written by pauljackson on 08/04/2005
British European is a BUDGET AIRLINE SERVICE FOR A PREMIUM AIRLINE PRICE!!!
After a great week of skiing our party (consisting of eight adults and eight children) arrived at Chambery at around 2pm to check in for flight BE1614 which was due to depart at 16:25 and arrive in Southampton at 17:20.
The airport was complete chaos with flight delays due to bad weather. However, although the problems were caused by the airport itself, there was no one from FlyBE providing any information or direction on our arrival. The airport information staff had no idea what FlyBE was planning to do to get their passengers home and they had to face an increasingly hostile public throughout the afternoon. I managed to locate a FlyBE flight dispatcher who was flitting around and found out that coaches had been laid on to take us to Lyon. This was at around 4pm. The buses finally departed Chambery after 10pm - six hours later!!!
During all this time, while the charter companies were handing out refreshment vouchers, not a thing was laid on for scheduled passengers who had paid full economy fare!
Of course, needless to say there was no one from FlyBe to meet us at Lyon either! We hauled our gear through check-in again and made it to the gate where we overheard a rumour that Southampton was now closed and we were being flown to Birmingham! As we boarded the aircraft I asked a flight attendant if we were going to Southampton. She carefully replied "To my knowledge yes - but don't quote me on that". Of course, once the doors were closed the Captain came on the intercom to tell us that we would be flown to Bristol, where buses would be waiting to take us to Southampton.
It was now around midnight. Not one of the adults in our party had had any food or drink for over four hours because we had been waiting to board the buses. Once on the aircraft, the Captain told us what a bad day the flight crew had had. If were expecting a little sympathy and a cup of tea, we were obviously in the wrong place at the wrong time! He then proceeded to inform us that, as Captain, he had no authority to hand out free refreshments. This decision had to be agreed by a director of the company. In any case, they had sold out of water by the time they reached halfway down the plane - as they had done on the way out. Later in the flight the captain informed of of the good news: that the buses taking us to Southampton would be waiting for us at Bristol on our arrival!
We landed at around 01:20 local time I think. Of course, once again there was no one from FlyBE there to greet us (although I think the poor soul would have been lynched). Just to jam the final grain of salt into our wounds, we were then told that buses were being source to take us to Southampton!
The bus arrived at 02:50. We hauled the bags on board and got going to Southampton. We arrived at Southampton at sometime around 05:10, almost 12 hours after we should have arrived.
After writing a couple of letters to their "customer service" department I got a standard offer of £50 per head refund.
This airline is just a joke. In the in-flight mag their CEO talked about bumper FlyBE profits and how happy he was with their flights on-time percentage. They are just doing the numbers, and nothing else matters to them.
Fly with them at your peril!
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Belgarion's Response to pauljackson's Review
Written on: 01/06/2006
Maybe this entry should be posted against the main FLYBE posings?