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• Blue Mountains says:

  7 Jul7 July 05:15

  Assuming you mean Norwegian and not Nowegian on the title… An easy mistake to make and quite easy to fix. 🙂

  • Rob says:

    7 Jul7 July 07:20

    Done!

• Zoe says:

  7 Jul7 July 06:26

  For those who missed it in comments earlier in the week Flybe are aggressively measuring hand luggage and collecting £40 / £50 per bag if even mm too big. We have removed the wheels from our bags for our return trip to avoid paying them anything on our return. They are also not too keen on adverse comments on their Facebook posts.
  I suspect some senior staff have bonuses that are revenue based, they are happy to collect £40 from customers now knowing they will be gone in six or twelve months time when those customers fail to rebook with them.
  I know some customers unable or unwilling to pay the £40 have dumped their luggage and carried their belongings in plastic bags instead. I wonder if Flybe are sending the luggage to landfill or selling it?

  • Henry says:

    7 Jul7 July 08:05

    Charge what they want they have a name change coming up so might as well grab revenue.
    They can blame the rip off charges on Flybe and brush it under the carpet with a new name.

  • Shoestring says:

    7 Jul7 July 08:34

    yep but even Ryanair is a pussycat these days if you’re slightly oversize

    obvs for commercial reasons, it simply doesn’t pay to really p off your customers with such a bad attitude

    1-2cm here or there doesn’t impact the overhead locker storage space in any meaningful way

    the only reason Flybe are doing this is to extract/ extort more money from a captive market of passengers

  • Sussex bantam says:

    7 Jul7 July 08:49

    I suspect virtually every senior manager has revenues as part of their bonus. In my company every single employees bonus is at least partly impacted by hitting a revenue figure.

    If I were a shareholder I would be worriedly if that wasn’t the case !

    • Rob says:

      7 Jul7 July 09:49

      Big gap between revenue and profit, even bigger gap between profit and cash.

      • Zoe says:

        7 Jul7 July 11:05

        Badly set up bonus schemes can cause unintended consequences, look at what happened to Swindon Insurance in 2013.

        • Rob says:

          7 Jul7 July 11:18

          Or indeed Amex UK, where bonuses were driven by new sign ups 🙂

      • Sussex bantam says:

        7 Jul7 July 11:15

        Of course – although without revenue there tends to be neither profit nor cash

        Anyways – I was reacting to the OP’s comment which seemed almost accusing that senior staff might have a revenue target as part of their bonus. In my experience it would be much more surprising I’d that was not the case

  • Zoe says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:01

    That’s true but I believe they have made the new sizers to be exactly 55 x 35 x20 hence suitcases of those dimensions will not fit. I will measure the Southampton sizers on my return and report back.
    Not since Barnard Marcus tried to unfairly retain the deposit on my student house in 1987 have I seen such pigheaded corporate behaviour. (Yes, they returned it eventually but had assumed as we were just students we were easy game)
    Good luck trying to buy a bag that would fit their criteria, the first 50 under 56cm ones on the John Lewis website were too big, I gave up comparing after that.

    • Anna says:

      7 Jul7 July 11:52

      A few years ago we got a couple of Wenger wheelie cases which are a bit smaller than the maximum dimensions but are fine for up to a week away in our experience. I don’t know if they still make them, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t.

• NigelthePensioner says:

  7 Jul7 July 06:58

  The linked article on Fly(may)be is succinct and accurate. They (*Connect) however have a further problem and that is the introspective, poorly managed major domestic hub of BHX. This airport is atrociously run and provides not an iota of daily Customer service. The passenger assistance provided (albeit by a third party) is clearly not monitored for effectiveness or adequate operatives; it seems never to have any management present on site. The speed of luggage retrieval is ridiculously long and frankly its just as well an A380 never pitched up fully loaded; they would still be off loading baggage now!
  What sort of airport management planning causes major road disruption (A45) for months whilst they adapt the airport for an aircraft that was clearly not going to be around for long? The solution for the A380 was to divert the A45 in a huge U bend around the end of the extended runway – that has never been needed! It looks ridiculous on Google maps and epitomises the “management” that Connect Air will be up against whilst trying to improve the “Flybe” route image. Will Virgin come to BHX? I doubt it, I rather think that they will move the “Flybe” domestic hub to Manchester. Time will tell.

  • Mr(s) Entitled says:

    7 Jul7 July 07:04

    Move to Man makes a lot of sense. I can see that happening.

  • Shoestring says:

    7 Jul7 July 07:33

    yep that map is funny given no A380 🙂
    https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Birmingham+Airport/@52.4434867,-1.7376253,15.75z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0xd7fab23579355bb!8m2!3d52.4523821!4d-1.7435071

    • Jake Mc says:

      7 Jul7 July 08:11

      Emirates do fly in using an a380 but the disruption was not worth it as all emirates did was convert 3x 777 into 2x 380 services per day. The 380 therefore adds no discernible capacity benefit and only takes away some flexibility in scheduling.

      A complete mess by BHX authorities. I understand the premise of allowing a380 to land but the feasibility study into expected long term demand must have been wafer thin….

  • Charlieface says:

    7 Jul7 July 07:38

    The main Flybe hub is already Man, it has more flights than any other. That doesn’t help you after you take a look at T1, it’s no better than Birmingham.

  • ADS says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:23

    i didn’t realise that BHX were so well known for incompetence !

    they regularly get confused when i arrive on a CTA flight, and the correct doors don’t open to allow arriving pax to bypass Border Control.

    a couple of years ago my mother (and fellow CTA arriving pax) got stuck in a corridor for half an hour!

    • TGLoyalty says:

      7 Jul7 July 22:05

      Why does a flight from Catania get security bypass?

