Amanda´s profile
Reviews (2)
Monarch
Cheap but stressful
We booked flights from Luton to Tenerife with Monarch. The cost for 5 adults (after adding all the taxes which get added to the basic price) was £239.48 each. Then there was a charge of £44.43 for paying by credit card. Then you have to pay £17.99 EACH WAY for each bag you want to go in the hold. The website says you are allowed 5k each for hand-luggage, which is barely enough for a laptop + case - although in fact at both airports our hand luggage was not weighed. If you want to check in on-line so you can reserve your seats it costs (I think) £8.99 per person EACH WAY. You also have to pay (around £8 I think) if you want a meal during the flight. And of course you can pay for extra leg-room.
After all these extras you may well think that this is not such a budget airline after all. And the stress of worrying about having hand-luggage weighed can be considerable.
The check-in at both ends was painless.
The plane itself is of course very basic, and leg-room is a joke - I'm just over 5ft tall and even I found it a squash. Interestingly, if you look at the overhead lights, you can see that they do not match up with the seats - it's obvious that the original seats have been removed and extra rows put in.
On board they will charge you for everything. You even have to pay if you want a blanket!
As I was paying for 5 seats, it was worth choosing a budget airline, but if it was just the two of us, I would prefer to pay a bit more for a bit more comfort and less stress.
Rentalcars
Carhire300 comes up trumps again
I've used CarHire3000 before, and have always found them to be very cheap. This year we paid £131 for an 8-day hire in Tenerife, picking up and dropping off at the airport (and including a free additional driver). Considering that a taxi to our resort would have cost us £25-30 each way, this makes it amazing value. The car was a Citroen Berlingo, which was plenty big enough for us two adults + 3 teenagers + 2 large suitcases + 1 small + 4 backpacks. It was air-conditioned, and drove pretty well, once I'd sussed out the bite point (which I had to do after stalling on a 1:4 hill - a bit scary!). There was a long queue to pick up from Goldcar at the airport. which was the only drawback, but once we had the paperwork (we paid an extra £40-ish for damage insurance), it was easy to find the pick-up point. Drop-off was equally easy - in fact, all we had to do was hand over the key (no inspection was done). The car had a full tank of petrol when we picked it up, and we were told to bring it back empty. We didn't have to fill up at all, and had a small amount left in the tank when we dropped off, having driven around 700km.
Another plus point is that when we booked in early March (for a late August hire), we only had to pay a £25 deposit - the balance was taken automatically from my credit card a month before the hire date.
All in all, I can highly recommend this company.
Amanda´s profile
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