My Sam retired on 9th January this year so, to celebrate, I decided to take him to a place he had always wanted to visit, Vienna. I searched the web for a two-night city break, but the main airlines cost the earth. Then Sam saw an advert in the Sunday newspaper for “Niki” the airline run by Niki Lauder the ex-F1 racing driver, in association with Air Berlin. I immediately went to www.flyniki.com, a simple red and white site in the colours of his old F1 team (those of you into F1 will know and those of you not into F1 won’t give a monkeys) and clicked on the English “bookings” button, as it’s in several languages.
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Although Niki don’t yet fly all over the world, they do fly from UK to many destinations in Europe and beyond. They also fly from quite a few other countries. There is a comprehensive map on the home page, which shows all the connections. The site itself was extremely uncomplicated and when I entered “Stanstead,” “Vienna” and “18th Jan 2005” in the search engine I was confronted by a list of dates, departure times and prices. It was easy to scroll backward and forward through the dates and times and choose a departure date, time and price to suit. Believe me there were many combinations of times, dates and prices, not all of them inexpensive, though the majority were under £50 in January and February. I did the same with the return.
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I was lucky enough to find a departure from Stanstead, (closest to us, though they also fly from Manchester and Southampton) direct to Vienna for £19 each and a return flight for £25 each. A further 9euros per person each way allowed us to reserve the seats we wanted by clicking on a large picture of the seating plan. The actual booking process was simple and quick and I paid with my credit card, through their secure site.
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My booking confirmation came through by E-mail immediately. There is a 24hour UK customer service telephone number at 8p per minute, so I could have booked by phone if I had preferred. Our flight was clearly laid out departing at 9:30am from Stanstead and we were pleased because this would mean a not too early rise for the 1hour journey. We would have to be there at least an hour before to check-in, so the E-ticket advised, although the Stanstead website said 2 hours due to increased security. Sam always errs on the cautious side so we planned to leave at 6am to give us time to park also. This meant getting out of bed at 5am, which wasn't too much of a hardship.
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I next went on to the web via my free search engine, CopernicAgent to find us accommodation for the two nights. I looked at a few hotel sites, and then found what I wanted on www.leisuredirection.co.uk. We could stay B&B at the Hotel Regina in Rooseveltzplatz in the centre of old Vienna for £96.00 in total. This looked like a really inexpensive holiday, so far a total of £206.00 for the lot, not including parking which, at the time, I hadn’t really considered. Anyway, I went ahead and booked the hotel, which again, was easy and I immediately received an E-mail confirmation.
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A couple of hours later Sam said to me, “Do you want to invite Allison along?” This is his sister who lives very close to us and who’s husband died of lung cancer in June 2004 after being diagnosed out of the blue the previous November. I immediately agreed as Allison and I get on very well. I telephoned her and she was delighted and asked me to do all the bookings for her.
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I called the customer number at Niki and explained that I would like to add another person to the departure and return flights. They were able to book Allison onto our flights and even seat her next to us. The only difference was that the cost of her tickets was £10 more than ours. This was because the cost of the tickets fluctuates all the time, presumably depending on the number of seats left. I was very impressed by the helpful friendliness of the operator and was not left hanging on the line for more than a minute or two while they made the arrangements.
I called the customer service number for Leisure direction and was able to book her a double room next to ours at the hotel (the cost of a single was only £2.00 less so not worth the reduced space.)
So far so good.
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I accomplished all this at the beginning of November and sat back, very pleased with myself to await Xmas and Sam’s retirement party etc. Sometime in December, someone mentioned the cost of parking at Stanstead and how it was less costly if you booked in advance, so I spent several days researching parking packages. I had almost decided to book and pay £28.50 for the three days, when, on 18th December I received an E-mail from Niki apologising and telling me that the time of the flight to Vienna had been changed from 9:30am to 8:30pm. This meant that instead of arriving in Vienna at 12 noon, we’d arrive closer to 11pm and we’d lose the whole day.
