First Choice charter air

[wwinfl91]

Has anyone used a company called First Choice, which is a UK based travel company for air transportation. I was looking for air transportation from the UK, London, to Florida and from another CC post I found the above company. They operate weekly charter flights from the UK to Sanford Florida with a first class ticket for about the same cost as other airlines want to charge for regular seats.

 

I'm looking for anyone who has experience with the company as well as anyone who has taken a charter flight arranged by them. I would also be interested in any opinions on taking a charter flight as opposed to a regularly scheduled one.

 

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[Globaliser]

Has anyone used a company called First Choice, which is a UK based travel company for air transportation. I was looking for air transportation from the UK, London, to Florida and from another CC post I found the above company. They operate weekly charter flights from the UK to Sanford Florida with a first class ticket for about the same cost as other airlines want to charge for regular seats.

 

I'm looking for anyone who has experience with the company as well as anyone who has taken a charter flight arranged by them. I would also be interested in any opinions on taking a charter flight as opposed to a regularly scheduled one.

First Choice Airways is part of what is now one of the UK's biggest vertically integrated holiday companies. They have until now been a pretty standard charter operator, which generally means high density aircraft layouts even for long-haul flights.

 

But they say that from May 2005 they are moving to a layout which is much more like a scheduled economy product - in fact, if the pictures on the website and the accompanying blurb give an accurate representation, it looks like they may be operating a 767 in 2-3-2 at 33" pitch, which would be better than most scheduled operators. However, the cynic in me says that this is probably over-optimistic and we may find that they're giving extra pitch by inserting an extra column of seats in the way that some scheduled operators also do it (eg Emirates in their 777s).

 

I wouldn't hold out much hope of there being anything like a "first class". Normal charter premium products are fractionally better than scheduled economy, and FCA's product even in the new layout would - I would guess - be little better than scheduled premium economy, if that.

 

If you get on one of these, you'll have to be prepared for the flight to be full of the absolutely typical bucket-and-spade market. Depending on exactly when you're flying, it may well be full of screaming kids and only-fly-once-a-year adults. Lots of stress in the cabin, with no peace, calm or sophistication to be found. There will be a very good chance that the flight will be late, sometimes seriously so - during the peak season, charter schedules are absolutely gruelling on the aircraft, the flying programme operates with no slack or fat in it, and as soon as one aircraft goes tech its entire schedule breaks down, sometimes spectacularly.

 

Most of the time, this doesn't badly affect those who are flying off to their two-week holiday, because if they're 12 or 24 hours late they've only lost half a day or one day out of 14 - with travel insurance policies usually giving a right to cancel, or paying delay compensation, in those circumstances. But if you really need your flight to get you where you're needing to be at the right time, the timing risk of a charter is generally significantly higher than the corresponding risk of scheduled.

 

The last time I nearly went on a charter, it would have been with another UK company to the Maldives. The aircraft was an A300, which is normally operated 2-4-2 in economy by scheduled airlines, which usually do about 31"-32" pitch. This operator had 3-3-3 in the main cabin, at 29" pitch. The premium cabin was 2-4-2 at 33" pitch. So I said I wasn't going on the charter unless we could go in the premium cabin. But it was full, so we went scheduled on EK (fortunately, I kept the 777 sectors to 1 out of 4). When we arrived in the Maldives, the tour operator's reps vouchsafed that nobody ever flew the charter to the Maldives twice - which they told us when we were waiting for the flight to arrive there, 5 hours late. It was an absolutely typical charter performance.

 

As always, you pays your money and you takes your choice. I know where my money goes if I'm flying from London to Florida.

[wwinfl91]

Thanks for the candid reply. That was the kind of information I needed to help make the decision.

 

We aren't the kind of people who normally do first or business class air but since this looked like it was a "good" deal we figured we would check it out.

 

It is really hard finding a decent price on a one way from London to Florida flight. I may go back and check out Virgin Atlantic again as they have one of the better reputations for treating even regular passengers like human beings.

 

Thanks again and if anyone else knows anything about this airline please go ahead and add to this thread.

 

Talk at you later.

[Globaliser]

It is really hard finding a decent price on a one way from London to Florida flight. I may go back and check out Virgin Atlantic again as they have one of the better reputations for treating even regular passengers like human beings.

I seem to recall someone having some luck booking on a one-way basis with Aer Lingus from Dublin to Orlando - and EI of course have lots of cheap flights from London to Dublin. The trans-Atlantic sector is done on a charter basis, but if it is in fact operated by EI then I expect that you'll be on an aircraft in a normal scheduled config rather than a high density charter layout. You could have a look at the Aer Lingus website to see what's available.

 

Otherwise, there is that old trick of buying a cheap round-trip ticket and just throwing away the return half. If you keep quiet about it and don't do it often, airlines are reportedly not usually interested in chasing the money to which they're theoretically entitled. That way you could get onto Virgin or BA, both of which are pretty much about as good as you can get, in service terms, in economy class across the Atlantic.