Flightblogging.com

At the end of January, I was invited to take a weekend break in Dublin with an old friend. I’ve flown with Ryanair plenty of times before, so I decided that I’d try out Aer Lingus and Aer Arran and take a look at Cork’s new “Taj Mahal” terminal in the process.
Although late January is not exactly peak time for flights from Birmingham to Dublin, finding good deals on any weekend of the year can be tricky.
High demand invariably means high prices, but Aer Lingus’ early morning flight on the Saturday had a base price of just €3 (€29 including taxes and charges). Former Aer Lingus boss Willie Walsh went to great lengths to cut the airline’s operating costs and compete with their Irish rivals Ryanair, ensuring that there was very little difference in price between these two carriers. If you’re looking for flights to Dublin from London or Glasgow, then airport choice can be a significant factor, but for Dublin flights from Birmingham, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Manchester, Aer Lingus and Ryanair both use exactly the same airports. If I had to choose between the two airlines, I’d go for Aer Lingus, unless there was a significant price difference. This is purely because of my aversion to the incessant in-flight sales announcements one has to put up with on Ryanair flights.   
At the airport
Check in desks for both Ryanair and Aer Lingus were right next to each other, but Ryanair had two agents on theirs, so their queue was moving a bit faster (grrr). I wasn’t too fussed though, because most passengers (myself included), were only carrying hand luggage. Aer Lingus have also copied the budget airlines’ strategy of charging for checked baggage. I experienced horrendous security queues at Birmingham over New Year, but I sailed through in ten minutes this time round. 
The flight
Whereas everything about Ryanair follows the pile it high, flog it cheap mentality, the Aer Lingus flying experience was a lot more demur. Where Ryanair tend to have tacky interiors with bright yellow colouring, Aer Lingus have opted for understated simplicity.
We took off promptly, and arrived in Dublin on time, but I had become increasingly perturbed by some of the comments I overheard from my fellow passengers. These included gems such as: “What language do they speak here?” and “Is Dublin in southern or Northern Ireland?”
Still, I can’t hold Aer Lingus responsible for the kind of passengers who fly with them, at least their service was impeccable!
I didn’t have any baggage to reclaim, so sailing through Dublin airport and onto one of the regular shuttle buses into the city centre, was a breeze. The bus journey gives a good overview of the northern half of the Irish capital, and passes under the magnificent Croke Park stadium.
Liked:
·                     Good value, on time, no messing around
·                     Pleasant staff
·                     Clean, uncluttered aircraft interior
Disliked:
·                     Only one person on check-in desk - Ryanair had two!
Overall rating — 4/5

I need to spend most of this week in London, but have tickets to see James’ first “official” gig since they got back together. There is a rather large problem though – the gig is on Wednesday evening…in Carlisle! 
I often harp on about the train being the best way to hop around the UK, but when time is of the essence, you can’t beat flying. As it happens, I need to be in London until about 3pm on Wednesday, and then back again for Thursday lunchtime. I could do this by train, but it would be expensive (over £100) at such short notice and involve spending almost ten hours on the rails.
An early evening flight to Carlisle, together with a morning return the next day, would be ideal. Of course, flight routes need a decent number of travellers to be commercially viable, and my desire to pop in and out of London to see a band play in Cumbria is not exactly representative of demand for this journey.
Carlisle does have an operational airport, and passenger services have been mooted, but the catchment area around the city would only support very limited flights. There could perhaps be enough demand from people in the southeast who want to take a break in the Lake District, but any airline attempting to offer such flights would struggle to get slots at most London airports. Only City would offer a big enough time advantage over rail. Considering that Eastern Airways were not able to make Newcastle to London City flights work, I wouldn’t really hold out much higher hopes for Carlisle.
If anyone does have a go at operating flights from Carlisle, I wouldn’t be surprised to see routes to Dublin or Belfast being much easier to sustain than flights to London. For now, following last year’s change of hands, the airport seems to be pinning its hopes more on freight operations than passenger services, but as we have seen time and time again, the aviation market is very fickle, and who knows what might be in store for currently unused regional airports like Carlisle.
In the meantime, I think I’ll give the concert a miss – it will simply cost too much and take up too much time travelling. Carlisle might be James’ “first” concert, but their Manchester homecoming show is always going to eclipse all others.

