Easyjet Impresses.

Earlier this year we flew Easyjet from Gatwick to Rome and back, hand baggage only. After a long gap since our last flight on them we were more impressed than we had expected.  Things have moved on for the better. Forget about comparing them to the long past glory days of the legacy airlines. Easyjet have a service style which is quite distinct....and which works. It was like travelling on London's District Line,- turn up, touch your Oyster card, get on then get off at the other end without interfacing with the company's  staff anywhere en route. The revamped check-in area at Gatwick South Terminal was simply efficient. For those with checked bags there is a row of machines which issue your bag tags and you pop the bags direct onto the belt. Successive swipes of the bar code on your boarding pass move you ever closer to your seat and your bags (if any) to their place in the hold. The only Easyjet staff we saw were the cabin crew. Departing Rome was perhaps more classic by way including two buses to get to the remote parked aircraft. Having grown up in an era when food and drink was free I scorn the thought of paying on board. But I was in a tiny minority.The range of food and drinks available from the trolley was astonishing-  even a bacon sandwich-and everyone was buying. The selling of bus and train tickets on board seemed perfectly normal. All smoothly functional. Gatwick Express was equally hassle free Gatwick's inbound Immigration was the pinch point. Only 3 out of 10 biometric gates were open and it was slow, slow, slow. A clever idea, yes, but the process needs to be slickened up for it to be useful in speeding the flow of ever-increasing traffic. Then it really will be good.

-John Williams.