Hi, today I’ll be giving you my opinion and trip report on Jet2 as I’ll be flying with them from Athens to Manchester. Let’s begin.
Check in
Check in was nice and easy as always. But with budget airlines they allow you to have the opportunity to check in your cabin baggage to put into the baggage hold of the aircraft. This also happened when I was flying with Indigo airlines (an Indian budget airline. Unfortunately I don’t have a trip report for that). I am not sure if that’s what budget airlines in the US do so anyone can tell me if they do. This is new concept for me. So that meant we had no suitcases to carry around the airport.
Athens international airport is your standard airport although if you are going via and airline which uses the satellite terminals (in this case I had to because Jet2 uses the satellite terminal) it is a bit of a walk through and underground tunnel which has a bit of Greek history on the walls which was a nice touch. The subway like tunnels reminded me of Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport. Same kind of concept. Luckily in ATH they had moving walkways or travelators in them. Then after like 5 mins or so of walking on travelators (my knees went weird) we finally went into security. I was beginning to worry if I somehow had skipped security. Security was standard like in any airport so I won’t talk much about that. The satellite terminal gave great views to the airside. It wasn’t very busy but before I boarded my plane the North American bound heavies were making their way to the runway to return back to their respective bases. It was a shame not to be in a nice and spacious A350 or B777.
Boarding
Boarding was average. We were told to use the boarding pass on our phone if we had it in which I did. For me it’s a shame that airlines are moving to digital boarding passes because I collect boarding cards (they aren’t even card anymore 😞). Jet2 has a different way of boarding. They asked us to board via seat number. They called out passengers who were sat in seats in rows 11 to 23. I was sat in 21F. I had to board via the rear so that meant stairs for me.
My plane was G-GDFF a B737-800 operated by Jet2 but for some reason it didn’t have winglets. If someone knows why this is the case please tell me.
The seat
As said before I was in seat 21F which offered a nice wing view as shown below.
First impressions of the seat for me wasn’t that great. It was quite uncomfortable after sitting for a bit and to my surprise it didn’t offer a reclining button for seat recline. The arm rest was very short and later on in the flight when I was using it to try and keep my arm supported to rest my head on my arm kept slipping. The window alignment was great but still had a good view. The legroom was better than Aegean to my surprise. That will probably be because the inflight magazines were stored higher behind the headrest of the seat in front of you. Many airlines do this so it wasn’t a new invention. This made for more legroom. I could fit my whole hand and have space over between my hand and the seat in front of me. The seat colours were the common Jet2 red and grey. And odd combination and in my opinion it doesn’t go and looks weird. Below is a picture of what the seat will look like in front of you.
Soon the cabin crew commenced the safety demo while the pilots started the engines. Many international flights were taking off now. Out gate wasn’t far from the runway and taxiing took less than 10 mins to get to the runway. There wasn’t much planes moving about now so we took off pretty soon. The B737 never ceases to amaze me by how powerful it is. From outside it doesn’t look like it but from the inside it shows. You are pulled back to your seat quite hard. The A320NEO doesn’t do that. Also I’m glad you can hear the roar of the engines when taking off unlike many other aircraft where it’s just quiet all throughout.
The departure wasn’t eventful and we quickly made our way to cruise with the Greek countryside and scattered islands fading. I saw a few planes but I couldn’t identify them in cruise.
Cruise and cabin service
Once we were at cruise at around FL360, the cabin crew went around with the preordered snacks that some passengers bought. After that they came around with food and drink that you can buy on board. I didn’t buy anything as I wanted to read my book and sleep. One thing I do have to say is a negative is that Jet2 tend to give too many announcements. This woke me up a lot when I was trying to sleep. Things did get a bit bumpy when we were over the Alps but it smoothed out but time and time again there would be spots of turbulence. One thing I don’t like about budget airlines is that they tend to always advertise a lot of products like perfume and aftershave to you. They were also selling a maximum of 4L of alcohol to you. And they were apparently at cheaper prices than the ones sold at stores. Outside there was nothing to see just clouds at couple of thousand feet below us.
Landing
Approach and all was fine and the landing was very smooth. I was sat over the landing gear so I could hear when the gear went down or when the flaps when down. I didn’t even feel or hear the gear touch the runway. Braking was very hard though as if we had to get off the runway quickly. As soon as the nose gear went down the plane tilted forwards making me loose my footing and I felt like I was going to slide out of my seat.
Conclusion
Overall Jet2 is your standard budget airline. The legroom is better than some airlines and it doesn’t feel like they want to cram seats in although you don’t get recline even if it’s a few degrees. It’s nothing special. It would be a bit better if they kept the announcements to a minimum. Most of the announcements were not from cabin crew but pre recorded in a studio for the airline. The cabin crew seemed very friendly though and always had a smile on their face which was nice.
Thank you for reading this and I hope you enjoyed this trip report and I hope to give some more soon.
If you have any corrections to make don’t be worried to tell me and I’ll try to correct them
