Picture the scene, you’re sitting in front of the TV watching an edition of Airline or Airport and seeing all these passengers turn up for their flights late thinking, “I’m too organised for that to happen to me!”. Well the truth is people miss their flights for all manner of reasons every day, the key is what you can do about it.
Flyglobespan; unlikely saviours!
THE STORY!
My parents have just returned from a wonderful holiday in Tenerife, their first truly memorable holiday in over 20 years because of family difficulties. It was their wedding anniversary as well so we all wanted them to have a great time, and that is just what happened, they stayed in a perfect resort, and by all accounts enjoyed every second of their time.
Unfortunately I think they enjoyed it a little too much because for some reason (not alcohol related!) my dad managed to get the wrong return flight times in his head. The holiday had been booked through Thompson Platinum and as a half board package tour, almost everything is included in the price from accommodation, flights, transfers, food, some drink, hotel entertainment etc. But as a package tour, you’re pretty sure you are going to a popular destination which means that if anything should go wrong then it is very likely that the hotel will be waiting for their next guests and this is precisely what happened to them.
As soon as they had realised that they had missed their flight, that was it, there was only one flight that day with Thompson’s chartered airline, Air Europa between Tenerife and Stansted and the hotel was fully booked.
I got a call at 10am on the Friday morning telling me they’d missed the flights and was asked if I could sort something out about getting them home, after all they could not get a refund or a later flight, because it was their own fault.
I admit to being a bit of an aviation fanatic, so I knew that Flyglobespan flew from Stansted to Tenerife but I also knew that their prices can vary from being extremely cheap, to very expensive. In fact prior to booking the holiday in the first place, we looked on the Globespan website for return flights and they only came out £100 cheaper than the entire week’s holiday with Thompson Platinum, perhaps it was a busy time, but around £800 was just silly.
You can imagine how I felt when I had to try and get them home on the same day. I started by looking at the Thompson website to see that there was only one flight that day – the one they had missed. What made matters worse was that there didn’t seem to be any flights over the weekend, so they would be stranded until Monday, which would have meant extra hotel expenses, potentially a less than desirable way to end a lovely holiday.
So, my next step was to try Ryanair, the prolific super cheap airline, but two problems a) they would have to route via Dublin and b) I couldn’t book to fly on the same day. Easyjet didn’t fly there, the BA website was really slow and after terrible experiences with them in the past I decided not to persevere so my options were running out, and fast.
OK, the only thing was to give Flyglobespan another try, although I didn’t really hold out much hope after the initial experience above, I thought that even if they did have something then it would be prohibitively expensive this late in the day.
THE GLOBESPAN EXPERIENCE
Well as you have already guessed by the fact I am reviewing them, my parents ended up flying with FlyGlobespan. But I really wanted to share this experience because I think it just goes to show that the Globespan experience is a pretty decent one.
I logged onto the airline’s website; now I have recently heard, through my aviation interests, that Globespan have been getting a bit of bad press lately with their new Canadian flights, through long delays and lack of aircraft, so it was somewhat strange to see the front page advertising their “award winning airline” motto.
The website itself looks incredibly cheap and has an almost tabloid quality to it, with it’s red and white and italic headers, actually worse than Ryanair in my opinion, but having said that, it is remarkably easy to navigate.
On the left hand side of the main page you simply select your Departure Airport (Tenerife South) and Destination (London Stansted), day of departure, if it is return or single, and then if you want flights only or accommodation as well. Select the number of passengers travelling and click search.
The site then uses the criteria input to search available flights, and this was done quickly.
I was somewhat surprised to see that the day’s flights i.e that Friday, were still shown as available to book. The price was shown as £108 each, which was considerably cheaper than when we tried to book in advance, and would work out cheaper than a further weekend of hotel, food and transport costs. The flight was due to depart at 1.20pm local time. Bearing in mind the need to be at the airport a few hours before the flight, and that it was already about 10.15am that only gave me about 45mins to sort things out, tops.
Well for my parents this was exactly what they wanted, so after a quick call to them, I placed the booking. Anyone familiar with booking anything on the internet will understand the requirement to fill in the forms detailing passenger names, contact details, main address and telephone number along with confirmation email. This is all done on a secure server, so data is encrypted and should be safe. I then input the credit card details, hit the equivalent of the Buy it now button and within a few seconds I was shown a screen with a confirmation booking number on it.
Amazingly, the booking was confirmed. This was like going into a train station to by a ticket for travel that day, only I wouldn’t have expected to do that for a flight, sure you can go to the airport and try to buy any vacant seats there, but it just seemed amazing that they would still accept online orders. Thank goodness!
Within a few moments I had received the confirmation email which had to be emailed to the hotel they were staying at and printed so that they could present in on check-in with the confirmation booking number.
Interestingly, anyone familiar with Ryanair will know that baggage allowance is only 15kgs and you have to pay for it, as well as the surcharges, taxes etc. Well all airlines do some or all of those things, but Globespan seemed a little more streamlined the confirmation showed a breakdown for flight costs, taxes, fees and charges at 12EURO each and credit card fee 6.04EURO. Baggage allowance was 20Kgs.
There are various other comments that I could make about what baggage Globespan will take and the charges etc, but this review is of our actual experience, if you need further information eg carrying sports equipment, then it’s all on their website again on the front page.
I got the email confirmation forwarded to the hotel where my parents were staying and they got a taxi to the airport, by all accounts the driver wasn’t cautious!
CHECK-IN, AIRCRAFT, FLIGHT
At check-in initially there was a problem in that the booking reference could not be located so my parents were held to one side whilst the remainder of the flight was checked in. However once the masses had filed through, the check-in assistant (employed by a ground handling agent not by Globespan directly) found the booking so it all went through without a problem.
My dad decided to pay 18EURO each to get wider seats. Now, anyone travelling on a budget airline and over 6ft tall knows how uncomfortable it can be, especially for 4 hours, so this seemed a reasonable price to pay.
The flight was delayed by about 1 hour.
The aircraft was parked at a remote stand at Tenerife South which meant a bus took passengers out to the aircraft and passengers ascended via uncovered steps. Again this is not unique to Globespan.
The aircraft was a 737-600, this is shorter than the 737-800 aircraft used by Ryanair and also Globespan too on other routes, however other than that, the interior is very much similar. The wider seats were located at the rear of the plane, but I was assured it was not much nosier than being at the front. The plane had leather seating and an inflight magazine was provided. There was no internal entertainment/music/movies as the system was down and the configuration was 3 -3.
As with virtually all low cost airlines, food and drink has to be purchased on board and a coffee cost £1.60 / 2EURO and was served twice during the flight. This compared to once on Air Europa. All staff on board were native English speakers, Globespan is a Scottish carrier, and they kept passengers informed of flight progress, unlike Spanish carrier Air Europa. However, Globespan is a scheduled airline, not a charter/holiday airline.
Upon arrival at London Stansted, the Globespan flight taxied to a stand with a jetway (the walkway that attaches to the plane), again this varies from airport to airport and airline to airline, but did allow for quick disembarking.
Above all I was assured that this flight was pleasant, it was a little better than the charter flight out, but very similar to other low cost airlines. It also arrived within the new revised arrival time following the earlier delay – in fact it flew in over my house at 6.25pm!!
CONCLUSION
I hope this review is useful in terms of showing that Flyglobepsan should definitely be a carrier to consider, their pricing can be very good value, and the ability to book at very short notice is something that could come in handy in many situations. I also hope that relaying the story actually put the review into context and didn’t serve to bore!
I would recommend Globespan on the basis of the experiences we had, however I would also keep an eye in the travel press or online for many bad experiences or continued flight problems. This isn’t unique to Globespan, I would do it with any booking. Globespan have had a long established and award winning domestic/European operation, so any problems with transatlantic flights may just be teething problems.
Great value, short notice flying, ability to book wider seats. These have to be ticks in the Flyglobespan box.
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