I HATE AIR TRAVEL - GET ME OUT OF HERE: UPDATED
 Sep 8th, 2002
(Nov 29th, 2003)
Advantages:
Actually fly at sensible times from regional airports, loads of legroom
Disadvantages:
The use of small planes mean you feel every bump and twist; much of FlyBE's fleet are turbo - props
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
Food Quality
Customer Service
Punctuality
Space
Value for Money
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  sue.51
About me:
Sheesh - seems like ages since I've been here. So many changes, business up and running - bred my f...
Member since:20.03.2001
Reviews:275
Members who trust:170
Review rated by 62 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
This review received a counterstatement by a party concerned
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Do you people living in London and the Home Counties realise how lucky you all are? you can nip over to Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton and hop on planes to almost anywhere in the world, including shock horror, a variety of locations in the UK, trust me, if you live in Wales then this is not a simple (or cheap process). My boss and I had a pending trip to Belfast and to get there needed a flight, the primary alternative was to drive to Liverpool and get the ferry (500 mile round trip – plus the crossing? I don’t think so).
Hence, naturally our only other feasible means of transportation on a somewhat limited budget had to be flights; so where else to look that our ‘local’ airport, Cardiff International, apparently advertising itself as the gateway to Europe and the rest of the world, but not it seems the British Isles. The cheapest flight we could get was somewhere in the region of £400 each – it would have been more cost effective to drive straight across. This flight was with British Airways (BA). We then checked BA from Birmingham - £78 wow what a difference, BMIbaby from East Midlands - £60 and £45 with EasyJet from Luton, it seems to me that the further away from your final destination you get the cheaper the flight gets, then I saw an advertisement in the Sunday paper for FlyBE a.k.a British European, well lets give them a try.
A little bit of browsing the website and playing with times, eventually found us flights that suited us from Bristol at a price we were more than happy with - £127 economy class return including taxes (I must say this was far more favourable than the parking charges at Bristol Airport which came in at a casual £12/day – which I now know to be cheaper than Gatwick (£6.90 per day if
not booked in advance). And to add insult to injury, if paying by credit card at Bristol, you are now charged a £1.50 additional charge. For anyone who doesn’t know Bristol was, until recently, the only main UK airport where parking could not be pre-booked, although I believe this has recently changed. The quality of the car park at Bristol is, to say the least, pretty appalling, as is the rather uninspiring airport, but I guess that will have to keep for another day. Shuttle buses run to the main terminal roughly ever 10 minutes throughout the day. Flyebe also fly Business Class return services, although on planes this size I don’t know what advantages you would get for the extra pennies.
The flight would take us into Belfast City as opposed to the International Airport. The former, as it’s name might suggest is only about 5 miles from the City, whereas the International Airport is some 20 miles away so we saved a fair bit on taxi fares as well, although I am reliably informed that if you are staying in one of the major hotels in the City, you can take advantage of the Shuttle Buses for a small fee from both airports. Our Taxi to the Europa cost us the grand total of £8 between three of us. MY RECENT TRIP
There have been a few changes at FlyBE since in the year since I first flew with them - the main one being that they have now become a partly ticketless airlines - although when I questioned this, they wouldn't comment further than saying that certain routes had become ticketless, and the Birmingham to Glasgow route was one of them, therefore remember to make a note of your reference number before leaving for the airport.
I am however, glad to say that FlyBE have not yet adopted this ridiculous procedure of free for all seats, lets hope they dont. The plane on this occasion had propellors, so I was a little stunned to discover around 80 people boarding the bus, thinking how on earth are they all going to get on the plane - but they were, the plane being, I believe, one of the Dash-8 range sitting 78 passengers in total, a little un-nerving to say the least, but generally a very nice new plane with plenty of leg-room, but it may be worth giving the toilet a miss if you can, the words "cat" and "swing" spring to mind.
The flight on this occasion was Birmingham to Glasgow. WHO IS FlyBE?
They actually started out as Jersey European in 1979 having gone through a range of changes since then to the current period, acquiring their first London base in 1991 and their first franchises with Air France in 1996, they won best Regional Airline in 1993 and 1994 and became FlyBe in July of 2002, so they are a relatively new player in the cheaper airline market, what they do have is smaller planes, slightly higher yet still affordable prices, allocated seats and it appears nice planes, loads of legroom, reliability and they FLY FROM REGIONAL AIRPORTS – are you listening British Airways?
WHERE DO THEY FLY?
It seems looking at the routes on their website, They fly from every major airport on the UK mainland with the exception of Cardiff (that figures) and Aberdeen. They also have links to Amsterdam, Brussels and numerous destinations in France, Jersey, Guernsey, Dublin and Shannon. From Bristol at the moment you can only fly to Belfast, Isle of Man and Jersey, although hopefully the not too distant future will see greater expansion on these destinations. I have been asked to provide more information on routes; usually happy to oblige, on this occasion, this would be something of a mammoth task as destinations from each of the 15 mainland, Eire and NI varies, safe to say they operate on a fairly large scale in these countries and France and I suspect they will continue to grow in Northern Europe for the foreseeable future, check out their website for more details on destinations - www.flybe.com. THE BOOKING PROCESS
My boss actually did this, but was a fairly simplistic process that required both our names, credit card details and issued a confirmation number, tickets were received in the post within about two weeks. Unusually, ticket and passenger details were changeable for a small fee.
UPDATE
I booked this time and it was fairly painless, except for the £4 credit card charge - they do now also make a charge for the use of debit cards - no such thing as a free ride anymore. I later discovered after booking my flights that getting an affordable room in Birmingham before my onward journey to Bolton was going to be nigh on impossible as it was half-term, and this saw me having to alter my return flight, setting me back an additional £25 to the £58 return flight cost. This was not charged to my credit card until I arrived at the airport - to add insult to injury, I arrived early at the airport for my flight back, and as the earlier flight had been delayed, I found myself stumping up another £25 to get on this, but it saved sufficient time to make it worth my while. CHECKING IN & LUGGAGE RETRIEVAL
Fast, efficient, friendly and I was allowed to take my 6.1kg bag with me as hand luggage – boy was I relieved, it meant I wouldn’t have to wait for my luggage to be offloaded the other side, although my joy was short-lived as another passenger who was travelling to the same conference as we were, and her luggage transpired to be in the hold – although the wait at Belfast City was MINIMAL – I didn’t even get chance to have a sneaky ciggie away from my boss before we were seeking a taxi into the centre.
The main feature I did like about flying with FlyBR was that I knew where I was sitting – it may sound silly but after the free for all of EasyJet and AirWales, having my seat allocated was music to my ears. THE PLANES
Flying is something I do often and still hate, so have heard horror stories of small planes on short distances from regional airports; I was awaiting this trip with a mixture of excited trepidation and anticipation – well, thankfully the plane did have engines rather than propellers – it was a Canadair Regional Jet – and seated 49 people including air stewards. The Dash80 seated 78 but had propellors.
Now bear in mind that I am only 5ft 1-1/2” and I could actually see inside the overhead lockers – both planes are small – normally even when standing on a seat I struggle to check whether I have left anything behind, which can be a real pain when I am travelling without my somewhat taller other half. THE LEGROOM
Wow – planes this small with leg-room – what can I say – there was at least double the amount offered by the likes of Britannia and JMC – very impressed – although if you are over 4ft 8”, then I wouldn’t recommend standing up suddenly or you could end up with a very sore head the next day.
THE SERVICE
The first time around the captain announced that we would be offered a selection of complementary refreshments including tea, coffee, water or fruit juice – with a mini packet of shortbread of savoury snacks, in addition, they were supposed to offer a range of drinks from the bar but we didn’t actually see any of these (I don’t fly well sober) but as I guess the flight last only around 45 minutes (it was actually scheduled to last 1 hour 15 mins) then I shouldn’t really complain. Complementary refreshments are gone, or at least they are from Birmingham.
RELIABILITY & PUNCTUALITY
On the outward journey we departed on time and arrived half hour early, on the return journey we actually departed about 20 minutes late, and both the announcers at Belfast, the staff, noticeboards and captain kept apologising profusely, quite impressive and we still managed to arrive back on the mainland ahead of schedule. In fact there was GO flight due to leave 15 minutes before us to the same destination, but it actually arrived some 45 minutes after us. UPDATE
Flying from Birmingham, the flight was delayed for a good hour, which was not so impressive, the return flight was also 1/2 hour late leaving due to severe fog, so generally have had better in the reliability stakes.
OVERALL IMPRESSION
An excellent service at an affordable price, but the planes are small and the majority of their fleet have propellors, which many at FlyBE will admit does not inspire confidence in many of their customers. It also , which means that they you every jolt, bump, wheels going up and down, engines pulling back – if you are a nervous flyer, try where possible to get a flight on a nice clear day, going out was clear as crystal returning home was a nightmare, cloudy as hell, and I could not believe that a plane this small could fly safely and comfortably at 30,000 feet and 500 miles an hour. My boss (being something of a daredevil and a glider enthusiast wasted no opportunity in recognising that he had finally discovered my key weakness he was quite nice about my fear of dentists) and took the mickey out of me mercilessly.
Having said all that about London and the Home Counties, I am reliably informed that if you want to get to Belfast, then Scotland is the place to be, as our Co-ordinator actually managed to get a flight with EasyJet for the grand sum of £27.10 return, including taxes, I couldn’t get a train fare to London for that price. Want to find out more? Visit www.flybe.com
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12.12.2004 16:31
Good review - I Love flying but refuse to use FlyBe after 23 out of 26 flights i had with them were delayed, luggae went missing, missed connections and appalling customer service - Maybe they have improved since 2 years ago though and are worth another look - Cheers
22.12.2003 00:15
Good op. I should have travelled with FlyBe in the summer (Southampton to Milan) but took ill and couldn't go. Julia.
25.11.2003 12:40
Great op. Am trying them for the first time in a couple of weeks, from Southampton to Geneva, so I'll report. They do still issue tickets BTW, at least on international flights. And it's been great to see the increasing number of low-cost flights from places like Cardiff and Bristol - Harry