First Choice Airways - comments please?

noonesperfect

Hello all,
Has anyone flown recently with FCA?
Do you have any comments to make about leg-room/ food etc?

Just wondering what they're like as we fly to Bodrum next month.....

littlereddevil

Just a standard charter flight but maybe a little bit more legroom than some. The food is crap ( in my opinion) so I always opt out.

TomsMom

Have flown with FCA many times.

Legroom is probably one of the more generous ones for charter flights, we are not particularly tall (5'5" and 5'7") but we find that there is enough room for us.

This is what their website says

On a First Choice Airways shorthaul flight you will have 28" of legroom in a normal Economy seat, or 33" if you have upgraded to the Premium service.
For First Choice Airways longhaul flights, there is between 33" of legroom in a normal Economy seat, or 36" if you have upgraded to the Premium service.

If you want to have a blanket if you're cold you now have to purchase a comfort pack for £5.

I always eat veggie, husband normal meal. Can only say "not too bad for airline food, have had worse" but it's about £15ish now for meals both ways and I don't think it's worth it.

mum2one

def not worth the money for the food, the seat room is ok. Your flight is around 4 hours, so stock up on nibbles b4 hand.

What i usually do is have a good meal b4 I fly, have been known to have steak, egg and chips at 6am in manchester airport, (that was b4 went long haul to dom Rep). x

Happychappy

European short haul flights up to around 4 hours are in the cattle class category with cattle fodder served up by a bunch of McDonalds rejects. Seat pitch is in the crammed in with a shoe horn category.

Unfortunately I have had to use them twice this year, and in fairness to them, they always managed to live down to their low standards. :rolleyes:

If you want to check the seat pitch on airlines, have a look at the attached and see how well they compare, not really very good, even worse then Ryanair and Easyjet.

http://www.uk-air.net/seatpitch.htm

Networkguy

Flew back from Spain with them a few weeks ago.

Seats were OK but nothing great. Food was better than we were expecting but still airline food. Staff attitude was a joke.

Even after we started our landing approach into Manchester I still had my meal tray in front of me (by now the seatbelt signs were on). When I raised this, I had to wait for the staff to finish their final duty free run before they collected it at which point I could put my seat tray back.

So again it is profit over safety with these guys.

vfm

We refuse to fly with First Choice again as the last two flights we had booked they changed/tried to change. The first flight was to Alanya in Turkey flying from Manchester. They contacted us a few weeks prior to flying to say that instead of the direct flight they would be flying us via Gatwick. We kicked up a fuss and said to cancell. The follow day they telephoned back and said they had put the direct flight back on. Foolishly we booked the following winter to fly with them from Mancester to the Algarve (direct flight). We got the direct flight there but whilst on holiday a week before we were due to fly home we got a letter delivered to our hotel to state that the times of the flight had changed, plus we would be flying to Manchester via Gatwick. I contacted First Choice continually over the next week, their customer service was disgusting and they would not email me a reply, the rep I found said he could do nothing. We therefore had a 4 and a half hour flight home. We were not offerred anything to drink or even drinks to buy for the last 3 hours we were on the plane and they showed no film. Although they sent me a letter apoligising and stating that their customer service was not acceptable all they offerred was a £50 voucher off future holidays with them. Needless to say the voucher wasn't used as we will never fly with them again. We found out from other holiday makers this has happened on other occassions as well so please be careful as there is very little you can do if you are already on holiday when they change the flight (they were aware that they were going to do this over 3 weeks before they notified us).

Uneducated_Archie

We travelled with FC on Long Haul from Manchester to Kenya at Chirstmas time and with My Travel to Goa in March. My Travel are dreadful and First Choice are really good, certainly the best charter airline for Long Haul. We've travelled to Kenya with Monarch, Britannia (before I fell out with Thomson) on charter and East African Airways, British Airways and Kenya Airways. First choice were certainly the best of the Charters and British Airways the best of the scheduled. Certainly more legroom and you have a console to operate the TV screen so you don't get someone continually pushing the back of your seat trying to change channels etc.

I don't know what FC are like on short flights.

shaileytuff

flew to egypt with FCA 2 weeks ago, classed a shsort haul as 5 hours, going out a bit cramped but we had 2 films (shrek 3 and I think i Love my wife) coming back we had 2 films (spiderman 3 and something else recent) but we had the last row on the plane right at the back and they were really comfy we had more legroom (maybe the check in crew felt sorry for us with an 22 month on our lap) no window so there wasn't a draft and somehwhere to lean your head - we opted out of the food

the staff seemed to think it was a socialising trip they were chattering and so on but one member of staff was so kind to me (scared of flying i am)

would defintly go with them again, they fly from Gatwick North which is not as good as south, they also don't tell you that you can check in from 2am on the day of any flight (ours was 13.00 tickets says check in opened at 11.00) we got there at 9 to find half the good seats had gone to those that got there early so if at all poss and you want good seats pop along and check in you could always go home again after!!!