORTANT UPDATE----
I recently heard two (supposedly true) stories which lead me to doubt the safety of AirTransat. One of these is that an AirTransat plane had to land prematurely at Orlando airport when the cabin filled with smoke, and the other is that an AirTransat plane ran out of fuel during a flight and had to glide 15 miles before making an emergency landing. Although they have had a good safety record, these stories would seriously put me of flying AirTransat again.
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Correction, the plane was actually going FROM Canada TO Portugal, and landed on an island off the coast of Portugal. Chris
chizster 19.07.2004 16:30
Hello there. The airline safety incident you refer to in your article was more like it glided for 150, not just 15 miles. It made an emergency landing on an island off the West Coast of North America (somewhere in Canada I believe) after gliding over the atlantic at 33,000FT. The aircraft was flying from France when the pilots noticied that the fuel was going down exceptionnally quickly, but blamed it on a computer error. This flight was documented in a recent "Air Crash Investigation" programme and ALL passengers survived. The pilots in this case were exceptional and went against all odds to overcome this potentially fatal problem. TWO safety issues in over 15 years of flying (with more than 20 flights a day) is somewhat safer than perhaps 95% of other airlines. There is no point overreacting to one crash, in which everybody survived due to the expertise of the crew. More information on Flight 236 can be found at http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/relatedstories/gam/20010825/UPLANMSB .. Otherwise a very nice review. Chris
melodysparks 22.04.2004 00:30
I flew to Toronto from Gatwick last summer with Air Transat which I booked with Lunn Poly aftr finding it on the net. WE were delayed by 1 hour taking off but made up time enroute to manchester where we took on other passengers. After a 10 minute delay on the taxiway due to the plane in front we eventually took off and landed in Toronto 1 hour before the expected time quoted on my ticket 6 1/2 hours flight
not bad for £488 and at summer bank holiday
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Advantages: Brilliant service, good punctuality,more space than other airlines,knows how to handle situations Disadvantages: flight was too short, BA's current financial situation scaring passengers away
Aug 13th, 2001
(Nov 2nd, 2001)
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