I'm about to book a BA flight to london and then connect to geneva through either BA or Easy Jet. I have to get to Geneva for a wedding. I would also be taking Easy jet back to London from Geneva en route back home to Toronto. I also dont have a lot of flexibility. Am I crazy to book with Easyjet? Are they reliable?

Part of the reason that easyJet and Ryanair are often much much cheaper than their competitors is that they have no compunction against cancelling a flight that is not booked enough to justify the flight. They just put the ticketholders onto the next available flight. If your schedule is very tight - say for example that you are trying to fly into Geneva on the day of the wedding - than I would recommend BA. If you are flying in a day or two early and the cost savings is large enough than easyJet might be the choice for you.

Never heard of Easyjet or Ryanair canceeling a flight because they haven't sold enough tickets - a whole route but not a flight.

Besides how would the plane get to it's destination airport to pick up the next set of passengers otherwise.

Though I do agree if it's something really important gettting there the previous day is a good idea - but that applies to all airlines as even BA cancel sometimes

I agree, if the schedule is tight, you may not want to rely on Easyjet, although in saying that, I have flown with them a few times and have been only an hour or so late on one occasion.
But I have heard that if Easy jet get a problem, it sometimes becomes a bigger problem than it would have with an airline like BA with greater resources.
But the cost is significantly less so really you pay your money and take your choice.

Muck

bobludlow, mind telling us where you get your information? Can you cite an example of an EasyJet flight cancelled because they didn't sell enough tickets for it? alanRow is right. The plane still needs to get there to pick up the people at that other point. And I have yet to see an EasyJet flight that wasn't full -- although I'm sure there are some.

Using similar logic, I suppose your chances are good that BA would cancel a flight that wasn't real full, because they could then put those people on a later flight as they often have a lot of flights going to the same place. In fact I'm pretty sure that's what they did with us once.

I haven't seen any statistics, but I have flown Easy Jet three times and BA three times. All 3 of my EJ flights were exactly on time or within minutes. One of my BA flights was delayed nearly 4 hours (see above). So if we went by my personal experience, I'd be more willing to trust EJ than BA.

I have had good experiences with Easy Jet and do not hesitate to use them. In fact I have a flight booked with them from Geneva on my way back to Toronto. The difference (I think) is that I am also visiting London so if EJ is late I have three days to make my Air Canada flight home so no risk. If you are doing a continuous flight: Toronto to London to Geneva then I would use BA all the way unless the cost is a lot more and the timings are reasonably safe. If you use BA all the way and your conecting flight is late it is BA's duty to look after your onward transport. If your EJ flight from Geneva is too late to conect to your BA flight to Toronto you have a problem. It was not BA's fault you missed your flight and they owe you nothing and that will cost you.

With EJ understand that there are no reserved seats so it is a bit of a scramble boarding. Pay close attention to their conditions. They are very strict about the cut of time for check in. With BA you will be assigned a seat at check-in.

easyJet and Ryanair are among the most on-time airlines in Europe, so that is unlikely to be a problem (incidents do happen, of course; no airline can predict or do much about bad weather, for instance, or strikes). That said, the one thing to worry about is, if for some reason your flight to London gets delayed, if you miss your connection (and it's not really a connection, you have to get your bags in London and recheck them on easyJet, it's a completely separate flight, if it's even at the same airport in London), you're SOL, easyJet will make you buy a whole new ticket, at whatever the price is at the moment. So make sure to allow plenty of time between flights.

I was at a wedding just last year in Stockholm where two of the guests got stranded in Spain because of cancelled Ryanair flights. No bad weather, no mechanical failures. Just unpopular flights that weren't worth putting on. Other guests from the UK weren't surprised and several had their own personal stories - about easyJet as well as RyanAir - of being delayed inexplicably. I don't pretend to understand the complexities of managing the hundreds of city pairs in a discount airline's system but if they are flexible enough to handle unwanted down flights (for weather or maintenance issues) then why can't they be flexible enough to handle wanted down flights - where the tickets sold don't cover the marginal cost of travel? These airlines offer massively cheaper fares than the oldline carriers - do you really think that you get those cheap fares at no external cost? Personally I'd put up with the risk of getting delayed for cheaper fares - and in a sense that's what every single priceline.com customer does when they bid for a flight that might start at an odd hour and have inconvenient layovers.

OK, I'm still trying to picture some representative of Ryan Air walking out into the terminal and announcing, "sorry, folks. We didn't sell enough tickets for this flight so we're cancelling it."

I'm curious who would have told these people that was the reason for the cancelled flight. If they were told that, then I just gained a whole new respect for Ryan Air, because they must be the only airline in the world where they will tell you the truth. Most airlines would never, ever admit that was the reason for cancelling a flight.

