Back when I first started holidaying, I always booked package deals, so it was charter flights all the way. In the beginning, we flew Britannia (remember them?!); more recently, we usually flew with Thomson. Our city breaks were pretty much limited to Paris and Amsterdam on a coach and the ferry (or once a hovercraft, back in the day). We even pushed the boat out a couple of times and went by Eurostar. Everything changed, of course, with the advent of the budget airline - or, more specifically, easyJet, as I've never been able to bring myself to fly with Ryanair (have you heard Michael O'Leary?!). Suddenly, Rome, Prague, Venice and Barcelona were all within easy, practical and relatively cheap reach. It took a while for me to extend this to our 'summer' holidays though. Somehow, it seemed 'safer' to book a package, in terms of airport transfers, having a rep at hand and the general ease of the whole process, especially once we had children. But it was those very same children who put package deals out of our reach - our youngest turned two at around the same time holiday prices seemed to triple, and suddenly we were faced with an extra airfare on top of the generally higher prices. We soon realised it was much cheaper to book independently - hotels in Spain in particular are often very cheap, and car hire costs surprisingly little (and is so much nicer than a coach transfer!). As for flights - well, they're still more expensive with two children to include, but they're still cheaper than you'd expect. All in all, our holidays were about half the price of a package deal, and we were happy. Then, this year, I had a bit of a revelation. We were booking flights to Alicante for October, and easyJet hadn't yet made their October flights available. However, looking at the earlier flights they did have, they seemed a bit more expensive than usual. I knew that half-term flights would book up quickly and go up in price accordingly - was it worth the risk of waiting until the October flights became available and hoping I could book them before everyone else? I tried looking at other companies (even Ryanair) and, on a whim, I tried British Airways. We had flown with them once, back from Australia many years ago. We hadn't been particularly impressed, mostly because we preferred the Qantas flight on the way there. Anyway, I was really surprised to find the flights were actually pretty reasonable - and the September flights were cheaper than the easyJet equivalents! I decided to bite the bullet and book the British Airways flights - and I have to say, I don't regret it! The first bonus was that we didn't have to pay for our luggage - we were allowed 23kg of hold luggage each, as well as two (count them!) pieces of hand luggage. To be fair, there's no way in the world we would want to take that much luggage - you have to carry it for a start! But it was brilliant not having to try to pack our worldly goods into two suitcases, just to avoid paying extra. In the end, we settled for three cases, and three pieces of hand luggage, with the knowledge that we could bring a whole extra case of shopping home if we should so wish (we didn't). We were also able to put both of our car booster seats into the hold without charge (something that, despite numerous emails to easyJet last year, I'm still confused about - we ended up packing one of them in our of our two suitcases!). You can check in online up to 24 hours before the flight - at this point, you are also able to choose your seats (if you haven't paid to do so before). We were surprised to see that seats had already been allocated to us, then we realised that they were making sure that we were able to sit together - very handy if you're not quick off the mark with checking in. You're still able to change those seats, of course, but it takes away the worry of not sitting together. As well as checking in online, we were also able to check our luggage in the night before. This is something that we've often done with Thomson, but doesn't seem to be available with easyJet. It's handy when you have an early flight and you're staying in an airport hotel - you simply check your cases in at the airport the night before and then, when you're stumbling through the airport at 4 o'clock the next morning, you can bypass the queues and go straight to security. Another bonus was the free food on the flight - it wasn't much, as it was a short flight, but we got orange juice, a croissant and some granola for breakfast, along with tea and coffee. They even offered me an alternative, which I don't think has ever happened on a flight before! The service overall was excellent - the stewards were friendly and helpful and, most important for us as parents, they were great with the children. The children received little activity bags, which was nice, but the best thing was that they were given the opportunity to go into the cockpit and meet the pilot at the end of the journey - cue two very excited little boys (and a rather excited mummy!). Overall, we were very impressed, and couldn't fault BA at all. I'm not knocking easyJet - we have never had any problems with them - but the service and the little extras on the BA flight really made the difference. In future, I will always check BA prices too, rather than automatically going to the 'budget' airlines - this holiday just went to show that you shouldn't make assumptions! Oh, and by the way - I bravely checked the prices of easyJet's October flights once they were announced (desperately hoping they weren't going to be half the price of BA!) - they were pretty much on a par and, once you included the luggage costs, they were actually more expensive. Phew!
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