Romania: Clearly the place to be

Not one, but two new flights to Romania from the UK were launched this week.

Budget airline Wizz Air has launched a new service between Liverpool John Lennon Airport and Romanian capital Bucharest three times a week, potentially boosting investment prospects in the Romanian market.

Wizz Air's Natasa Kazmer said: "We are glad to expand our network from Liverpool to a new EU member state." She predicted that Romania would become the new "must-see" place of Europe, due to its good beaches, cities and picturesque countryside. Wizz Air will also be flying from Luton to Targu Mures, a city in the heartland of Romania, later in the year.

Ms Kazmer also said that travellers and investors would be able to reach the country in a short time and at an affordable price.

Blue Air, a Romanian low cost carrier, this week launched a thrice-weekly service from Bucharest to Stansted, in Essex. EasyJet will launch its Gatwick-Bucharest service on October 29. On the same day, American Airlines begins a daily flight to New York's JFK.

According to the American Automobile Association, Romania saw a seven-fold increase in the number of bookings from US tourists during summer this year.

Time to call a spade a spade:easyJet is a great airline

In a desperate attempt to fly from Bucharest to Belfast and back at reasonable cost last week (to help Belfast In Your Pocket celebrate its second birthday: more on that soon) I was forced to call on the services of no fewer than three budget airlines: Romania's own Blue Air, the UK's easyJet, and Hungary's Wizzair.

Let's deal with the chaff first:

Blue Air, a Romanian private equity company which began operations in 2004, has a long history of generating bad press in the local media in Romania, mainly because of the safety record of its aircraft. Though a Blue Air plane has never been involved in a serious accident, in its early days the number of planes forced to make emergency landings was startlingly high. Lately it has been long delays that have generated bad press. I have now flown three times with Blue Air, and on each occasion I have had nothing to complain about. Planes have left promptly, and flights have been crash free.

In my experience Blue Air is an airline with a bad reputation is does not deserve. It's website needs work, and its prices are not always what could be called 'low cost,' but these are minor gripes.

Wizzair is a different matter. Don;t get me wrong: Wizz are cheap, fly a reasonably new fleet of aircraft and have a great inflight magazine that now features content from In Your Pocket... but I have taken five Wizz flights this year, and not one has departed on time (or anything close to it).

The latest mishap came at Luton on Friday: we were told to board on time, were feet away from the plane when we were told that Wizz had decided to change cabin crew... and the flight would be delayed at least an hour.

As we had already handed in our boarding passes, they had to be given back to us; they were, but in a very willy-nilly way. I got Mrs. Dumitrescu's boarding pass for example. As a result, when we did finally board, we were further delayed because two passengers were missing... and as nobody had the correct boarding pass Wizz had no idea who those passengers were. That's just amateur (though in Wizz's defence the boarding passes were returned to us by Luton Airport staff, not Wizz's).

So to easyJet. Again, everybody has different experiences with different airlines, but I have yet to hear too many complaints about easyJet's services. Their flights get delayed, just like everybody else's, but the whole easyJet experience, from reserving your ticket (on the clearest and easiest to use airline website around) through checking in to boarding is so efficient and comfortable that you don't mind so much.

And above all they are cheap. Again, might just be me but easyJet always appear to have the best prices on any of their routes. And now they are coming to Romania... only from Milan at the moment, but I am sure more services will follow. Competition for Blue Air and Wizz at last.