Hello!
So, as you all probably know, I went to Lanzarote a few months ago. It was fun, and I miss it so much, but I'll be in France in a few weeks time, which I may have mentioned once or twice before. Anyway, I haven't written an airline review for a little while now, so I thought I should write a little something about my holiday with Thomas Cook.
To be totally honest, I didn't have high expectations with Thomas Cook. I'd heard a lot of stories about things not going according to plan and so I went onto the flight, and on the holiday, with low hopes.
Boarding was done really quickly, and in no time we were sitting in our seats. The cabin crew also seemed to be really friendly (and especially so on the return flight to Glasgow, with a full Glasgow based crew.) Because my outbound flight was so standard, most of this post will be me talking about my return flight (ACE to GLA).The only bad thing, and in general, the only thing I can find to say about the outbound flight, was the meal.
This was my first vegetarian flight meal. A lot of time time, I find that vegetarian meals revolve a lot around cheese. I don't like cheese. I can handle it in small amounts, but it's really not something I'd ever choose for myself. I like it on pizza, I like wotsits, cheesy pasta and quavers, but not cheese sandwiches, or anything like that. My flight meal was, of course, a cheese souffle with broccoli and field mushroom in a grain mustard cheese sauce. It was overbearingly cheesey, and it took me so long to eat it. My step sister took a slice out of the souffle and gave me a few of her veggies. She found it overbearing as well, but I was just really glad when I managed to finished it! (My first meal in Lanzarote was a 'vegetarian lasagne' which consisted of lasagne slices, broccoli, mushroom and a lot of cheese sauce and I'm really glad I'm not lactose intolerant!) The bread and the malt chocolate cheesecake definitely helped me through that meal.
In saying that, on the flight back, I was really, really hungry, and all I could think about was the meal service. The food on the way back was Spinich Gnocci, butternut herb and porcini mushroom cream sauce and mozzorella. So basically, cheese again, however, there was more flavours for me, and I demolished the thing in less than 5 minutes.
Before the return flight was the transfer from our hotel to the airport. This was a coach transfer, with a few scheduled stops to pick up other passengers from other hotels. It wasn't the best transfer. We were stopped at one hotel for so long that some people on the coach were able to run to the toilet and make it back again. That plus the fact the coach went in a circle around three times before joining the motorway kind of put us all in a bad mood.
Then, once we got to check in, we found out that we weren't going to be sitting in our prebooked seats. My dad and step mum were both sitting beside one another, I was sitting across the aisle in the row in front, and my step sister was sitting two rows behind them. My step sister has a fear of flying, so it meant that I was worrying about her a lot. Luckily, behind my dad and step mum, there was a member of cabin crew situated, so they told her immediately what was wrong, and she was incredibly apologetic and immediately went to try and sort it out. There was a spare seat beside my dad, and so once the final checks were complete, Kirstin got to sit there, so we were together (kind of.) and we were happy.
There was a lot of decent communication from the captain, which I'll circle back to in a moment.
I really enjoyed watching the screens for the flight path (as well as watching Spongebob, a few episodes of Friends and a looooot of Looney Tunes). As we were arriving back to Glasgow, I was making sure that Kirstin knew that we were nearly back on the ground again. 30 minutes. 20 minutes. 15 minutes.... 30 minutes. Now our plane had passed Glasgow and looked as thought it was heading towards Edinburgh, and then it was heading back on the flight path we'd just taken. Then, the captain came on the tannoy and told us that we were in a hold pattern over lanarkshire and that we were due to arrive at 8.50pm (I can't remember the exact time but I remember it was 10 to a late time). Given that we were due to arrive at 7.50pm, we cabin erupted into a confused quarrel, until cabin crew came on the tannoy and confirmed that he had meant 7.50pm. The landing was trouble free after that and soon I was saying goodbye to my family and making my way back home.
I was really surprised by how good the service was from Thomas Cook, given that I went in with such low expectations. They gave good, prompt service to us and they were able to fix our problems with no hestitation. The only thing I really have as a complaint is the vegetarian food that I mentioned earlier, but I definitely would consider booking a holiday with them again.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this post! I'm sorry it's such a late blog post. I'll be flying with their competitor, TUI in May for another holilday with the other side of my family to another Canary Island, so I'll make sure to write about my experience with them as well, and who knows! Maybe I could compare this post with that one.
Read my other airline reviews here:
Turkish Airlines
British Airways
easyJet
Until next time, be excellent to each other.
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