Archive for flybe tag
An open letter to FlyBE on usability
Last night I booked some flights with your web site and must say I’m rather disappointed with the experience. We needed to book two return flights with one going out on a different day but both returning on the same flight, and ideally next to each other.
It is a little disappointing that to book two different flights that you have to book each one separately despite obviously being possible on the phone or with non-airline sites such as Amazon. To avoid booking one and finding the other not available and being left with useless tickets we decided to book each using a different computer so that we could try and make sure it went through at the same time.
Our first issue was that once you have chosen your flights there is no indication of the dates again until the payment has been processed. Other sites seem to have no problem displaying a "current itinerary" down the side at every stage yet with yours this place is instead full of such great things as "You saved £10 booking online!" in giant text and other less important details than a reminder/confirmation of what I have chosen thus far.
The next page, that of your details, then completely omits GUERNSEY as a country forcing us to choose UNITED KINGDOM. For a business that used to be called Jersey European it seems you have forgotten that the Channel Islands are not and have never been part of the UK. Would it be that hard to get it right? After all you’ve even got VATICAN CITY listed although I doubt you get many bookings from it’s residents.
The next part automatically includes travel insurance – which is of course completely unnecessary if you are booking on credit cards or have a travel policy but it there it is and switched on as default. This adds to the whole spiraling-supplements experience that seems to be FlyBe.
Also here is a "I’m a UK resident" check-box. What do I select being from Guernsey? Do I tell the truth and uncheck it or leave it checked as you forced me to choose UNITED KINGDOM as my country?
An option here lets me choose my seat for an extra £5.00. There is no indication of course that it is £5.00 PER PART not per booking so for return trip will be an extra £10. The conditions also make it clear that you can renegade without refund on this arrangement if you feel it’s not safe or that you didn’t make it to the front of the queue within the allocated check-in time.
We struggled through and elected to pay the £2.50 per-person-per-leg-per-hold-item charge. If there’s one thing that’s really annoying about commercial flights it’s the time it takes to get into your seat while people try to stuff over-sized items in their overhead lockers, other people’s overhead lockers then under the seat in front of them. With a supplement on hold baggage I can only assume it’s going to get worse.
Finally, the payment screen and one that seems okay apart from the fact that you’re about to pay for something you can’t get a refund on and there is no final confirmation as to what it is you are buying in contrast to every other e-commerce site I have ever used.
In order to ensure we both got our flights we clicked okay at the same time.
One completed, the other came back with a card error despite the details were okay. I can only assume your system was not happy about processing two different transactions with the same credit card details.
Hitting "retry" to return us to the previous payment screen led us to a page saying our booking was now invalid as that level of seat had gone and now only more expensive ones were available.
Joy, we get to do it all over again for one of our tickets.
Luckily for us we managed to get the second booking through, albeit at a more expensive price.
Using your site is like playing Russian roulette.
[)amien
Planes, trains and engine failure
A little after 5am Friday morning last week when I arose somewhat dazed from bed and made final preperations for a trip to Prague. My sister is getting married in July and my future brother-in-law was kind enough to invite me along to his stag night.
We arrived at the airport for our 7am flight to London Gatwick and I was introduced to two of the guys, Glen H and Michael Knight… Within minutes local airline Aurigny had announced an hour delay to our flight because of fog. Fog is a regular problem here and when it occurs planes are not allowed to land, despite the landing guidance systems in place, for reasons best known to the airport. There are few flights out from Guernsey and even fewer destinations means being fogged equals missing your connecting flight and there goes your holiday. Fog coming back means sitting or sleeping at Gatwick and explaining your absence to friends, family, or boss.
Only one flight made it in and the fog showed no signs of lifting. Our flight jumped from delayed to cancelled which in airline terms appears to mean “screw you, we’ve got your money and we’re not taking you anywhere”. A quick trip to the Aurigny desk confirmed the afternoon flights were full even if the fog does lift, the same situation mirroed at Fly Be…
A few phone calls later and we’re at the harbour joining a massive queue of fellow airline passengers at Condor Ferries trying to grab seats on the ferry to Poole. Luckily we’d got through on the mobile and managed to reserve some tickets at an outrageous £60 per person with Aurigny offering zip towards it from our cancelled flights. Some people couldn’t get on the full boat and angry words were uttered from down turned lips. We wouldn’t make our EasyJet flight to Prague so we called them and managed to transfer bookings to a later flight at 6pm…
Having explained to a large bunch of northern lads they were in our seats and yes, our bags weren’t there but they were ours, seat allocations printed on tickets and no we didn’t know where H29 through 34 were we sat down and munched on breakfast comforted in knowing we were now on our way.