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Of course this was unacceptable, but what could we do about it? We had only one option, because I’d already booked the hotel, which was to cancel the flight out and book with another airline so off I went to search the web again. My first results were depressing….KLM wanted more than £700 for a one-way ticket for three adults and most of the others were no better. Then I remembered that Niki was affiliated to Air Berlin and so I searched their website. The closest match I could come up with was a flight from Stanstead at 7:30am to Vienna via Dusseldorf at around £150 plus taxes for the three of us. I phoned the Niki customer service and asked them what our options were. The very friendly German youth advised me that he could either change the date of my flight or refund my money. I suggested the option of switching us to the Air Berlin flight and after conferring with his supervisor he agreed, adding that it would be at the original price because it was their fault. Again, this took no longer than a few minutes, however I was disappointed that this was not offered to me at their instigation. Someone not so accustomed to surfing the internet may not have been able to discover this option themselves.
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Thank goodness I hadn’t yet booked the parking! With a departure time of 7:30am now, we’d have to be up at 3:00am! Totally unacceptable, so off I surfed again to find a hotel with free parking so we could go down to Stanstead the day prior to departure. I was able to find via www.holidayextras.co.uk a triple room for three adults for £99.00, room and parking, and we were all satisfied with that, though you will notice that the cost of this short break is creeping higher.
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When January arrived, I started my week’s leave from work on 17th (the other two passengers being already retired!) and we extended the holiday by one day and left Suffolk on 17th to wander around the shops for an afternoon in Bishops Stortford, then eat and sleep in the delightful (as it turned out) Yew Tree Inn at Manuden. Because the triple room wasn’t ready, we were given two separate rooms at no extra cost. The taxi to the airport the next morning was included and also the taxi back on our return. We enjoyed the meal, but this also added about another £60 to the cost of the holiday.
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We arose at 5am, after a fairly sleepless night of waking every hour because we weren’t sure that the alarm would work, and got to the airport in plenty of time. We had decided to take just hand luggage because of the change at Dusseldorf, and as there was only an hour between us landing and our next plane’s departure, we were a little concerned that we’d be able to make check-in in time at Dusseldorf. We were the first to check in at the Air Berlin desk and an unsmiling, unfriendly young girl gave us our boarding passes, though to give her credit, she told us that she had swapped the seats to ensure that they were all together, which the Niki operator had seemingly failed to do. She did not ask us any questions at all about our baggage, whether we had packed ourselves etc, and didn’t weigh it either (which was just as well because we were all above our 6kg limit for hand luggage!)
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We proceeded to the checkpoint for metallic objects, passing a large plastic box containing metal nail files, scissors, Swiss army knives etc, and had to place all bags, handbags and coats on a conveyor belt then walk through a metal detector. My bag was pulled out for a search. They found nothing of course so, as this bag contained mostly underwear, it must have been the underwire in my bra! Sam was body searched with a hand detector because the tin foil on his indigestion tablets had set off the alarm. One man had his shoes off because they had metal caps. It was all very reassuring but if I had been carrying anything, I’d have hidden it in my toothpaste tube wouldn’t I, so that the cursory search they gave it wouldn’t have found it in any case. I have an honest face!
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The small Air Berlin plane took off on time and we had some turbulence, so a bumpy ride. We were given a free roll of either salami or cheese and a non-alcoholic drink. We were also offered sweets and magazines (in German) when we boarded. There was plenty of room for our luggage, probably because we were first on. We landed and were first off the plane. Dusseldorf wasn’t a large airport, but we had to ask where the check-in was. We were told, “It’s over there but you’d better hurry, it closes in 5 minutes!”
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We hurried to the checkout desk and stood behind one other person, whereupon the young man shouted at us in German, “You must wait behind the yellow lines!” If I didn’t

Pictures of Niki

The Ferris Wheel-closed!