• Michael says:

  7 Jul7 July 07:33

  Who do you think would want the BHX routes? It’s one I’m going to be flying for business a lot and although Flybe has its faults I did like them.

  • Lady London says:

    7 Jul7 July 08:47

    Think I saw a while back that LX had the odd flight to BHX. If there’s a slot pair at, say, Paris that LX could grab by flying to BHX for a while.. who knows. That’s assuming Brexit doesn’t lead to airlines only doing the 4 major UK airports.

  • The Jetset Boyz says:

    7 Jul7 July 10:09

    It’ll be interesting to see who the AMS & CDG to BHX slots will appeal to so definitely one to watch.

• Lee says:

  7 Jul7 July 07:45

  Virgin Connect is the new name for Flybe.

  It has recently been registered as a trademark.

  • Andrew says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:53

    Could just as easily be the name for a competitor to the Curve Card, an Open Access rail franchise, or set of puzzle books.

    • Lee says:

      7 Jul7 July 13:33

      Not when it is owned by Virgin and is the the groups for airlines!

  • Brian W says:

    7 Jul7 July 16:18

    Could just as easily have been registered by Virgin to stop others doing so, similar to many companies taking numerous URL’s similar to their own. Doesn’t mean they are going to use it to trade with although it looks very likely they may if Little Red isn’t to make a return.

• Lee says:

  7 Jul7 July 07:50

  No Hilton offer on any of our cards, BA or Platinum.

• Mr(s) Entitled says:

  7 Jul7 July 07:57

  OT Bits: I’m off to Europe 27/7 and I’m seeking a 0% fx card. I don’t want another credit card just for a short trip so I believe my best options are Curve or Revolut. Qestions:

  – Do either leave a mark on your credit report?
  – Any issue with one or the other not being issued in time?

  • Jake Mc says:

    7 Jul7 July 08:16

    Or open a bank account like monzo or starling or N26. Money is protected with all and you will get your card in time. All offer 0%FX

    As these are current accounts they don’t impact credit scores

    • Genghis says:

      7 Jul7 July 15:52

      But a debit card linked to a current account is a credit product due to the way payments are processed, hence a potential search.

      • Jake Mc says:

        7 Jul7 July 18:32

        You learn something new every day…

  • Joe says:

    7 Jul7 July 09:27

    Curve and Revolut both seem to mark up the exchange rates on the weekend (0.5% surcharge if paying in Euros, on top of the ‘interbank’ rate), whereas Monzo/Starling/N26 give you the MC rate with no surcharge all the time.

    • Mr. AC says:

      7 Jul7 July 12:10

      The MasterCard rate does actually have a higher surcharge on the weekend than on weekdays (around 0.2-0.3% by my measurements), so you’re better off with Curve on weekdays and slightly better off with e.g. Starling on weekends.
      However if you’re charging Curve to a points earning card, you’re better off with Curve approximately all of the time.

      • Roy says:

        7 Jul7 July 14:28

        I thought that if MasterCard does the conversion, it happens on the day the charge is applied to your account – which is always a working day. Or is that no longer the case?

        • the_real_a says:

          7 Jul7 July 14:52

          No curve is using a spot (bank) rate intermediary for major currencies. They do their own conversions.

        • Roy says:

          7 Jul7 July 18:15

          Right, Curve and Revolut do the conversion themselves, and charge the spot rate, plus an additional fee for weekends and, in the case of the free Curve, an additional fee for converting more than £500 in a month.

          Most other cards let MasterCard or Visa do the conversion for them. As I understand it that conversion happens at the time the charge hits your card – not at the instant you make the transaction. If you make a transaction on a weekend, the day the charge hits your card is usually early the following week. I’d need never heard of the Mastercard rate having a premium for weekend conversions, mainly because MasterCard conversions normally (always?) happen on a business day.

    • Roy says:

      7 Jul7 July 14:26

      But with Revolut you can convert some of your GBP to EUR (or whatever other currency you’ll be spending in) in advance of the weekend, to avoid the 0.5% surcharge.

      • the_real_a says:

        7 Jul7 July 14:55

        Exactly Roy, but for some reason not many people know this… Revolut will use the currency in your digital wallet before making any conversions. So if you have a balance in your USD digital wallet this will be spent first whenever doing card transactions. Also the Fx rate on wallet to wallet conversions is at bank rate.

        • the_real_a says:

          7 Jul7 July 14:56

          * when making a USD transaction on your card in the example.

        • TGLoyalty says:

          7 Jul7 July 22:08

          That wasn’t the case 3 months ago when I was using it in Italy. It converted my gbp balance rather than use the EUR one first.

        • Roy says:

          8 Jul8 July 10:18

          I use it all the time with EUR and USD balances. Works just fine. (Just make sure you don’t accept DCC.)

          The one gotcha is that it really doesn’t like (possibly can’t) split transacations between currencies. So if you don’t have a sufficient balance in your EUR wallet, it will take the entire amount from the GBP wallet instead.

• Nick Merry says:

  7 Jul7 July 07:58

  The linked Flybe article is extremely poor in my opinion. The author hasn’t even flown on Flybe this year. The flight cancellation issue is long gone.

  If you want to fly from a regional airport like Birmingham and avoid the pain of Heathrow, it’s about the schedule and not the colour of the seat. Flybe do this well.

  • Zoe says:

    7 Jul7 July 08:08

    Take a look at comments on Flybe Facebook posts. Plenty about cancellations.

  • ADS says:

    7 Jul7 July 11:27

    there was a particularly bad outbreak of cancellations at the start of April

    https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/flybe-flight-cancellations-refund-delay-compensation-today-a8852421.html

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