When easyJet does exactly what it says on the tinRunway Girl

Sometimes you just need a cheap and easy flight to get from one place to another. In this case, I needed to fly from London Gatwick to Prague in mid-September. My options were not plentiful, and I wound up on an early evening flight aboard UK low-cost carrier (LCC) easyJet.

Booking with LCCs can be an adventure. The most aggressive of the bunch will hit you with myriad upsell screens during the process, and might even obscure total costs.

Thankfully, easyJet spares customers the annoying pop-ups (I’m looking at you Frontier and Volaris), and instead shows a clear, easy-to-see running tab, which is good, because their bundles didn’t pan out cost-wise for me.

Choosing just the bag (£27) and a seat selection (up to £15.5) via the ‘a la carte’ menu would bring the cost to £42.5, and for some reason automatically included speedy boarding. In contrast, easyJet was asking £48 for its Standard Plus bundle which included those ancillaries plus a small under-seat cabin bag. The choice seemed clear.

In fact, I ended up selecting a less expensive seat, for AvGeek engine-viewing reasons, naturally, and paid £10.5 for the privilege.

All in, the total ticket set me back £73.97, an entirely fair price. The only downside is easyJet requires you to make an account to complete the transaction. Not my favorite.

Check-in began 30 days before the flight with an email in my inbox. I cannot tell you why this is a thing, but I obviously ignored the prompt. Instead, I checked in via the airline’s user-friendly app after arriving in London Gatwick on the morning of the day of travel.

The flight was already posting a 75-minute delay, which showed up immediately in the app along with an explanation: ATC restrictions. That gave me plenty of time to hop a bus to the nearest town, grab a pastry, a tea and later a pint to wile away the 7.5-hour layover.

Back at the terminal, with a mobile pass in hand, there was no need to visit the counter. And security presented no delay at Gatwick’s north terminal. The gate staff checked tickets at the desk before hoarding everyone into a tiny lounge area. Boarding was, more or less, a free-for-all when the jet bridge finally opened.

On board, I settled into seat 8A on this, a 17-year old Airbus A319. My bag found a home in the tiny overhead bins, which quickly filled up despite the flight not being especially full.

The flight took off into a bumpy UK sky before turning towards Prague. The seat itself offers 18″ of width and a tight 29” pitch. It has no recline but better-than-expected padding.

I got lucky and had the row to myself, which made the experience quite pleasurable. If my row had been full, or if the flight length had been three hours instead of 90 minutes, I’m not so sure I’d have the same opinion.

Buy-on-board service began not long after takeoff. The airline maintains a wide selection of meals, snacks and beverages for purchase at reasonable prices.

I wasn’t especially hungry myself, so I took a pass, but my travel-mate ordered a chicken wrap for £5.50 and oven-cooked chips for £3.50.

He reported that the chips were merely OK, and we wound up splitting the wrap, so I can confirm it was pretty good.

I’ll take a well priced, higher quality buy-on-board menu every time over some crummy ‘free’ meal.

The flight landed 90 minutes late in Prague, deboarding via airstairs. We then climbed another set of stairs to the terminal. The delay was a bit of a drag, but all in all it was a very — wait for it — easy experience that I’d be happy to repeat any day.

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All images credited to the author, Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren