September 2000

Anna and me were going on a short holidaytrip to London, to visit one of our online-friends in real life. Anna was going to travel straight to London from Finland and I was going to London from Amsterdam. We would meet there and after our stay there (which was really nice! Thanks Rob!) we would fly back together.
There was this fairly new company that offered really cheap flight tickets (I won't tell the name, except that it starts with an E and ends with asyJet and that it has these orange planes *grins*), which you could book through the internet. Really cheap, because there was no additional service on board included in the ticket price, so you would get no meal on the trip unless you paid extra for it on board. And also, the flight prices were based on short times on airports, so everything was supposed to go really fast and smooth.
I had the second flight on a Thursday or Friday morning and flying from Schiphol-Amsterdam was still pretty ok, with only little chaos, only one gate change and only 15 minutes delay.
But I already feared with big fears for our trip back, which was on a Monday in the late afternoon from London Gatewick. Checking in our luggage went already a bit ummm... unsmooth. The system with EasyJet was so (it might've changed since we flew, I'm writing this June 2002) that if you checked in as first, you got some kind of coupon with which you could get into the plane first and pick your seat. With our plane it went in three groups of 30-35 people and we checked in so early that we could go in with the first group.
But before that... before checking in actually started we had been waiting already at the gate we were supposed to board from. But at the time we were supposed to be boarding, nothing happened. No one noted us why boarding didn't start, nor did we hear through the intercom if there had been a gate change or what was going on. Only after some 20 minutes there were two guys coming to the group of travelers to announce a gate change. If we would please follow them to this and that gate.
Then it still took some 20-25 minutes before we were actually ready for boarding. Usually there's either some kind of tube going to the plane or there's a bus that would bring you to the plane you're supposed to be boarding. But not in EasyJet's case. They have everything Easy, and so if we would please follow the two guys out to the plane. We walked some 400 meters straight across the airfield ( not just crossing a landing or take-off track) and climbed the plane with one of those mobile stairs.
We sat down somewhere in the plane where we thought we would make it safe over to Holland and after awhile, when all the passengers (or at least most of them) had found their seat there was this darling female voice coming through the speakers in the plane: "Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Please do not put on your seatbelt yet, in case something goes wrong with fuelling the plane. We will notify you to put on the seatbelt before taking off."
Anna and me looked at eachother, thinking the same thing. And there were also some disturbed sounds coming from elsewhere in the plane. Hearing that through the intercom was at least a comforting start of the trip.
It took quite some time before anything else happened, we just stood there on the airport, waiting, and then all of a sudden that same darling voice sounded through the speakers again: "There's a little problem with a passenger that checked in. His luggage is already on the plane, but the passenger isn't. People of our staff will come up here with bags. Could you please let us know if you recognize your bag?"
And then two guys actually came up, holding up bags in the front of the plane and people were supposed to give a yell when they recognized their own bags in that.
Well... Anyway... In the end everything worked out and we left almost 2 hours later than planned. Nothing happened with fuelling and we also got safe to Amsterdam, so...
But for us no more EasyJet...