Please can you tell me if there is premium cabins on flights to Tenerife? Thanks

sharonj,

No there is no Premium cabin on flights to Tenerife. However, there are extra legroom seats which are available at a cost of £25 per person per sector.

I've noticed that a lot of Monarch flights from Gatwick, seem to be delayed again.Likewise with return flights.

Flying to Kos next Saturday MON7926, anybody know why Monarch seem to be having these delays. Looks like it could be a long night!!

Thanks for any info.

partyboy_uk

Many thanks for your comprehensive pm in reply to my earlier post regarding the 12+ hour delay RHO-LGW.

I've not fully digested everything you've said but I'll have a fuller read later. I may come back to you via pm with any further questions.

As you were crew on that flight, how was it for you (if you can comment without causing employment issues)?

The flight seemed quiet although we slept most of the way.
We were in seats 30A & 30B - 30A is a nasty seat as it is immediately in front of the exit doors and doesn't recline.
However, 30C was left spare so we had 3 seats between 2 of us.
I noticed they did the same on the right hand side of the cabin.

I think the fact that the walkway that connects to the plane on landing for passengers to disembark failed (and we had to exit the plane via steps) just about put the icing on the cake.

Hi carg20.
It's not only Gatwick where Monarch have bad delays recently, Manchester is just as bad, we are off to Palma next month and I have been watching the flight information and nearly every monarch flight has had a delay, other airlines do not seem to have so many delays. I actually talked with a monarch rep at Manchester the other day and she said it is because the airline are making more flights and no longer have any spare available aircraft to substitute for any delays due to technical problems or other problems. In my opinion I think monarch are pushing things with all these delays, I know a few families that refuse to go with monarch because they know there will be a delay and they will be ignored when they complain.

Hope your flight does not have a big delay.

Big Al.

they are under contract to the government at the moment [sorry no details to be given] which is using the usually spare airframe

wizard

Hi Wizard,
That is just typical that our government upsetting passengers, but there must be other aircraft that are available for lease to help with the present situation, make the government pay as its their fault in the first place for nicking the spare aircraft.
Just shows where monarchs loyalties lie doesn't it, and its definitely not with the fare paying passengers.

Big Al

Im not an airline expert, but from what my source tells me they have held the government contract for some time, another [not contract] they are one of the favored airlines to be contracted to abta/caa for repatriation flights when as we have seen others go down, as a personal thing I love my holidays but if im delayed because they are busy with other contracts/necessary work i would take a lenient view
again provided i am advised of the facts and not left hanging around an airport

wizard

BigAl, I appreciate your comments about Monarch having delays. However, I should point out that it is not only Monarch that have had heavy delays this year. I know that Thomas Cook have also been hit quite badly as have Easyjet. In fact Easyjet have even had to cancel a number of flights because of crewing issues and have had to lease out 3 x 757's this summer to cover part of their programme for the same reason. You will find that it is quite rare for Monarch to cancel a flight and leave passengers up the swanny. If there is a problem then they will always try and honour the flight, even if it means a heavy delay.

I know you have been keeping your eye on the Saturday PMI because you are off there soon, and since you pointed it out, I have also been keeping an eye on it. It does appear that this flight has been particularly affected, along with the Malaga. Strangely, the PMI flights during the week don't seem to have been as badly affected. The only reason I can suggest (and it is only a suggestion) that this flight may have been more affected than others is that crewing are able to juggle with the crew's hours on this shorter flight more so than on the other flights to places such as the Canaries, Turkey, Greece and Egypt where crew are more likely to go out of hours sooner.

Monarch did not have a standby aircraft this year, but then they didn't have one last year either. There was a B757 that was designated a standby aircraft the previous year, before it picked up a line of flying halfway through the season. It is just not economical for an airline to have aircraft sitting on the ground, where not only is it not flying but it is picking up airport charges for parking. As far as I am aware, Monarch never expected to have the government contract that Wizard speaks of. In fact, I believe that these contracts are only awarded a short time before they are due to operate and so Monarch would not have known about them at the start of the summer when the programme was finalised. However, these would only be taken on if the company believed there was sufficient space in the flying programme to operate them, not instead of or with priority over its existing flying programme. I can assure you that Monarch's priorities definitely do lie with its fare-paying passengers. This is its bread and butter market and not the occasional ad-hoc flight it gets in from the government. Unfortunately, because of the number of technical problems the company has faced this year, they have been affected quite a lot but they have done very well to keep the schedule going as much as they have done.

It is not as easy as you may think to simply sub out the flight to another airline. Because of the current economic climate in the airline industry, few airlines have standby aircraft sitting around, and even then it does not mean that only one aircraft is going to go tech at the same time. Even if an airline does offload a flight to another company, it will still mean a considerable delay. As it happens, I have just returned home after being told there was a problem with the aircraft I was due to operate on and the operations team were desperately phoning around to try and offload it to another airline. It seems it has now been delayed until later this evening, where there is some space in the Monarch schedule, when this evening's flights have returned. At this time of year, aircraft can be up in the air pretty much 24/7, apart from when it is turned around, and to encounter a technical problem can turn the schedule on its head.

Hopefully, by the time you take your flight in October when the flying programme will have quietened down a lot, and there are fewer night flights, there will be much less chance of you incurring a delay.

