EasyJet offer nonsense-wrapped discounts

EasyJet are having a 24-hour promotion that promises to offer various discounts on flights destined for many of the cities that In Your Pocket covers. So we thought we'd let you know. The discounts, that seem to change every hour, range from a paltry five per cent off the price of your ticket to... erm... something more exciting that we haven't seen yet. Yay! (Or something.)

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.