thomas cook

[Katy2605]

After reading the problems that people have had with virgin atlantic, i was wondering if anyone has ever flown with thomas cook to florida and what the service was like?

thanx

katy

[phaedra]

Flew with them via a Travel City Teletext offer from Newcastle last April, paid for the upgrade to Premiere as normal seat pitch (29, 30 or 31") is too small for me. Service was good, seats were leather and almost comfortable (which is pretty good for an aeroplane!). No problems with flights and would certainly use them again.

[steph_goodrum]

"After reading the problems that people have had with virgin atlantic, i was wondering if anyone has ever flown with thomas cook to florida and what the service was like? "

I'm beginning to sound like I'm being paid commission by Virgin Atlantic (or should be) but people are still obviously being confused by the problems being spoken about. They are nothing to do with Virgin Atlantic (we have never had a bad flight or service from them yet - we may have had delays but they have always been down to weather which is unavoidable). It is Virgin HOLIDAYS who have caused the problem and they work the same as any other travel agent.

[Cowboy]

You are correct Boo. Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Holidays are separate. Virgin Holidays need to buy their flights from VA.
I remember a few years ago, a Virgin pilot who is a client of my daughter (hairdressing)gave her two £100 vouchers. Virgin Holidays would not accept them but Virgin Atlantic did.
Mike.

[Nigel W]

Back to Thomas Cook we have flown with them they were what you expect for charter flights really. as long as it is clean, tidy and ontime you dont mind really.

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by Katy2605
After reading the problems that people have had with virgin atlantic, i was wondering if anyone has ever flown with thomas cook to florida and what the service was like?

thanx

katy
[/quote]

katy2605,

The problems have been with Virgin Holidays not to be confused with Virgin Atlantic, I know from past experience if you book direct with Virgin Atlantic the problems are less because you are booking a scheduled flight as opposed to packaged holiday, whether its a flight, flydrive or the full package, flight car and hotel/villa, Virgin Holidays is just like any other tour operator.

Julie R

[Achilles2k]

We have booked a package deal with Thomas Cook - our first trip to FLA. We have flights, villa and car all from them. (sorry villa owners - booked b4 i found this site). I hope it all works out.

Phaedra - how much did it cost to upgrade to Premiere?? I am only 6 ft - but my son (who is ONLY 15 years old) is over 6ft 2ins and growing rapidly [msnscared][msneek]. Might be worth our while . . .

TIA

[KevinT]

Hi Katy,
We like direct flights and often go from Newcastle to Sanford. We must have used just about all of the charter firms at one time or another and they are mostly of reasonable standard but not over generous with the legroom. We used Thomas Cook twice in the past couple of years and found them slightly better than some of the other charters. A lot of this was down to the plane they use from Newcastle which is an Airbus 330. They are a little more comfortable than the Boeing 727s that a lot of the charters use, though in fairness some of the others may now be using newer aircraft. We also travelled with Monarch on an airbus 330 and found that much better than the old DC10s they had. Airbus has seat back screens but still not great legroom.
I think we paid £150 each (return) to upgrade to premium on Thomas Cook and I personally didnt think the difference was worth it as I got a seat with some sort of large metal box screwed to the floor of the seat in front which meant I couldn't move my legs much at all. (I made sure I didnt get that seat on the way back!)which kinda defeats the purpose of upgrading.
I still feel that it depends a lot on which airport you travel from and what plane type you get (ie how old it is) I've travelled with Virgin as well and their 747s, although much bigger planes still don't have a lot of legspace in economy.
I was under the impression that some new laws were coming in to increase the minimum
distance between seats and even talked over the subject with a pilot of one of our journeys (we were both standing in the queue for the loo!)and he was explaining how they would lose one row of seats and move all the others up, but nothing seems to have happened about this , unless the adjustment was so small that nobody has noticed!
So Thomas Cook are as good (or bad) as the others, perhaps in our experience a little better than some.

Have a good flight with whoever you decide on!
KevinT.

[phaedra]

Nigel, the upgrade was £99 and certainly worth it, I've just flown with MyTravel in standard economy (no premeire seating at all on the flight) and I couldn't fit into a standard seat (I'm 6'6").

The outbound flight wasn't too bad as I'm disabled and had a medical request booked into the system and was given a window/bulkhead seat in row 8, on the rwturn flight they somehow managed to loose my medical request and I had to argue with the cabin staff who eventually found me an empty centre row to myself which sounds good but as there is no legroom meant I was sitting twisted sideways across the seats with the seat back and bottom metal frames pressed into me for 9 hours.



Katy, if you can fly from either Manchester or Gatwick I'd recommend US Airways, 34" seat pitch as standard, excellent in-flight entertainment system and price for 5 of us in early December from Gatwick is about £1500. The only "problem" is that you don't fly straight to Orlando and have to change planes in either Philadelphia or Charlotte (nice airport!).

The good news is that immigration in Charlotte are quite friendly and as the flight down to Orlando is an internal one you just pick up your luggage and go straight for your car without going through customs & immigration )

[Mick-H]

Our last trip over (March) we flew with Thomas Cook.
Going was no problem pretty standard stuff, on the way back however we had the seats at the very back row, never again worst trip I've ever had, no leg room at all [msncry][msnsad]