Another tale of ‘cheap and cheerful’ flying

Reading of Robert Tickler’s experience of flying back to the UK by Easyjet on the Rust yesterday brought to mind my own progress from Palma, Mallorca to Gatwick on Thursday evening.

One of the things that never ceases to amaze me – when our media and left wing politicians would have it that the UK has gone permanently to the dogs, with Brexit, Tory rule, austerity measures crippling the economy and ever-greater levels of poverty being registered every three months that passes – is how quite so many Brits seem to be able to afford to go incessantly on holiday to all destinations of note throughout Europe.

Certainly the likes of Easyjet, Ryan Air and similar seem to base their entire business plans by the phenomenon and do very well thank you out of it.

In my case on Thursday evening I had prepared myself for a crowded Easyjet flight and queues and delays at every turn.

Airport time is very like hospital time – the moment you walk in the door, time warps into a fourth dimension in which appointment times, waiting times – and just anything, really – somehow takes not five, ten or thirty-five minutes … but just ‘as long as it takes’, even if that turns out to be four hours. And there’s nothing you can do about it, so there’s no point in getting upset or paying it any mind, you just have to wait until your ‘time’ arrives.

I never bother with ‘speedy boarding’, the Easyjet facility whereby you pay more in order to be given priority to board first, before all the riff-raff. Supposedly. Usually it just means that you get to queue first.

It was thus for me on Thursday night. We all grouped together (well, most of us did) by 5.15pm at Gate 620, seeing as how boarding was scheduled to begin at 5.25pm.

Somebody sitting close to me by the boarding desk pointed out that as yet there didn’t seem to be a Easyjet airliner waiting for us to board onto.

This impression was proved correct when shortly afterwards an announcement was made over the tannoy that there’d be a slight delay because the incoming flight (of the aircraft we were to fly back to Gatwick in) had only just arrived – but, nevertheless, would those with ‘speedy boarding’ please like to queue on the left of the boarding desk … and then the riff-raff on the right of it.

Two orderly queues began to form on opposite sides of the desk as requested. I was a riff-raffer, but joined a small cadre of maverick individuals and families who joined neither of them.

We were the ones who had figured out that – when you fly Easyjet – it doesn’t make a jot of difference whether you choose to pay more and sit on the aircraft for thirty minutes whilst everyone else boards after you, or whether instead you choose not to pay anything extra and instead remain on your seat at the boarding gate area for thirty minutes, i.e. until the last possible moment, and then just saunter on board to find your plane seat as the chocks are about to be rolled away and the engines are brought into life in order to back the aircraft away from the terminal.

We then had the spectacle of some 200 people or more people walking past us between our twin queues – these were the passengers who had apparently just arrived on board ‘our’ Easyjet plane. In other words, the aircraft was scheduled to do no more at Palma airport than disgorge one set of passengers, refuel, take on board another set of passengers (us) and fly us back to Gatwick.

Not quite the image that any nervous passenger, which I am not I hasten to add, would want to be given. They’d want to kid themselves that the aircraft they’re flying on has spent at least four days being serviced at Palma – new seats, food, other comforts and indeed crew having been taken on board – specifically for the sole purpose of flying us home in comfort and safety.

So anyway, we had the experience of watching 200-plus Brits arriving for their holidays in Mallorca past us and then, as soon as they’d gone through, we were invited to board the same aircraft for the return journey.

By which time we had already been delayed thirty minutes past our scheduled flight time.

Based upon my flight to Gatwick last Thursday evening, this is how Easyjet ‘speedy boarding’ actually works.

Those who have paid for the privilege of ‘speedy boarding’ are conducted down a tunnel that turns left at ninety degrees and then takes the ‘speedy boarders’ to the door at the front of the aircraft by the pilot’s cabin (which is situated to the left as you go on board) whereupon, presumably, they amble to their seats at the front of the plane, receive complimentary glasses of champers and sit down to then pretend to read the ‘duty-free goods pamphlet’ situated in the pocket on the back of the seat in front of them.

Meanwhile we riff-raffers are sent upon a tortuous yomp down three or four flights of stairs, out onto the tarmac and thence, hemmed in by the kind of tape that police put up to keep people away from crime scenes, herded towards the steps at the back of the aircraft, up which we have to gain entry and finally progress to our seats.

The irony on my Thursday flight was that clearly Easyjet’s ‘speedy boarding’ facility effectively provides no more privilege to those who pay for it than the right to enter the cabin by the door at the front of the aircraft. It has nothing to do with whether, say, you have paid extra (or not) to sit in a seat at the front of the aircraft.

I say that because – as a riff-raffer – I had proceeded in a human queue crocodile fashion down the terminal stairs to the ground floor, out onto the tarmac, across to the stairs at the back of the aircraft … and ultimately into my seat in row 26 … well before those ‘speedy boarders’ booked to sit in rows 20 and or higher – who had paid extra to board earlier than me via the door at the front of the aircraft – had reached theirs!

‘Speedy boarding’, my arse …