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“Avoid this company at all costs-- at least for long...”

written by on 22/07/2010

Avoid this company at all costs-- at least for long haul flights. My flight from JFK to Charles de Gaulle was appallingly bad in virtually every regard. It began with check-in. I fly internationally often and am used to madhouse scenes at airports. This, however, was unparalleled. First, they funneled 300+ people through only two open counters, then made people with extra baggage (pretty much everyone, given that the baggage allowances are ridiculously low) wait in a separate line to pay. The truly ridiculous part was that all 300 of us were then forced to wait in et another new line to drop off our bags. Why couldn't this have been done at check-in...? Major organizational failure on their part.

Once on board, things took a turn for the worse. Seats are tiny by anyone's standards, and only go back a couple of inches. Leg room is practically non-existent, and I am not even very tall. The aisles are miniscule, so that if you have an aisle seat you are literally shoved every few minutes by people walking by. I couldn't get a wink of sleep on the overnight flight because of this very reason. At one point during the flight I asked if I could change seats and the air hostess practically screamed at me. I told her that any other airline in the world would have treated it as a fairly routine request, and she literally stormed off without another word then proceeded to ignore me the rest of the flight. There is no excuse for such rudeness.

The on-flight "entertainment" deserves a mention as well. On a 7+ hour flight, we only had a couple TV monitors per section, and no movie, just cartoons and footage of some sort of stage show involving mimes. They were also extremely stingy with drinks, and if I hadn't had my own bottle of water I would have been very unhappy indeed.

I would put this airline about on par with low-cost carriers such as Ryanair, except with far worse service and-- if you can believe it-- less comfortable as well. It should NOT be operating long-haul flights. I paid over 1,000 USD for my ticket-- although this is most certainly a no-frills carrier that's not exactly what I call a "budget" price. I hope that they start taking our complaints seriously and making improvements to their terrible service. In the meantime, I will not be booking a flight with XL Airlines ever again, and I will encourage my friends and family to book elsewhere as well.