Just wondering what people’s opinion is on the different airlines and airports used during their travels. For what it is worth here are mine:
Virgin America v good
American good but v good on routes from South America into Florida
British Airways v polite airline staff but poor on comfort/legroom
Alaska good
Singapore Airlines comfortable flights but sour staff some of have difficulty cracking a smile.
Jet 2 could not be more helpful
United efficient and helpful
Lufthansa biz class v comfortable, female flight attendants could not have been more polite and helpful
Air NZ polite, efficient and comfortable
Swiss could not be better about everything
Ryanair cheapskate but jovial staff and good legroom on flights to Cyprus from Northern Europe
Malaysian Airlines a total non starter, flight were booked before complete Covid lockdown, cancelled by Malaysian no effort at all made to offer realistic re-routing and never got our money back despite taking it up at a senior level at Malaysian airlines and the Ombudsman. We used the digital card R… and would advise against using them again. has any used the N26 card?
Emirates - simply amazing service from ground staff to flight attendants but try getting your money back if they cancel a flight because of Covid. It took us a few months to get our money back but thanks to using the right credit card, we did in the end.
And now on airports
Korea - Soeul is my favourite, great entainment and the fanciest dog loos for your doggie’s needs.
Heathrow,Gatwick,JFK = big busy and v. Congested when conditions are normal
Birmingham,Dublin,Philadelphia,Dallas Fort E. Are less frantic and maybe more friendly
I’ve flown 2.5 million lifetime miles on Delta (and it’s premerger partners NW, NorthCentral, Southern) and its SkyTeam partners AF, KLM, China Eastern. I’m pretty happy with DL and the way it treats its very frequent flyers.
Haven’t flown United in a long, long time. Was very disappointed in an American RT to London a few years ago.
My hometown airports - Washington National and Raleigh-Durham are pretty good.
I’ve connected a lot at CDG and AMS and am pretty pleased with them.
If you really want to discuss airlines and airports, check out flyertalk.com.
That’s good to hear. We booked through Delta last week for transatlantic flights - Orlando, Atlanta, Amsterdam, Glasgow - starting this afternoon finishing tomorrow morning. Was shocked at the cost but put it down to last minute flights and not as many flights to chose from. Have flown with them before and had a very good experience.
I have always flown budget airlines or BA. my favourite, Norwegian, is no longer doing transatlantic flights but for the price they were excellent. BA staff are well trained and friendly. I try to avoid Ryanair if possible. There has to be a line drawn. EasyJet is good for short hops in Europe. As is Frontier in US and JetBlue.
The cost is more important to me but apart from Ryanair I have always found the staff of most airlines friendly and very supportive. I’m a very nervous flyer.
I live in Ontario Canada. Pre-pandemic I did a tour in Europe through an American company. The tour included all flights. They flew all their American customers to Toronto Canada to do the flight to Europe, presumably because it was cheaper. Something to consider, especially when travel requires less testing.
I used to also do all my flights to the US from Buffalo New York as it’s much closer than my nearest major Canadian airport. However my flights in the couple of years pre-pandemic were also out of Toronto as the US option cost considerably more. I have not flown internationally since the pandemic so I don’t know if it’s still the case.
Elsie,
Yes I have used Delta and think you will enjoy the flights, never had a bad experience with them and maybe that is why they get booked up so quickly
It used to be the case for many years but not more recently. Also most Canadian flights are direct, which is different to the US. For those in Ontario or coming to Ontario the budget airline Swoop is expanding its routes to more locations in the US soon and uses Hamilton airport here, which is quite small. Swoop is the budget airline of Westjet but I have not flown with them.
I would always recommend paying for flights with a credit card. I had two flights booked from Australia and back when the pandemic hit and got nowhere with the airlines. I went through my credit card company (Barclaycard) and bingo!
I live in Detroit, Michigan just across the river from Windsor, Ontario. I always compare Canadian flights and have found them to be much more affordable. My husband and I have flown out of the Windsor airport to Toronto and the onto Europe on a number of occasions at a considerable savings.
We’ve been flying with Westjet for ages and I’m always happy with them, for the price in particular. They fly into Gatwick, Glasgow, Dublin, and Rome as well as all over Canada. We’ve found the legroom is better than some of the other cheap airlines we’ve flown with in the past. Plus we always book early and pay extra to book bulkhead seats if we can.
YVR (Vancouver) is a lovely airport. I like Calgary too, but I hate Toronto’s airport.
Good to know about Windsor Alice. Have used Air Canada and the prices were good but you had to pay extra if you went over their smaller baggage allowance. Now it looks like many airlines are charging for checked baggage so it almost makes no difference. Didn’t notice a lot difference between other airlines like Quantas or KLM but it seemed to take longer to go through their security checks. They used examine every single otc med and small toiletories to a time consuming degree. Perhaps, I looked like a drug junkie.
Yes Kelownagurl, often wondered about Westjet and yes YVR is a treat. Agree, Toronto airport is hectic too and another I try to avoid but on the U S side is Boston, so old and long walks to different terminals.
@Alice that’s interesting when we lived in BC we would fly out of Bellingham to US destinations as the flights could be up to 20% less than from YVR (Vancouver) and the airport car park was awash with BC plates.
Singapore Air takes hospitality to another level as does Singapore Airport
Qatar Air - Excellent service across the board
Emirates - Same as above
Qantas … the most entertaining safety demonstration I’ve ever seen - got my attention and everyone else’s
I think for flying to a USA destination it is much cheaper to fly from within the USA if possible. [absolutely logical if you think about it] So we would drive from Ontario to Buffalo to fly to Florida, for example. My mistake was in assuming it was therefore cheaper to fly anywhere from the USA than from Canada -lol. Glad this thread came up :-).
Thank would make sense Liz because if flying within the country, it would be considered domestic rather than an international flight but with that said,sometimes better deals can be seen outside the country. I suppose if they have to fill seats, it is a different story.
