easyJet to open its new Birmingham base early

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

• Bernard says:

  8 Dec8 December 06:52

  EasyJet early?
  Won’t happen. An airline that cancels every year and runs late.

  • Richie says:

    8 Dec8 December 08:46

    ….and ignores reg. UK261 and the UK CAA’s CAP2155 doc.

• Barry cutters says:

  8 Dec8 December 07:25

  Off topic totally – but maybe someone can suggest how to deal with my issue .

  Going to Tenerife on my stag so in may with 30 other lads split over manc and Liverpool . All on Ryanair . Times all pretty much matched when we booked .

  But there has been flight time changes and now they have split all the different bookings on to different combinations of times across each airports 2 daily flights.

  I basically want to change everyone to the same flights – but when I call they won’t let me as I haven’t had an email notifying of the change on the bookings that were made earlier (as they have already had one flight change) . All the bookings made after that have had the email and changed allowed.

  Doesn’t seem fair that they have changed the flights more than once and then I can’t change it.

  We are 6h+ difference in most cases to the flights we changed to

  • Bill says:

    8 Dec8 December 07:50

    They won’t do anything until you receive the email notification. When you get that you then have the right to move everyone onto the same flight. In my scenario recently I had an TFS-EDI cancelled. They rebooked me onto a flight about 7 hrs later that day. There was only one flight per day. I told them to move me onto TFS-MAN which was almost the same time as my original flight. Be prepared for an argument though. Our group had two reservations. Two of us contacted live chat. One agent done the request immediately. The other one took some persuasion and took 25 minutes. If you know your rights then you can just keep trying if one refuses. But the key is that you must wait for their email notification

    • barry cutters says:

      8 Dec8 December 08:59

      i cant work out why? we booked pretty much a year out and they made changes in june. We accepted the change and then they changed again in sept.

      Guys that added on and booked to the trip have received the emails back in sept. But the majority of us haven’t. It doesn’t seem logical

• The real Swiss Tony says:

  8 Dec8 December 07:29

  The last thing BHX needs is more early morning departures – they can’t cope as it is. Also the Aspire (South) lounge is I believe still closed post-COVID. I tried to get in there a couple of weeks ago to find the place shuttered. The bacon sandwich in All Bar One was however I’m sure far superior to anything they would have served up.

  • E says:

    8 Dec8 December 08:01

    The Aspire South lounge was open last week. They did say they were sometimes closed at short notice though due to staffing issues.

    • tony says:

      8 Dec8 December 09:35

      This was at the start of October and the place looked as if it was destitute. Although given the notes by @ChrisBCN perhaps it was indeed fully operational 😬

  • BOSSMANTRAVELS says:

    8 Dec8 December 08:57

    I’d agree BHX just can’t cope with the amount of early morning flights, for any early morning flight I’ve learnt my lesson and get a fast pass which isn’t really fast but better. Maybe that’s BHX’s ploy to get you to part with another £5 🙂 I also walked into the Aspire South and walked out 2 mins later, it took longer to get checked in with our PP than we stayed in the lounge it was that bad!

  • ChrisBCN says:

    8 Dec8 December 09:22

    I gave up on the Aspire lounges there some years back, they were/are both truly awful – there are always quiet and calm places around the airport if you hunt them out.

  • Chris L says:

    8 Dec8 December 09:24

    Hopefully when the new security hall opens it’ll be better

    • The real Swiss Tony says:

      8 Dec8 December 13:33

      Hopefully when the new security hell opens it’ll be better

      I’ve corrected that for you. You’re welcome 😉

• ChrisBCN says:

  8 Dec8 December 09:28

  “At most, you will see three flights per week”.

  I can beat this – Barcelona gets 4 flights a week. But only for 4 weeks in April – then twice a week for rest of schedule.

• James says:

  8 Dec8 December 09:43

  BHX is a real shell of an airport compared to what it used to be. The collapse of Flybe/Monarch hit it quite hard, and it is surprising how few destinations it serves (you can’t fly to Paris, Nice or Lyon for example). I guess the downfall compared to MAN is you are only 2h drive to Heathrow. Not to mention, the crazy runway extension and rerouting the A45 to allow A380s but rarely used.

  • BOSSMANTRAVELS says:

    8 Dec8 December 10:03

    You can fly direct to Paris with AF (3 flights a day) and EasyJet also fly direct. Agree it will struggle with Heathrow being less than 2hrs aways. I had found memories of the old London Airways lounge at BHX.

    • ankomonkey says:

      8 Dec8 December 17:53

      I live somewhere between BHX and LHR. We much prefer BHX due to its far smaller size, enabling us to get in and out in a fraction of the time taken at LHR. Usually, getting from T5 B or C gates to the main T5 terminal alone takes longer than it takes to be deplaned and out of BHX.

  • Aston100 says:

    8 Dec8 December 10:36

    There are multiple daily non-stop AF flights to Paris.
    You can fly non-stop to Lyon, albeit once or twice a week.
    Emirates flew an a380 twice a day. Might be down to 1 a380 + 1 777 currently but I expect 2 * a380 again.

    And yes, BHX sitting under 2 hours drive between both LHR and MAN doesn’t encourage airlines to fly there.

• ADS says:

  8 Dec8 December 10:46

  “At most, you will see three flights per week … You will need to be flexible, and stay away for a multiple of seven days, to take advantage of many of these routes”

  Or alternatively mix and match airlines / airports!
  I regularly take the train (around an hour) from London as BHX prices are often half that from London – and the train isn’t that much longer than to some London airports!

  The only downside is that there aren’t early trains from London to BHX – so you can’t get an early flight out of BHX (unless you stay overnight).

  • Andrew J says:

    8 Dec8 December 13:44

    Or do the opposite way around fly from LHR with BA and enjoy Galleries First and First Wing, and then fly back in to BHX and be out the airport in 15 minutes of landing.

    • The real Swiss Tony says:

      8 Dec8 December 15:47

      I think simply navigating the tensa barriers that they seem to have permanently in place for immigration at BHX takes 15 mins. It’s a new level of tedium, especially when the whole place is deserted.

      Oh and don’t bother checking bags – I recall seeing a sign on the wall in bag reclaim that said the target for getting bags off a widebody plane was 60 minutes.

• Bernard says:

  8 Dec8 December 17:41

  Goes without saying that if there’s a Jet2 alternative, that’ll be the better quality option.

• Azza says:

  8 Dec8 December 20:22

  I live in Birmingham and try my hardest to avoid flying out of there.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.