EasyJet - EZU > Reviews > It's easy when you know how

Author's product rating:   

Food Quality	Satisfactory
Customer Service	Nothing special
Punctuality	Satisfactory
Space	Fairly Comfortable
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Low cost travel at its best, plenty of destinations, fly into centrally located airports
Disadvantages:	Seats a bit cramped, lack of product on board .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

As my secret plan to visit Disneyland Paris before the end is out was finally in place an airline had to be chosen to transport us from North Wales to Paris, with having Liverpool and Manchester less than an hours drive away we had a few options, we considered one way with Jet2.com and the return with Easyjet as that seemed to be the most cost effective way, until we realised that Jet2 only offered one flight to Paris a day and if the flight got cancelled it would severly impact our holiday so we opted for Easyjet as the offered more than one flight a day departing from Liverpool.

*~*About Easyjet*~*
Easyjet was founded by Sir Helios Haji-Ionnou in 1995. Easyjet is based at Hangar 89 a bright orange building adjacent to the main taxiway at Luton Airport, you can sometimes catch a glimpse of this on the ITV1 programme Airline.
Easyjet was one of the first no-frills carriers to introduce low cost air travel using the internet to keep costs down and employing a limited number of staff to keep operational costs to a minimum.
Easyjet sell 95% of their seats online and were the first airline to offer seats for sale online in April 1998.

*~*Booking with Easyjet*~*
Easyjet's website is where you will find the lowest fares and you can even set a corporate account up with them if you have business travellers in your office.
The website is designed in an easy ti use manner and a 5 step booking process starting at the front page where you can check availability to your chosen destination and an optional calendar display to select your travel dates.
Flights will be displayed on the next page giving you a choice of timings and it will also display availability either side of your chosen date to provide you with a cheaper option if you are flexible.
Once you have chosen your flights you will then be directed to the booking stage and provided your flight price, third party taxes and charges, any relevant hold baggage charges ( if you are taking hand luggage only then you can remove it at this stage) you can also choose whether to include travel insurance or not as it is automatically added to the booking and if you do not require it, make sure you click to remove it.
You are then asked to provide your contact details, such as name, address, telephone number and email address and then below this you will be asked for the passenger names and these must be entered as they appear on the passport starting with title, first name and surname.
Easyjet like most other airlines have terms and conditions and you will not be able to proceed any further without accepting the terms and conditions and if, like me you have watched the show if anything goes wrong on your part it will be contained within the terms and conditions so if you are unsure read before you book and one happy tick the box to accept and proceed to book.
When booking online you will need to have a credit or debit card as payment and you will need to enter the long card number, expiry date, security code found on the reverse of the card and issue number or start date and again you will need to tick the box to confirm the total to be debited from your chosen card and this is where Easyjet make a bit of money.
If you are using a credit card they will charge and additional £4.95 and if you choose to use a debit card where there are no processing charges they will still take a £1.50 profit from you, something I just don't agree with, the only card you don't get charged to use is a Visa Electron and the majority of the time they don't get accepted online as they are swipe only cards!
Once your payment has been authorised your booking confirmation will be displayed along with you reference number consisting of a combination of letters and numbers and this is what will need to be presented when you check in.

*~*Check-in*~*
When we arrived at the check-in desks there were no queues and there was just 30 minutes left until check-in closed.
As we approached the desk my fiancé very chirpily said "Good Morning" to the staff member who would check us in, she ignored his polite comment and asked for our passports personally if you can't greet people in a polite manner then you shouldn't be in a customer facing role….not the best of starts.

Our 1 suitcase that we had paid £4.00 for was weighed and fell well within the 20kgs luggage allowance, our passports were returned along with our boarding passes and advised that the gate number had not yet been announced and to observe the screens.

Coming back it was a similar situation however as I had caught a bug in Paris on our last day we had to leave it to when there was no queue to allow me to check-in as quickly as possible, the staff members were very plain and offered no friendly conversation as they checked us in and obviously seemed common throughout Easyjet standards.

*~*The Flight*~*
When it was time to board the aircraft we were directed to our boarding gate and asked to queue in area B, passengers with speddy boarding and young children were directed to area A to be boarded first.
We were taken by coach over to the aircraft and we were able to access either via the front or rear entrance, we chose to take the rear entrance and boarded the flights and picked our seats together.

The seats aren't the comfiest of seats but what do you expect on a budget airline? Dark grey seats trimmed with the trademark colour of orange ensured that you knew who you were travelling with. I found the seats ok for a flight of such a short duration but any further and I think I would struggle in terms of comfort levels as they were not too wide, my poor partner who sat in the middle did feel a little squashed however and couldn't wait to stand up at the end of the flight.

We were delayed for 30 minutes due to a problem with the paperwork but when the flight finally took off the flight was pretty enjoyable with friendly Easyjet staff who offered a snacks and drinks service, I took a look at the prices but they were really high with a hot drink starting from £1.70 and sandwiches from £3.20 so we decided not to purchase anything you can take food and drink onboard to I would suggest purchasing something in the departure lounge beforehand it will be a cheaper option.

The return flight was pretty similar except we left earlier as all of the passengers were on board we managed to get an earlier time slot, as we took off we were again offered the onboard service my partner was so hungry he wanted to buy a sandwich only to be told there were none available, he asked what snacks were available and he was offered crisps and chocolate, I was still feeling ill so I was okay and didn't want anything to eat.

My only complaint is that the staff tend to linger in the galley at the rear of the aircraft and have a discussion about their plans for later that evening not very work orientated.

Overall I do think that I would use EasyJet again for a short haul flight as the price and service is really good compared with Ryanair who I have previously traveled with. After watching the programme many people complain that they are not all that Easy to use however if you check-in for your flight in time, have your passport or photographic ID and book the right dates you will be sure to get on the flights.