Dubious prices, rubbish crew and no customer serivce
Recommend to potential buyers:
no
Full review
Founded in 1985 Lyingair has grow to become one of the big European players in the low airfares, short haul passenger market. They are renowned for good deals, cheap airfares and expensive in-flight sandwiches. I was recommended to Lyingair by a friend, 'They're cheap and you can't go wrong with them', he said.
Getting a flight with Lyingair is easiest over the internet. Forget any other way of booking, phone, letter or email, as no one above an amoeba is staffed at the call centre and they don't know how to reply to letters or emails. At the internet site you can click on your departing airport, then the destination airport and you move on to the next page. Airports available are almost exclusively of the small provincial type one of which I reviewed in my last inane opinion. I won't pad my review out with a list, but they include airports of dubious locations to the name given. For instance Oslo(Torp, Sandefjord) is 75 miles from Oslo, it's kind of like telling an American that Bournemouth airport is near London.
Booking over the internet is easy, but you will see your cheap flight rise up in value as you proceed through the booking pages. What starts off at £30 in one direction can easily hit £100 by the time you cough up your cash. Couple that with a destination airport far away from you goal and you are potentially looking at more money in the long run for transportation at the other end.
I won't comment on the check-in procedure as this is normally leased to the local airport and one of the operators, but I will mention about getting onto the crate. Boarding a Lyingair flight is one of the most farcical things that you will ever see at an airport. For some reason Lyingair give your boarding pass a number but no seat allocation, it is what they term as allocation free.
At the departure gate the attendants ask for families with small children to go first. Everyone else starts creeping forward no matter what number they have on the boarding card. The attendants then give out a set of numbers like 1-30 and ask passengers with these numbers to board. Like most thing there are always people who try to buck the system and board with the wrong ticket number, sometimes they will get turned back other times they will be let on.
On our last flight the attendants let everyone else go after the family passengers which then led to a mad scramble for the seats. I think that this system is flawed and one day may even result in an accident or worse as tempers fray. It is not really a nice experience with everyone pushing and shoving to get to their seats before the music stops. I personally despise the idea and wish that they would do something else as it is not my ideal way of boarding a flight.
The crate is normally a basic model Boeing 737 painted in blue and gaudy yellow. Yes, that's right their crates are painted a lovely sick colour. The yellow is more prominent inside and the whole interior feels cheaply done and styled with acres of yellow or blue plastic trim. The inside of the plane is as clean as you would expect, but sometimes I have found rubbish stuffed into my seat pocket that hasn't been recovered. Remember this is the only airline I can think of that has the attendants coming down the aisles to collect your rubbish before you land.
The attendants employed are young, cheap and dumb. They are generally okay, but on our last flight when one of my party felt ill they stopped them from going to the toilet. The reason was they didn't want that person from passing out in the loo. A sound enough idea except the doors open outwards and the latch can be operated from the outside. So what was the real problem? In the end this person passed out from a standing position, then they hit their shoulder and arm on a hard metal trolley in the galley area and finally was sick all over the place. This little incident was proof to me that the attendants are not the sharpest knives in the block and don't care a hoot about their passengers.
Further proof came with the inept way they dealt with the semi-conscious casualty by laying them on their backs. Luckily a medical professional was on board and sorted them out better than I could have done with my basic first aid skills. It seemed strange though that there are over 100 people on the crate and yet there were no first aid trained or at least evidence of a competently trained attendant to deal with this casualty. We can't be the first group in 21 years to have had a group member passing out in mid-flight?
The flight crew are probably trained to the correct standard, but fly with the skill of a new pilot who has little experience. Taking off is okay, but landing in a Lyingair crate is a bit of a hit or miss affair. They never produce a nice gentle landing and on my last flight Captain Crash landed his crate at Bournemouth and earned his company the title of 'Worst landing ever' from all six of my group.
Overall the attendants are okay and will do the best that they are trained to, but I now have personal doubts as to this companies training of their flight attendants and I have serious reservations about their competence. As for the pilots, I can only hope that Captain Crash that bought us into Girona and Bournemouth has been sacked. His flying was atrocious and for the first time ever I though we were not going to have a safe landing.
If you get any problems with Lyingair then you can try and communicate with them via several mediums. Unfortunately you will need psychic abilities to confer with them as you may try to contact them, but they will not reply for months. Just to put you in the picture I'll do a brief run down on my particular dispute with them.
I booked flights on the internet in February 2006, the Terms and Conditions (T&C) changed in March to increase the weight limit for both hand and checked in luggage. I read the new T&C, nothing to say that previous bookings should refer to old T&C. Checked in at airport, told luggage over 'old' T&C luggage limit, but could use the new weight limit for hand luggage? Six members in party each only over by 1 or 2kg's not much but got stung for over £50, same story on return as we had no disposable luggage. Complained to Lyingair no reply for two months. Then one day an email arrived from a nameless representative of Lyingair, I tried to read it but it was not in English. I think it was legal speak and basically I was not going to get a refund. I would pursue it further, but I'll let them kept the money as few in my party of six will be likely to travel with them again.
In conclusion then the friend who recommended Lyingair to me is no longer a friend, the couple who came with us on our last flight are no longer a couple. Are you seeing the same pattern I'm seeing? The same is true of Lyningair, once I would have recommended them to most people, later a few people, now none. Yes, the flights are cheap but I would expect a little bit more response then a grunt from Lyingair for the troubles that they have cause me and my group. Also the airports they use are never in the place that you would expect them to be and the crew are poor. They are no longer the cheapest with their ridiculous pricing structure which (as I write this), the EU has decided to call unlawful once they bring in a new law.
Finally my point about the crew is the bit that has convinced me that the Lyingair are not worthy of my recommendation or custom. On the last flight the actions and reactions of the crew were for me the most worrying part of the whole package. Lyingair may have good new crates, but the crews are their Achilles heel. Even the flight crews have the same talent as exhibited by a contestant for a long running, popular, voyeuristic Channel 4 TV show.
Wait a minute I have brainwave! I can see it now 'Airheads', ten Lyingair trainee pilots trying to learn to fly a crate. The winner gets to fly a proper blue and sick coloured crate with over a hundred passengers. Every week you the public get to vote out who you want and they throw him out from a thousand feet with no parachute. Who do you think should get the boot now? Oh, its Michael O'Dreary chairman of Lyingair. Kick him out lads!
If you think this is just sour grapes on my behalf, check out www.ryanair.org.uk. Lyingair ruined my holiday and they will do the same for you too. Take my advice, never ever fly with them.
very helpful