&quot;<i> two of the guests got stranded in Spain because of cancelled Ryanair flights. No bad weather, no mechanical failures. Just unpopular flights that weren't worth putting on. Other guests from the UK weren't surprised and several had their own personal stories - about easyJet as well as RyanAir</i>&quot;

Sounds like an urban legend to me.

There are lots of problems w/ the budget airlines - but they do have to re-position their planes so they can't just leave one on the ground. It has to get to its next city for another flight.

miaj: using EasyJet is safe and you can pretty much count on being on time. But it is <b>VERY</b> important that you allow enough time for airport transfers/connections. They are very strict about check in times and you must have you boarding pass in hand before they close the flight. Just being in line to check in isn't good enough. Also they have strict (and low) weight restrictions for both checked and carry on luggage.

Low cost airlines will move heaven &amp; earth to keep to their schedules as ANY delay costs them money - as does cancelling a flight.

They certainly wouldn't announce at the airport that they are cancelling the flight as that would make them liable for ALL the costs of getting the passengers home. (Recent EU legislation).

From my own experience, Miaj..I just HOPE your bigger bucks carrier BA gets you to the airport in time so you can catch the EasyJet flight.

Yes, they are &quot;reliable&quot; which is one reason they are still flying and making as much money as they are.

Talk of why flights are cancelled sort of reminds me of our much delayed and finally cancelled American Eagle flight from Ft. Myers to Miami last year (where we were to pick up an AA flight to Laguardia). They kept saying that the problem was the Miami airport and the weather there prevented our landing so that we couldn't take off from Ft. Myers. But after a lot of people started demanding another flight, they started offering to put people on other flights to Miami. Huh? If the problem was that planes couldn't land in Miami, how were the other airlines landing there. When people started asking the clerk that, she turned red and walked away from her post. Truth is not a common thing in cancelled flights.

I still say I find it hard to believe that a budget airline actually told anyone the reason they cancelled a flight was due to lack of ticket sales.

I don't know about urban legends - I just know about the two empty seats at the wedding reception. I also don't expect that they announced that the flight was cancelled because not enough people had booked a ticket - are you guys crazy? Please re-read my first post. Ryanair cancelled without any excuse...and the locals at the wedding (including the girls' brother who actually knew almost no one at the wedding, poor guy) were much more disappointed than surprised that it happened - and without evidence of weather or maintenance issues all agreed as to the reason. As for recent EU legislation this wedding was almost a year and a half ago, so things might have changed. But the girls were put on the following day's flight...so perhaps this new legislation did not apply. I don't know anything about it. Based on
the comments of alanrow, grsing, and Janisj perhaps such events are rarer than I thought - but I certainly don't appreciate my FIRST-PERSON story being written off as made-up or an urban legend. It happened. Draw your own conclusions as to whether it implies anything about the overall sector.

OK - first of all your report isn't &quot;first person&quot; since it didn't happen to you. You are merely reporting what the others said.

and &quot;<i>all agreed as to the reason</i>&quot; - well that must make it true??

OK, now I get it.
It it wasn't weather and it wasn't mechanical then it HAD to be that they didn't sell enough seats.

There isn't another possible reason for cancelling or delaying a flight.
Sorry for the confusion. I'm glad the missing guests were able to figure that out for themselves.

Talk about coincidence that this thread should appear! I just rechecked our booking on Easyjet, for reasons having nothing to do with this thread, and I was confused and shocked to note the online departure time for our flight from Berlin to Krakow had been changed, from 7:00 to 12:25! I had not received any e-mail or other notification of the change.

I have e-mailed Easyjet, requesting an explanation. Geez! We would have gone sideways if we'd gotten up at 4:30 to get to the airport in time for our 7:00 flight, only to find the departure had been postponed 5 1/2 hours and no one bothered to tell us, but I can't imagine how upset I'd be if it meant I'd miss a connecting flight.

EasyJet should have notified you (not sure why they didn't), but sometimes airlines prefer to wait until the last 72 hours, because it might change again. I'm a bit paranoid, so if possible I always recheck 12-24 hours before the flight just in case.

That can happen w/ ANY airline. AA changed one of my flights over 6 hours - and their e-mail (which I believe they probably did send) didn't get to me. Probably due to filters.

Neopolitan, it is possible that if you were flying a puddle jumper with America Eagle that it would have been unable to land in Miami whereas certain other kinds of planes might have been able to. I'm not an expert on planes, but that could have been a legitimate excuse on the part of American Eagle.

I've only flown easyJet twice, last fall in Europe, and they were fine, basically on time. I got good leg room because I managed to be almost first on the plane each time and got an exit row but the other seats sure looked not to have much leg room. I'd probably do easyJet again but only if they were much more convenient and/or cheaper than BA or someone else.

All the airlines can cancel flights for any reason (or lie about it), not just the budget airlines. For every Ryan Air story, I'm sure we can dig up a BA horror story. It's silly to single out one or two budget airlines based on a single second-hand incident without looking at a lot of data for all the airlines.

Andrew