Thank you all for your replies.

Lets hope we don't have any of the ad-hoc flights it gets in from the government or any of the number of technical problems the company has faced this year, which is a bit of a worry, when we are due to fly.

Good luck Big Al

Of couse nobody wants to have a delay but we mut trust airlines to get us from A to B safely.

I'm sure that no airline would delay a departure unless it was absolutely necessary - after all, a delay is possibly going to cost them money (if they have to provide food/drink and maybe even accommodation) and may give them unwanted bad publicity.

I think Wizard has hit the nail on the head with this statement:

provided i am advised of the facts and not left hanging around an airport

IMHO, it's how an airline (and/or Tour Operator) deals with a delay that matters to me.
I want to know what is going on as soon as anybody has any information.
If the people on the ground don't have any idea of when the plane is taking off, then I'd like to know that too.
I don't want to be fobbed off with 'we'll give you an update at xx:xx time' and then when that time has come and gone, they say the same thing again.
If the delay is going to be significant, I want to know as soon as possible what they are going to do with the passengers re food/drink/acommodation.

I think airlines are much better now than they used to beabout giving information out - I think they've realised that people's expectations are much higher and they are less disposed to be 'fobbed off'.

Having experienced a 18 hour delay going out to Skiathos last year (plane turned back over the Alps) plus this recent 12 hour delay - both with Monarch - I feel that Monarch did the best they could on both occasions to make sure people were kept informed and made as comfortable as possible.

I'm flying to Goa with Monarch in November and if I can get a deal for February 2011, I'll book again with Monarch.

i know this may sound a silly question im about to ask, does anyone know why the MON1828 flight to corfu from manchester is delayed.

probably for the same reasons as on the previous page

wizard

Can anyone tell me what the Manchester to Sanford flights have been like regarding delays this year please? I mean in general what are they like? Thanks

Twinkletoes,

In general their flights have been quite punctual from what I can think of. An airlines flights can be delayed for a number of reasons and looking at past delays would not have any bearing on you flight.

Gower

Just experienced a 4 hour delay on MON303 and a 26 hour delay on MON302.

To be fair to Monarch, putting us in the Hilton for the night with 2 meals and a voucher for the airport was more than I expected. However the lack of information, the lack of any sort of rep at the airport/Hilton and the lack of organisation in the airport and at the hotel was absolutely disgraceful. If I have to rely on a text message from England to let me know my flight is delayed there is something seriously wrong. And if Monarch/Cosmos and the resort rep decide not to answer their phones to give any information, that is also seriously wrong.

I can understand that a bird flying into an engine is beyond their control. And I can understand it takes a significant amount of time to find a replacement aircraft/fix an aircraft. But if my relations back in England knew about the delay 6 hours before the flight was scheduled for then it's fair to say Monarch were aware of it before that and should have been able to organise the whole situation better in resort.

Not sure if this is the correct place for this little rant, but had to get it off my chest!

Also wondering whether the way Monarch switched aircraft is normal practice? The inbound flight that had the problems was actually scheduled to return with the Gatwick passengers. However, they were placed on the Manchester bound plane and the Manchester passengers were the ones who faced the delay. If that's the way things work then fair enough - it just seemed a little strange at the time when you are stressed out!

wigdean,

A delay is always unfortunate, It is nice to see that they gave you hotel accommodation even if information about the delay was few and far between.

On Switching Aircraft. Most airlines regularly "rotate" (swap) their aircraft on different routes. This is normally so aircraft can be taken for maintenance. These "rotations" are written into the schedule so for instance a plane could be based at Manchester but then be rotated onto a Gatwick run so that It could go for maintenance. (eg Manchester to Palma then Palma to Gatwick). As I say this is normal practice for most airlines. The airline may also take the decision to swap the aircraft on the basis of what they think would cause the least knock on delays

Gower

Hi wigdean

If I were you, I'd claim for the delay on my travel insurance.
You will need a letter from Monarch confirming the length of delay and reason but if you email them I'm sure you'll get this pretty quickly.

Re your issues (exlained here and on the 'complaints' sub-forum):
you might be interested in my post (page 75 dated 11/9/2010) regarding a delay of 12 hours.

I didn't have (much of) a problem with the information provided by Monarch/Olympic Holidays or the treatment we received.
I did want to know whether we were told the truth by various parties and (thanks to partyboy_uk) I'm now pretty sure that we were.

I note from your other post that you're not after compensation, if your issue was lack of information and/or the timeliness of any information regarding delays in your flight, I'd be inclined to write to Monarch with a brief, to-the-point and unemotional letter explaining what happened, what (in your opinion) went wrong and how they could have done things better.

You seem to have niggles about other parts of your holiday, your Tour Operator or Travel Agent should address these but the delays are down to the airline.

Regards

Hi All,

I am looking at booking a Flight only from London Luton, to Plama Marjorca flying Mid October for a week.
I was just wondering if anyone has flown via Monarch recently from Luton and if so did they experience any delays etc... Its just i have read some poor reports but then again some good ones so i am a little unsure.

Lastly the flight numbers come up as ZB870 and ZB873?? Should this not be MON870 and MON873??

Any assistance would be much appreciated

Thanks

Craig