By Patrick Griffin.
This flight was operated on an Airbus A320 aircraft and is an economy only service.
Fares are offered in ‘low’ and ‘flexi’ economy options – the former being the cheapest and the latter being fully refundable and with a whole raft of extras for a premium price.
Typically ‘low’ fares are advertised as non-refundable ‘flight only’ options while ‘flexi’come with an allowance of two checked bags, lounge access, full flexibility and the ticket is also refundable.
Some of the ‘low’ fares on the Aer Lingus website have a little green star to the side of them but I have never been able to work out what it is there for or what it means. (If YOU know then please feel free to leave a comment and enlighten me.)
By way of an unscientific price comparison the cost of the ‘low’ fare on EI34 for travel a week from today (October 26) was on offer at £88.59 while the ‘flexi’ version for the same flight was priced at £228.59.
An Aer Lingus A321 aircraft...bright, clean and modern.
The aircraft is bright, modern and clean and the seating is three abreast either side of the central aisle.
I chose not to pay extra to book my seat at the time I bought my ticket and decided to take a chance with what was left when I checked in at Heathrow’s Terminal One.
There are manned check-in desks and self-service ticket machines – I chose the latter and was given access to the system via my six digit booking reference code.
When it finds your booking you are prompted to “please answer ‘yes’ to the following security questions.”
Some systems make you click on the ‘yes’ button for each question but Aer Lingus allows you to answer en-bloc for them all at the bottom of the screen.
There is also a ‘no’ option but I guess that cancels the whole check in process and alerts security so I left it well alone.
The computer also assigns you a seat but gives you a ‘change seat’ option. I was assigned somewhere near the back of the plane on the left hand side in one of the middle seats – my lesat favourite option.
Luckily I was able to find window seat 7A free and 7B was also showing as free. The flight was around three quarters full but I was lucky enough that nobody else fancied 7B so I had a empty seat to my immediate right.
The ticket machines print out proper traditional boarding passes on thick paper and not the thermal fax paper favoured by so many airlines these days – this is always nice to see.
Great service from the Irish airline on the flight to Belfast.
It is always something of a lottery navigating the checkin and security process at Heathrow but today there was no queue at all to check in and virtually no queue either for security.
I found myself at the gate just 20 minutes after checking into the airport – which is great considering that Aer Lingus uses the bank of departure gates on the most remote pier at Terminal One.
EI37 was due to depart at 19.15 with a ‘gate closes’ time on the boarding pass of 18.50 but in the end it was delayed until 19.35.
At 19.10 information screens changed to ‘go to gate’ and boarding commenced exactly 18 minutes later.
It seemed clear that we were not going to make the new delayed departure time either but the whole boarding process just took 14 minutes.
Two crew members were at the boarding door as I walked on but neither seemed the least bit interested in checking my boarding pass – interestingly on my flight out to London with Aer Lingus two days previously the boarding pass was not looked at either.
Instead I received a polite and friendly ‘good evening’ from a dark-haired girl in a fetching green uniform and sporting trendy oblong designer glasses.
Captain Peter Brady – identifiable as such by the four gold epaulettes on each shoulder – also stood at the entrance door and nodded greetings to the boarding passengers.
With us all safely on board Captain Brady retreated to the flight deck while designer glasses lady got to work counting all the passengers on board.
We were informed from the flight deck that our late departure was due to the plane arriving late from Spain. Interesting my outbound flight was also late departing and the reason…the inbound flight had been late arriving from Spain.
We took off from Runway 27R – which was also the closest runway to our stands – and at 19.56 the engines were powered up and we began our take off roll from intersecton A4.
Flight conditions were smooth all the way, the cabin crew were relaxed and came round with a paid drinks and snacks service and later with selection of inflight gifts to purchase.
The seat was comfortable and I passed the time reading their Cara inflight magazine which had a mix of features on some of the destinations served by the airline, an interview with Irish actor Aiden Gillen and lots of adverts for pubs.
Midway through the flight Captain Brady thanked us for flying with Aer Lingus and told us we were running 15 to 20 minutes late.
We touched down at 20.49 – just 19 minutes late and were at the gate with the doors open just four minutes later.
I enjoyed this flight and was very impressed at the way the crew made passengers feel genuinely welcome – something of a rarity for many airline crews these days.
Please feel free to share your experiences of Aer Lingus – or any other airline for that matter – in the comment section below.
PG.