Selection
Dan and I needed to get from Amsterdam to Manchester in time for Friday evening’s “Versus Cancer” concert at the MEN arena. The headline acts were due on stage at around 9pm, but we had to get to the arena much earlier than this because we wanted to see all the support acts too.
Jet2 and KLM are the only airlines who offer regular multiple daily flights from Amsterdam to Manchester, but KLM are not remotely competitive on one way fares. Although Easyjet offer a much higher frequency of service between Liverpool and Amsterdam, we were keen to try out Jet2, as they are one of the few British-based scheduled airlines that we haven’t yet flown with. If I remember rightly, this route initially started as a three times daily service, but now only operates twice a day. Jet2 do additionally operate cheap flights to Amsterdam from Leeds and Blackpool, but none of these operated around lunchtime, when we wanted to leave. Jet2’s evening flights to Manchester were much too late to be able to make the show, so we ended up taking the 9.35am flight. We booked just one week in advance, and the two tickets cost a total of £95.
Getting to the airport
Amsterdam’s outstanding public transport system is well documented, but I’m not sure how many visitors know that there often easier ways of reaching Schiphol airport than travelling through the main Centraal station. Our hotel was about a mile outside the main tourist area, and just a few minutes’ tram ride from Zuid (South) station. From here, trains run every six or seven minutes to Schiphol airport, with a journey time of just nine minutes. Naturally, as we expected, everything ran completely smoothly, and we reached the check-in desk within about 25 minutes of leaving the hotel.
At the airport
We checked in about 70 minutes before the flight was due to depart, and there was only one person in front of us. It then took us about four minutes to go through the initial queue, which was for checking boarding passes, before entering the main airside departures hall. Although Amsterdam Schiphol airport has excellent waiting facilities for all passengers (including upstairs reclining seats), we took advantage of the lounge access provided by Prioirty Pass, with Dan being allowed in on my card, without any additional charge. The lounge had a limited selection of pastries, together with the usual array of alcoholic and soft drinks, but at that time in the morning some yoghurt and fruit juice would have been great!
With a flight due to depart at 9.35, we started the long trek to the departures pier just after nine.  Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport has many good points - the facilities are superb, and weary travellers are presented with a plethora of retail and relaxation opportunities, with a whole range of innovations, including an airside art gallery. However, everything is situated within one massive terminal, walking distances to and from gates can be significant.
If you are transferring from one flight to another, then we would probably agree that bigger is better - processing all 40 million annual passengers under one roof means that there is no need to worry about transferring between different terminals - if you’re just travelling point to point, and have no need to spend hours in the terminal, then size really can be a huge disadvantage.
By the time we finally reached the H pier, from which most no-frills Amsterdam flights depart, time was longer on our side! We still had to get through full security screening, and the queue for this was much longer than the original boarding card check. Luckily boarding had only just started by the time we got to the gate.
The flight
Unlike some of the other more bargain basement no-frills airlines, Jet2 do least allocate seats, however cramped their aircraft are! The flight finally left the gate about 20 minutes behind schedule - there was no explanation or apology for this, although it almost seems like standard form at Amsterdam. With the flight to Manchester only expected to take just over one hour, there is usually enough block time in the schedule to allow for minor ground delays like this. So we begin our very slow journey to Amsterdam’s new sixth runway, which feels like it is halfway towards Rotterdam.
Once in the air we got the usual offering of drinks and sandwiches for sale, together with a half-hearted attempt to sell duty free - I think Jet2 probably acknowledge that any serious shopaholics would have done their business in the terminal. The only kind of in-flight entertainment on this kind of no-frills flight is the airline’s magazine. Jet2’s mag was fairly unspectacular apart from the handy city guides.  
We didn’t make up any time following our late departure, but passport control and baggage reclaim at Manchester airport were both surprisingly quick, and we got to the arrivals hall within 15 minutes of reaching the stand. We knew that our hotel was in Didsbury, but stupidly hadn’t checked the map beforehand, so we jumped straight in a taxi, only to find out later that the hotel was just 200 yards from East Didsbury station, which itself is just ten minutes’ train journey from Manchester airport.
See hotel review, for more details
Jet2 flights summary
Liked
·                     Allocated seating.
·                     Reasonably priced, considering it was a late booking.
·                     Efficient baggage reclaim at Manchester.
·                     Both airports extremely easy to get to by public transport.
Disliked
·                     No mention of, or apology for delay.
·                     Very cramped seating.
·                     Huge walking distances at Schiphol airport (but this is difficult to avoid - it isn’t any better with KLM!)