Monarch Airlines > Reviews > Good cabin service and reasonable on the ground

Author's product rating:   

Food Quality	Good
Customer Service	Friendly and attentive
Punctuality	Satisfactory
Space	Fairly Comfortable
Value for Money	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Good entertainment, food, big so able to solve problems .
Disadvantages:	Not a mind of information but reasonably helpful

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Monarch Airlines (MON)

I recently travelled with Monarch for the second time from Gatwick to Bodrum (MON3481) on an Airbus A300600 (or something like that). It wasn’t through choice as it was a package but I was fairly pleased.

Check in was fairly good and fast although I was not impressed by the way there were about 6 desks all saying ‘all monarch flights’, I checked the code on the baggage labels and fortunately they did get to the right place. Check in was all in all, reasonable with few hold ups by silly people that do things like forget their passports.

Everything seemed fine, we waited in the lounge, boarded the plane, watched the safety video and were about to take off when suddenly an engine failure. We then taxied back to the stand, waited about 20 mins while they tried to fix the problem but with no luck. Whilst delays are not good we were kept informed whilst on the plane at least. Being at the back I overheard the cabin crew talking about a plane form Manchester and we were asked to disembark and go back to the lounge as transit passengers. The trouble started here: Security again took a stupidly long time but was after a while speeded up and MON3480 passengers were cleared quicker.

In the lounge there is not a lot to be fitted on 8 characters of a screen but after about an hour a time of 10:50 was given, later changed to 11:30. Information was scarce and Aviance (the rep for Monarch and about 30+ other airlines at Gatwick). Anyway, after a while some £6 vouchers did appear (if you were standing at the desk), and about an hour later there existence was announced with large ques forming. Breakfast at Garfunkles it was then followed by a further lack of information. At one point there was no one there just a phone, a guess by dialling 100 gave a bit of hope with wait in the lounge boarding soon followed by a Monarch rep giving us some details about gates and times which were finally put up about 5 mins before the flight was supposed to leave. Needless to say it was 12:00 not 11:30 when we left Gatwick finally after a 6 hour delay.

I don’t hold this against Monarch as they were fairly helpful and there are difficulties at Gatwick because it is so busy although more information wouldn’t have gone a miss they did rectify the problem with another plane and give food vouchers, things could have been a lot worst especially if it was a smaller airline.

The flight itself was actually very good although being tall there wasn’t masses of leg room I was ok and it was an economy class cheap charter flight. The first drink was free which is the least they could do really but it was something. The entertainment was comedy like you might find on UK Gold and very good with audio channels as well. The meal was very good for airline standards and probably better on the way back. The trolley services were good and the cabin crew (from Manchester) were very good despite the surprise flight.

Inbound was much the same, without any delays and despite the problems I do look forward to travelling again with Monarch to Canada in February.