Thompsonfly > Reviews > who said dodo's were extinct?

Author's product rating:   

Food Quality	Satisfactory
Customer Service	Unhelpful
Punctuality	Awful
Space	Fairly Comfortable
Value for Money	Poor

Advantages:	They can fly me there quicker than I could fly myself
Disadvantages:	I'd rather strap a couple of pigeons to me and fly myself !

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Now, I have left writing this review for a few weeks since returning from my holiday, in that my opinion may now be balanced having calmed down from my awful experience with this airline!!

And so to my balanced review..........

I am lucky enough to have parents who own a small house in Playas Flemenca, a 40 minute drive from either Alicante or Murcia airports (very convenient). They have owned the villa for around 4 years and myself and the bloke have been at least once every year since then, even twice a year if I can find cheap enough flights (can you tell I'm from Yorkshire?!), which seems to have become something of an obsession of mine!!

I have always until this year been a keen user of EasyJet, for their prices, the ease of booking on the internet, the overall service and because they flew from East Midlands (sorry, Nottingham East Midlands as it now likes to call itself), which is a 40 minute drive from said blokies family, and is home to a Vulcan bomber which my plane mad bloke never fails to get tired of seeing!

So, way back in September/October last year I started trawling the airlines websites for prices for my summer holiday. Traditionally we always go to Spain at the end of May, as that is when we celebrate (or commisserate) our anniversary, however a Bank Holiday fell across that period and the prices where too expensive for my liking (I'm not paying around £300 just for flights when I could get a full holiday for that!). I found in general that all of the airlines prices had risen sharply, due I suppose to increases in fuel and insurance costs. Even my beloved EasyJet had hiked its prices.

Anyhow, by this time, now living back in Hull, I remembered that the new Doncaster airport was due to open in 2005 and ThomsonFly offered flights to Alicante - bingo!!
And so I logged onto the ThomsonFly website (www.thomsonfly.co.uk) which is incredibly easy to use. Across the top of the page are tabs which you can use to find destinations, prices, customer service and to change your flights. There is also another tab called 'travel extras' which provides links for travel insurance, hotels, airport parking etc.
To the left hand side of the screen is by far the easiest way of finding flights under the tab 'book a flight'. Simply select the airport you wish to leave from, your destination, your arrival and return dates, and how many customers will be flying. Click on 'find flights' and you will be forwarded to a screen that lists prices of flights and times on your chosen dates as well as dates before and after. If you are able to be flexible with your flights then you may find cheaper, so its worth looking at a few different dates for the best prices, which is what I did. After searching various dates, I finally settled on 30th June to 6th July which came to grand total of around £84.00 return for 2 people. You can pay be switch or credit card online, and a confirmation email is sent to you straight away.

And so, having had an email from ThomsonFly in around April time to advise me that the flight times had changed (nothing major - just 15 minutes either way) all I had to do was wait for June to arrive with no other holiday inbetween.

June swiftly approached (boy was that a busy month - getting new jobs, finding a place to live and going to a wedding), and so to the airport......

I'm not going to comment on Doncaster Airport, since this is about my experience with ThomsonFly, but I will briefly tell you that its tiny, and there is nothing to do!!! But this is a new airport and they have plans to improve its facilities.

Being the good little passengers that we are, we arrived at the check in desk 2 hours before the flight time. There was no queue, but upon check-in we were informed that the flight had been delayed by just over an hour. We were none too pleased, but figured that it wasn't a long time really, and we'd brought provisions anyway. And so, 3 hours later, still not aboard our flight (you can see the runway from the terminal building, so you can see if any planes have landed!) a further announcement was made to say that we'd be another hour (as this announcement was made I was in the toilets washing my hands and was chatting to a lady who informed me that every flight she had been on with ThomsonFly had been delayed!) - but no explanation as to why! Well, again we didn't complain, bought some food and magazines.

At last the pale blue and white plane bearing the ThomsonFly logo arrived, around 2 and a quarter hours late and we boarded.

Unlike EasyJet who just gives you a number, supermarket deli style, ThomsonFly actually allocate a seat to you upon check-in. The lady who checked me and blokie in asked if we had any preferences, but the lady who checked in my best mate and her partner didn't ask, so they were put in any old place!! Anyway, this meant that there wasn't a mad pushing session at the gate in order to get the best seats! There were a few families on board with pushchairs, which I saw that the cabin staff dealt with. There were no disabled passengers as far as I could see, but there were plenty of seats in the middle of the plane that would have accommodated any.

We were given a quick apology by the pilot, and to be fair he did try to get us off as quick as he could! We were given the usual safety run through, though I didn't feel it was as thorough as with other airlines, but this may have been because they wanted to get in the air as soon as possible. The seats were reasonably comfortable and there seemed to be a little more leg room than normal. I was however distressed to find that in the seat pocket, there was no sick bag - something i think the staff wish they'd have had since one passenger threw up and they had to change the seat - a bag would've saved all that!!!

As with the other budget airlines you are not provided with a meal. Instead you can choose from a very limited range of sandwiches (cheese or chicken to be precise), soup (think there was one type), snacks (mainly mars bars!) and hot and cold drinks. As usual these items are more expensive than on the ground. We had already brought our own sandwiches, but with the delay we'd had we'd already eaten these and therefore had to fork out for some more food since we now wouldn't land until nearly midnight and nowhere would be open! We opted for a meal deal - a sandwich, large mars bar and cup of tea for £5.

And so, after we were offered a range of toilettries (I have NEVER seen anyone buy any duty free stuff on a plane yet!) and had our rubbish taken away, we finally arrived at Alicante airport!!

So, after a week of blistering sunshine and too much cheap white wine, my dad rang me on the morning of our departure to let me know that he'd checked the ThomsonFly website and that the flight was due to be an hour and an half late, but we still had to check in at the same time!! Great stuff! What is the point in that!!

Again, we arrived at Alicante airport 2 hours before the original flight time to be greeted by the information boards confirming what my dad had told me. The check-in desks however opened about 15 minutes late, much to the annoyance of the huge queues!

Again, I shan't comment on Alicante airport, but needless to say it is better equiped for keeping delayed passengers entertained. However, we found that their announcement system was even worse than Doncasters, in that we were not even informed that there would be a further delay of around an hour. We only found this out by monitoring the information boards ourselves. By this point we were none too pleased and happened to come across a board that outlined some European Rules for airlines and its treatment of passengers (I'm sorry I haven't got the technical info to hand). Upon reading this we discovered that if your flight is under 15,000 miles and is delayed for more than 2 hours, then your airline HAS to provide you with refreshment. Having spoken to passengers who had been delayed on another airline and had been given food tokens, we decided to ask for the same. Lovely blokie decided to ask the lady on the information desk, who rang ThomsonFly and was told that we would get nothing and we would therefore be forced, yet again, to buy food on the plane!!

We eventually flew around 2 and a quarter hours late, again no explanation was given.

On my return to the UK, I wrote to ThomsonFly by email, and around 3 weeks later I received a letter from them (this review is long enough - so I won't publish the whole thing) advising me that they are one of the best operators in the business and that we were not entitled to any compensation. No 'sorry' or anything!!

My dad and I have since been monitoring their flight times on their website, and nearly every flight to and from Doncaster has been delayed by at least an hour...............go figure!

Neither myself nor my family will be using them again!

Sorry for the huge read.