If you are familiar with my other articles, you’ll know that I generally don’t like to fly on budget airlines, yes because I’m a bit of a snob and I like the luxury’s you get with major airlines. But it’s not just that, when travelling on business, things like having a bit of comfort on your flight and at least a good luggage allowance without paying a load extra is all stuff that you need. Plus, the benefits of fast track and lounge access save you both time and money when travelling on a work trip.
And of course, I tend to stick to Star Alliance airlines so that I can gather points, meaning I can discount my upgrades and get free flights at a later date.
However, on this occasion the only sensible way for me to get from London to Nantes was via an easyJet flight. There are of course flights operating from other places, I could have flown to Frankfurt and then to Nantes from there, but that was an incredibly long way round and even I’m not mad enough to go that way. Plus, the price was horrifically more expensive. So, Gatwick to Nantes it is.
Booking the flight, how to do EasyJet in business class!
First thing was to choose the flights, there are two flights per day from Gatwick to Nantes, and very luckily the evening flights were quite late, which is very useful for me. My work was a Tuesday to Thursday job, so, I booked for a Monday evening flight out, and a Thursday evening flight back. This meant I got most of the day of work on Monday and then I’d be back late Thursday night allowing me a full day of work on the Friday, very convenient. Then there’s the choice of tickets, easyJet seem to offer 4 levels at the moment. Starting with no hand luggage other than a very small bag through to small hand luggage, big hand luggage and then finally the most expensive ticket gives you hold luggage. As I was billing this all back to the client, I wasn’t particularly worried about the costs, but I went for what they called the “Smart” ticket, which is second from top, giving you the large on board hand luggage option. And I will admit I did go up into my loft, where I keep my suitcases, and measured my larger hand luggage suitcase to make sure it fitted within their sizes.
The smart ticket also came with the speedy boarding, easyjet’s version of priority boarding, a choice of seat (you normally have to pay for seats choices), and this ticket included a seat up at the front. I noticed the included seat choice, however, did not include row 1, which was an extra £15. Knowing that easyJet planes don’t have a bulkhead in front of row 1, I didn’t really want to sit there with everyone tripping over my feet as they boarded, so I went for row 2.
Having chosen my ticket and seat, I then had to go through pages and pages of upselling trying to get me to buy all sorts of things from car hire to hotels to insurance. I turned all of this down and completed my booking.
Now to add on the luxuries I’m used to with travelling through an airport. First was fast track security, Gatwick is a major holiday hub and I don’t want to get mixed up with loads of people that have no idea how security works, so fast track security it was, only for a mere £6 extra.
Next, I need a lounge. Thanks to my gold Amex I still have some priority passes left to use up, so I started looking at the options available there. There are 4 lounge options at Gatwick that allow me access with priority passes, ranging in levels of luxury. At the bottom end there is the number one lounge which is no extra charge to get in on a priority pass. At the top end was the clubhouse lounge, which was actually the last lounge I went to when I flew with Swiss. This lounge was excellent and it was very quiet. The only catch with this was it is a bit more luxurious than the other ones, is that there is a £15 additional charge to pay on arrival, as well as using up one of my priority passes. I’d easily spend more than £15 on dinner or drink anyway that evening, so I thought why not have it in the luxury of a nice lounge where I can enjoy as much free sparkling wine and cocktails as I like? The lounge was due to close at 6:00 PM, one hour before my flight departs, but that’s fine I could leave then and wander down slowly ready for my speedy boarding experience.
So for additional £21 on top of my ticket that included a suitable size bag for my week of work, I’d managed to get myself fast track security, lounge access, early boarding and a seat at the front of the plane. I’m never particularly bothered about eating on short haul planes anyway so it didn’t bother me that there were only paid for meals on board. Plus, I’ll be off the plane nice and quickly at the other end so I can get through passport control and take my hour long uber ride to my final destination. I was all sorted, or so I thought.
I looked into booking the lounge and discovered they recommended pre-booking, which I tried to do. It was sold out, not a good sign. They did say they allowed walk-ins, therefor I decided to wing-it on the day and see what happened, read on to see where I ended up.
More to come…
