Voyages of Discovery flight shock

We are booked on Voyager for the Black Sea cruise next October. We have booked the companies flights from Manchester as we were told that there would probably be a charter flight, (but that it may touch down in London). I have just got our flight details and we have been booked on Easyjet out to Athens and Turkish Airlines back from Istanbul.

As it is far from a cheap cruise or a cheap cruise company, I was pretty shocked to hear we had been booked on Easyjet. We were waiting to hear about the flights as we were hoping it would be possible to upgrade to extra legroom as we normally do.

On the plus side, the flights are direct from and to Manchester and the luggage allowance is 20kgs with 10 kg hand luggage on Easyjet and 8kgs hand Luggage on the return.

We have not flown Easyjet, but have heard some horror stories about there being a crush to get onboard with everyone fighting to get a decent seat, since seats are not allocated prior to boarding. I have heard you can pay a bit more for priority boarding, but that if you do, people without priority boarding will block your way and try to elbow you out of the queue - sounded quite painful!!! The lack of food service is not an issue from our point of view.

Has anyone had experience of flying Easyjet to a cruise, (or otherwise), and is it as bad as I have heard? I also presume the seat pitch will be far less than we are used to, but am wondering just how tight it willl be.

I could well be overeacting and if so I will accept that.

Easyjet introduced pre-booking of seats last year, so There is no longer a scrum to get seats together. We have flown with them several times and have found the service excellent. I hope you enjoy your cruise, it sounds an interesting itinerary.

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Hope this helps

http://support.easyjet.com/request.do?view()=c%7bac8ddea0-ced9-11e2-ef6e-000000000000%7d&utm_source=ej_CMS&utm_medium=EN_Homepage&utm_term=FlightInfo&utm_content=colC_link5&utm_campaign=MegaNav

Added

Was finding the link for you and meanwhile LandC has replied.

Thanks for the replies.

It seems our son has used Easy Jet and he aggreed it is better now that the seats are allocated, but it seems some people are still somewhat anxious to get onboard with their hand luggage as the company allow 10kg in the cabin, but hold luggage is charged for - hence there is a bit of competition for the overhead lockers. I was also concerned that their website say the seats do not recline as I get a bad back if I sit completely upright for a length of time, but we will just have to see.

As I said before, it is at least a direct flight from Manchester and we should land at 12.35pm Athens time, so hopefully we will be on the ship fairly early. That wil be handy because it is, (as LandC said), a very good itinerary, so we will be doing a lot ashore over the following two weeks. Well - as long as our 3 Ukrainian ports and 2 Russian ports are not pulled because of troubles!!

We have flown Easyjet and Ryanair hundreds of times and never had a problem with either. I have mobility issues and both airlines look after me well. We are flying to Crete in May with Easyjet and they have allocated us convenient seats. No problems. If everybody is rushing to get on to the aircraft, then just wait until the end of the queue.