The comfort was short lived when our captain explained the failure of one of the engines…. It came back to life before we got into Poole but this, the delay leaving and the disaster of baggage collection meant we now had zero chance of meeting our EasyJet flights. We called the rest of the party in Prague and let them know the stag would be absent from the first night’s activities :( Another call to EasyJet and we transferred to the following days 8:15am flight…
Having stopped for a bite to eat we jumped on a train, the first bit of good luck so far in that they were a. all on time and b. offering 50% discount for our route on some offer. We arrived in Gatwick and got ourselves setup in a local hotel and then headed to the bar. On reflection this was quite a mistake because we had to be up at 5:30am and in the end went to bed after 2am. We trotted off to EasyJet only to find the stag himself was the only person booked on the flight. Melissa, Melinda or whatever her name was from the night before had messed up our transfer :( Another guy transferred us, somewhat unenthusiastically, to the flight and we were off through departures!!! Another half hour delay on the tarmac and then we were finally OFF!!! At last, against all odds.
We’d already been warned about taxi touts in Prague but we got a reasonable fixed price from a guy in a tie called Jan who also had a very nice car and told us plenty about the area and promptly delivered us to our hotel, situated right next to a beer factory. The beer in Prague is rather good and like most things there, quite cheap. Hence to say we drank quite a bit!
Prague is a beautiful city during the day. Magnificent buildings untouched by the ravages of the last world war combined with scenic lakes, small parks, trees and wonderfully clear skies and warm temperatures contrasted against the scattered communist era housing blocks on the outskirts on the city.
We soon met up with the rest of the bunch including the stags brother James, who was an captain stationed out in Iraq with the British army just a few months ago, and a few other guys from the UK including a couple from UK registrar Nominet. The stag was forced to wear a dress and handbag for the evening and we bustled him outside into the still broad-daylight where he attracted odd looks and wolf-whistles :D
We had a great time and as the sun set the city transformed into a much seedier side more reminiscent of Amsterdam and curiously ascent from my Lonely Planet guide to Prague dated 2003. Perhaps it’s something quite recent but there were plenty of bars, clubs and strip-clubs with touts in the streets trying to pull in customers.
It’s at this point things get a little vague. We had a great meal and some more beer, and went on a pub crawl. Michael had some minor bumps and scrapes caused by a trick on a stool and a camouflaged street post at groin height. We definitely ended up in an 80′s themed nightclub where the group got fragmented before I found myself outside alone with the stag drunk still wearing his dress but having now acquired white horns. We finally managed to locate the rest of the group and watched an interesting show ;-) before heading to a rather seedy bar. It was now 5am and a few of us were worse for wear.
Two days of travel and three nights of minimal sleep took their toll and we checked out late the following morning before hitting the shops of Prague and finally relaxing in a park where a few guys took out little pedelo boats on the river. We thought we’d lost them but they stumbled back a bit later covered in what they were calling bridge-drip and tree.
The trip back was uneventful and we said goodbye to the other seven. Sleeping in Gatwick airport is a surreal experiment, most places were closed and it was deadly quiet at 1am but bustling by 5am making it more and more difficult to sleep. We checked in only to find Aurigny had now cancelled our flight after check-in because it had “gone technical”. We collected back our bags, Michael’s going AWOL in their possession and got checked in for another a few hours later. Within minutes that too had been cancelled and they finally gave us over to a more competent airline, Fly-Be who took the whole Aurigny flight on theirs at a moment’s notice. My thanks to them.
Aurigny did give me a £5 food voucher which I used at McDonalds to create a mega McFlurry. It was one-part ice-cream and several toppings. Smarties, Chocolate Orange, Rolos and Crunchie I think. It tasted like frozen liquid sugar. I perked up instantly and wondered if I was going to die from a sugar overdose, but I’m still here to write this so I guess not.
We got back 3pm Monday in end and I’d spent twice as long travelling as I had being at my destination. I don’t think I’ll do a trip less than 5 days again, it’s just not worth the hassle regardless of the destination. I fell asleep in my clothes at home by 6pm, awaking 7am Tuesday morning fresh from my 14 hour top-up sleep. For some reason I was shaking at my desk later that day. I’m not sure if it was the sleep or the sugar that caused it.
Have better luck travelling
[)amien