Thomson Airways Flight Review
Flight Review Submitted By Phil Armstrong in February 2011
Flight TOM7110 from Birmingham, UK (BHX) to Funchal, Maderia (FNC) with Thomson Airways on G-OOBD Boeing 757-28A.
I have flown with this airline under different names, previously Britannia Airways, Thomsonfly and now Thomson Airways for over 50 flights since 1988.
This review is going to be a little critical of the entire experience, as I firmly believe that standards of service have slipped from the glory days of the 'Royal Service' that Britannia Airways offered me as a regular passenger in 1990.
Our journey started at 06.50 when we checked out of the Novotel at Birmingham Airport and made the short 30 second walk into the terminal to check in for a 09.20 flight. The boards indicated that we needed to go to desks 7 to 9. You guessed it; the longest queue for any flight was for our flight! Although the boards indicated that 3 desks were open, only 2 were manned by the handling agents Thomson use, Servisair.
The 2 queues were from the check in desks to the entrance doors at the terminal, effectively blocking the free passage of other airport users. People were grumbling in the queue that this always happens at Birmingham, but what many people fail to realise is that very few people actually work directly for Birmingham Airport and most of the services you receive are provided by contractors. So the blame for this doesn't sit with the management of Birmingham Airport, but with Servisair.
So with only desks 8 and 9 open and queues out of the door, eventually another Servisair employee arrives at desk 7. This is where it gets bloody annoying. How long does it take a person to remove their coat and start work? This person arrived at the desk and appeared to take pleasure in looking at the length of the queues and not actually checking anyone in! Standing up, adjusting their chair and generally fiddling around, doing nothing constructive. Eventually, after around 10 minutes desk 7 started processing passengers. So now we have 2 queues and 3 desks leading to more frustration as 1 queue was being processed by 2 desks and moving faster that the other queue. This was short-lived, because after around 10 minutes of 3 check in desks being open, the person at desk 9 disappeared and never came back. I know this is down to Servisair but it does reflect on Thomson Airways as it is their contractor!
So that was our check in experience, 70 minutes waiting in a queue for the start of our relaxing holiday. What a way to 'relax'.
Can't really comment too much on the airside services, because we hardly had any time there due to the long check in process. The only thing worthy of note is that the WH Smith store, airside is too small and the staff appears either to be poorly trained or overworked for their abilities - I'll let you make up your own conclusions on that, if you use Birmingham Airport.
Now to the actual flight. Everyone boarded on time and we were pushed off the stand at 09.22. The aircraft itself was an old First Choice Airways plane.
Before TUI merged with First Choice, all the Thomsonfly 757's basically had the same layout, because TUI used to buy their aircraft from Boeing and could specify the layout to their exact requirements.
However it seems that First Choice was less choosey about some of their aircraft and would buy them in second hand, this results in a less standard approach and cabin configurations vary. Even the onboard entertainment systems are all of varying standards. The 757 we were on today was actually purchased as new from Boeing by Air 2000 in March 2003. Air 2000 was rebranded as First Choice Airways and subsequently merged with TUI's Thomsonfly to create Thomson Airways.
I have travelled on a First Choice flight (operated by Thomson Airways) in June 2008 previously and felt that it appeared more cramped than a Thomson flight. I'm 6' 3" and believe me it was hard work trying to keep comfortable sitting on that First Choice flight. However with this aircraft now sporting its new livery, I thought that the seats would have been changed to the new design that has been on Thomson aircraft for a number of years. Unfortunately, it seems that apart from the new paint job on the outside, they have only recovered the seats from green to blue. Still with the same cramped space for passengers. Before you ask, we only booked the holiday 16 days prior to departure and all the extra legroom seats had been booked up already!
The flight was uneventful, which is always welcome on any form of travel! But I would like to say that the pre flight safety film with that screeching kid gets on my 'pip'. Also, isn't it about time that the old charter meal was dumped! It's been around for over 40 years and just gets worse. It slightly improved a few years back, when they started charging for them, but the standard has gone right back over the last 2 years. Apart from the fact that the 'meal' consists of steam heated sausage, egg, tomato and a hash brown - it has to be one of the most environmentally unfriendly way of delivering any food. The amount of packaging is outstanding for so few calories! The meals also make the cabin stink - just like a school kitchen. A better solution would be to provide sandwiches and a hot drink! Simple solution to save the planet and keep the aircraft smelling fresher.
We didn't bother with any gifts from the illegally described 'Duty Free' cart. Duty Free is only allowed on flights outside the EU (plus a few anomalies, like the Canary Islands). That just about sums up the outbound flight, so here goes with my observations on the return flight.
Flight TOM7111 from Funchal, Maderia (FNC) to Birmingham, UK (BHX) with Thomson Airways on G-OOBA Boeing 757-28A.
Check in at Funchal was a breeze compared to the car-crash service provided by Servisair in Birmingham. Plenty of desks open for each flight accompanied by hard working staff. It's a bit of a odd layout at this airport. Once you have checked in you need to go up an escalator to the security check point. Clear security and you're in the first part of the departure lounge. This is where all the main shops are situated so don't go through passport control until as late as possible. Once you have proceeded through passport control, you will realise that the facilities are very limited, with one coffee booth, little cigarette and brandy shop, plus a scattering of vending machines and a toilet block.
Because of the way the package holiday industry is structured, you will see that there will be lots of aircraft from a particular company all arriving on the same day. In this particular case, Thomson Airways arrive in Madeira on Mondays, so the airport appears to be overloaded with Thomson aircraft. Because of this, the departure gates can get very congested and there were too many people crammed in this part of the departure lounge. Flights to Glasgow, Birmingham and East Midlands were all loading within 20 minutes. Add in passengers going to other destinations and you soon see that the waiting area isn't large enough for over 1000 people to be standing around in!
Once we had boarded the aircraft, one of our parties' seats had a rather big boot print on it - nice! I would imagine that on the inbound flight, some idiot stood on the seat while waiting to disembark!
The aircraft was another old First Choice Airways airliner. This time it was noticeable that is must have been built, intended for a Spanish speaking market as all the internal signs were in Spanish then English. A quick look on the web, soon shows that this aircraft (G-OOBA) has had a number of owners in its past.
Again, the actual flight was perfect, with the same cramped conditions and smelly meal. For around 3 years, Thomson has been showing passengers films on their entertainment system. Personally, I can't think of a better way to murder a film than attempt to watch it on a charter jet. I counted 7 interruptions on the return flight. Crap about filling in a questioner, the gift cart, charity donations etc all required the film to be paused!
Anyway flight over, just need to wait at the carousel at Birmingham for the luggage. Bizarrely they have planned 2 flights luggage to be on one belt. One Thomson flight from Las Palmas and ours arrive within a couple of minutes so someone decided to try and get 500 people at 1 belt! Can you guess who - yep the handling agents, Servisair. So Servisair make a mess of the start of the holiday and still manage to leave their mark at the end.