Today I’m flying from London Stansted Airport to Glasgow with easyJet. This one hour flight was delayed by another hour and that, alongside a plethora of other gripes made it a pretty uninspiring experience. I have always had a pretty good opinion of easyJet, but this is my first flight with them since 2018. So please read my disappointing easyJet trip report.
EasyJet are Europe’s 2nd largest budget airline after Ryanair. Operating a fleet entirely made up of Airbus A320 family aircraft they are headquartered at London Luton Airport. With over 300 aircraft, over 900 routes and serving 34 countries they are clearly doing something right. But are they a good airline to fly?
Stansted Airport
Stansted Airport is London’s 3rd busiest airport and, besides a daily Emirates flight, is pretty much 100% budget airlines. Ryanair make up the vast majority of flights here, as well as a few from easyJet, Pegasus and Tui. However, being 42 miles (68km) away from London, calling it a London airport could be considered a bit of a stretch. That coupled with less convenient transport links than Gatwick and Heathrow make it one of London’s least accessible airports. Despite this, almost 30 million passengers pass through each year. There is an express train from London Liverpool Street station which takes around 45 minutes.
Stansted is a pretty convenient airport though if you live just north of London. For instance, on the day of my flight I drove down from Norfolk, making it the closest airport.
Also a quick travel hack. To avoid the drop-off charge (£7 under 15 min, £25 over 15 min) you can park at the Radisson Blu hotel. The hotel is less than 5 minutes walk from the terminal.
It is definitely not included with the easyJet ticket but I also decided to try out Stansted’s Escape Lounge. Feel free to watch my Youtube review here but to cut a long story short, it’s not very good. I had free access with Priority Pass but I certainly wouldn’t pay £29.99 for this lounge. It is the only lounge at Stansted though so if you really want the lounge experience it’s your only choice.
The Aircraft and Seat
Today we flew on an Airbus A319-100. It was 11.5 years with registration G-EZGN. This is the smallest aircraft type easyJet operate alongside their larger A320 and A321.
The Airbus A320 family have a very typical seat map. You could pay extra for a front row or exit row, but I found a standard seat to be just fine. I sat in seat 8A, just ahead of the engine.
The seat, in my opinion, is actually quite good for a budget airline. I do prefer leather seats, like those on Norwegian which I reviewed here. But easyJet seats are quite comfy and have enough legroom for short people. If you’re over 6 foot though you may struggle. The only downside of the fabric seats is that it does show stains, which there were many of here.
One small critique which I think exemplifies budget airlines in general prioritising costs over comfort. Almost every gate at Stansted has a jet bridge, yet none of the airlines use them. This is just so they can avoid paying extra to the airport. But I find it annoying when there’s a perfectly functioning bridge right there and they still make you walk up and down stair to get on the plane. It also creates more problems as we had to wait an extra 15 minutes as they used a mobile lift to get wheelchair passengers on the aircraft. If they just used the jet bridge this wouldn’t have been an issue.
Service and Other Stuff
I don’t really expect much in terms of service on a budget airline. But I was surprised by what I saw on this flight. First of all at the gate there was a passenger who had missed her previous flight to Glasgow and wanted help rebooking. She clearly didn’t have a clue what was going on but the desk staff she talked to was very rude and dismissive and just told her to leave the airport and phone easyJet support. Secondly, on boarding the plane there was no flight attendant to greet people, they were just standing in the corner facing the other way. I don’t really care about this but it is the first time I’ve seen this. In their defence they could have been busy, but it is common courtesy to greet passengers on boarding.
Finally, I’ll just mention that booking a flight and checking in with easyJet is quite a laborious process. The amount of times it asks if you want to add any extras when both making the initial booking and then checking in online is ridiculous. And just in general, seeing a popup asking “are you don’t want baggage?”… followed by “are you sure?”… followed by “are you really sure?” is a bit annoying.
Bottom Line
This was a pretty poor flight from easyJet. There was no specific thing that was egregiously bad, just a constant list on small niggles throughout. And considering the price of £90 per person I feel like it’s a bit of a waste of money. A British Airways flight for the same price would still have probably been delayed, but at least they give you complimentary water and snacks.
Pros:
- good(ish) seat
- online check-in opens 30 days before flight
Cons:
- Poor, unfriendly service
- 1 hour delay
- Dirty airport seating
- Dirty aircraft seating & floor
- you have to pay for any extra (food, baggage, priority)
I have a flight with Ryanair in the coming weeks so will be sure to do a comparison with this easyJet trip report. I suspect easyJet may even be able to challenge Ryanair to the title of worst budget airline in Europe.
More from me…
If you liked my easyJet trip report, please feel free to check out other related posts I’ve written:
- Norse Atlantic Airways in Premium – London Gatwick to Oslo flight review
- British Airways Club Europe London to Geneva – Another “Premium” short haul flight
- The Escape Lounge at London Stansted – a pretty poor lounge
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- The Platinum Card – You Receive 35,000 Membership Reward points after spending £3,000 in the first 3 months: https://americanexpress.com/en-gb/referral/fREDEGgRA5?CPID=100493012
- British Airways Card: You Receive 12,000 Avios after spending £1,000 in the first 3 months: https://americanexpress.com/en-gb/referral/fREDEGuUeO?CPID=100493012