Airline: EasyJet
Flight #: U22533
Route: LTN-GVA
Class: Economy
Seat: 27A
Date: Wednesday 18th October 2023
With a gap in my schedule and the wanderlust growing stronger since my last trip abroad, a Wednesday in mid-October saw me arriving at Luton Airport bright and early ready to take a flight to Europe. This trip would take me to a country I’ve visited before, but a new brand new city, Geneva in Switzerland!
My trip came about a week after the car park headline that had caused Luton to hit the headlines and with limited car park capacity, staff were checking car park reservations before allowing entry into the remaining car parks. My intention had been to park at Luton Airport Parkway station and head to the airport via the new ‘DART’ rail link, however this was also closed owing to the fire and so I’d had to park at the airport.
A quick shuttle bus to the terminal later and I was heading to security with my ‘fast track’ pass in hand. Whilst the security process was pretty quick, the staff were quite rude, barely interacting and pretty much only grunting at passengers. Thankfully I passed through without issue and was soon heading up the escalators to Luton’s cramped departure lounge.
Deciding to avoid the main departure lounge, I headed for the Aspire Lounge which I could get discounted access to with my Monzo Premium account along with my travel insurance (not sponsored although if Monzo wants to, I’m open!). Thankfully the Aspire Lounge was much quieter than I expected and provided a reasonably good cooked breakfast as well as plenty of caffeine to help with the early hour.
At 0555, an hour before departure, the gate for my flight was announced and after finishing my coffee, I began to head for gate 7. I was quite surprised by the gate being announced quite so early, with Luton and Stansted usually only announcing these 40-50 minutes before departure, however as I continued the trek around most of the airport to the gate I could see why the extra time had been allowed. On arrival at gate 7, boarding had already started although it quite quickly became obvious that this was in fact #BoardingNotBoarding and we were only being ‘boarded’ into an empty room.
It wasn’t until 0625 that we were finally allowed to leave the room with incessant announcements and head downstairs to board a bus to our aircraft. We had been provided with some entertainment as two passengers had decided the baggage policy didn’t apply to them and were arguing with the staff trying to charge them for their large cabin bags.
At 0635, 20 minutes before departure we were finally boarding our aircraft, with G-EZRX allocated to take us to Switzerland. This Airbus A320 was just over five years old at the time of my flight and had spent its entire life with easyJet, flying around Europe. With 186 seats, there was plenty of room as there were only 36 of us taking this early morning flight to Geneva, meaning I had around three rows to myself towards the back of the aircraft.
I was in seat 27A for the hour and 20 minute flight across France, and with us pushing back at 0648, I had a good view of the airport as we taxied to runway 08 including the darkened shell of the burnt out carpark. After a really short take off roll, we were airborne at 0657, two minutes late, and soon made a turn to head west.
Having headed to almost Oxford, we turned south-east to pass to the west of London and its crowded airspace, before crossing the coast over Brighton. With so few people onboard, there was definitely a more relaxed atmosphere than is normal on low cost flights, with a more personal service being provided by the cabin crew. The lights remained dimmed allowing people to get a little more sleep and rather than the trolley coming down the aisle, the crew took individual orders for refreshments and brought these from the galley.
Having had some breakfast in the lounge I opted to just buy a caramel latte and a bottle of water, which cost me £5.75, certainly a reasonable price for onboard an aircraft. The caramel latte was actually very nice and I enjoyed this whilst watching the Jordan Christmas Special of Travel Man and catching glimpses of the ground through the sea of clouds.
Our flight took us almost directly over the French capital, Paris, before continuing south-east between Dijon and Lyon. As we crisscrossed between French and Swiss airspace on the approach to Geneva, there was some chop with us heading dropping below the light layer of cloud over Lac Léman. Before we dropped below the lower layer of cloud, we were treated to the unusual sight of some of the smaller mountaintops sandwiched between the two cloud layers.
Landing on runway 23 at 0920 local time, we had a short taxi towards a remote stand, passing a former Aeroflot aircraft impounded on the ramp. With the doors opening at 0925, we were quickly on a bus across to the terminal building and I had passed through passport control by 0940 into a long corridor advertising Swiss watches and jewellery. From arrivals I then had a short walk to the northern end of the terminal building to reach the airport railway station for my connection into the city.
This was my first flight with easyJet in quite a while and certainly the first since I have been running Flights and Times. It was interesting to see the difference between easyJet and their ultra low cost competitors of Ryanair and Wizz, with my general assumption that they were a very slightly more ‘upmarket’ airline seeming to be true. I certainly felt more like a valued passenger than merely a money making machine. If the price is right, I definitely see myself taking more flights with easyJet in future.
Lounge 0*
Seat/Facilities 3*
Food 4*
Service 5*
Punctuality 5*
Overall Rating 17/25 (read about my rating system here!)
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