Cosmos/Monarch??

[mellymouse]

Am I right in thinking that the holiday company 'Cosmos' use Monarch airlines??

If so - can anyone tell me their experiences of flying to Orlando with Monarch please?

Although I'm still going to wait until all other Airlines have released their flights, at this moment in time, Cosmos are coming up with the best flight prices on the flight search engine I'm using for May 2009.

[loobylou]

We flew monarch in Aug last year, booked last min. They are ok nothing special. Not as much legroom as other airlines, food was airplane food!!! No seatback t.v's. You have to pay for drinks, headphones, snacks.
We are not bothered who we fly with as the flight is a means to get there,(as long as we do get there!) the cheaper the flight the more money to spend in florida. :happy-thumb
We flew Virgin for the 1st time in feb this year and to be honest they were nothing special, on par with TCD.
We are flying with bmi in Dec we have a change in Chicago. Have you tried BMI? I found a very cheap flight for christmas £347 each! We had to book them ;)

[dmrevis]

This all comes down to personal experiences, and personal preferences. At the end of the day Monarch are a charter airline so all the little "perks" you get on scheduled airlines are extra on these airlines. As stated above things like drinks, meals etc are extra. Your baggage allowance is usually smaller aswell.
As i said before its about personal preference usually. I'd never go charter. I've always flown quality airlines wherever i've gone - BA, Virgin, KLM, Royal Jordanian Airlines, El Al etc and the service on these airlines is top notch. I'd not trade that great service, free meals and drinks, seat back entertainment etc for a cheaper flight. Thats just me though.

[mellymouse]

This all comes down to personal experiences, and personal preferences. At the end of the day Monarch are a charter airline so all the little "perks" you get on scheduled airlines are extra on these airlines. As stated above things like drinks, meals etc are extra. Your baggage allowance is usually smaller aswell.
As i said before its about personal preference usually. I'd never go charter. I've always flown quality airlines wherever i've gone - BA, Virgin, KLM, Royal Jordanian Airlines, El Al etc and the service on these airlines is top notch. I'd not trade that great service, free meals and drinks, seat back entertainment etc for a cheaper flight. Thats just me though.

I tend to agree,......it's a long flight with 3 kids if there's no entertainments etc. The kids thought it was great last year being able to pop and ask for yet another lemonade for 'free' on VA ha ha! and the kids tv and games channels, activity bag etc really did do it's job well.
I was just interested to know what you 'loose out' on by going cheaper.
Will keep my eye on those VA prices! Ha ha!
I looked at BMI last night and was given a price of £6,500 for flights for next May!! :wide-eyes

[Catlady]

Wow that is expensive, are you looking to go through Virgin Holidays or maybe booking it all separately, maybe booking the flights direct through Virgin Atlantic then the car hire and villa online?
This is what we do nowadays.

[ADRIAN C]

That is very exspensive is that just for the 5 of you:purplejum

[mellymouse]

Actually, I'm wrong with what I wrote. That was the quote I got from BMI last night for the 5 of us travelling on the same dates THIS year!!!! I can't get a quote from them for 09 yet. (Forgive me - I was watching the football at the same time as getting quotes! Ha ha)
I just double checked and today BMI are quoting £2798.70 per adult for a flight leaving tomorrow :eek:.......unless their pricing is wrong and that's supposed to say 'total party' instead of 'per Adult'????!!!!!

Catlady, we have already booked the villa. We're doing it all seperately. Did the same last year too - and flew with VA - who we found very good. I suppose that's why I'm favouring them next time around!

[Tiggers Friend]

Scheduled flight prices for May 09 won't be out for 3 or 4 weeks depending when you're looking. The prices get released 336 days (I think) in advance. Remember you will not be able to get return flights till that point.

I've travelled with bmi before and found their service very good, but they don't fly direct to MCO from Manchester, and my wife doesn't enjoy the indirect experience.

The other point is that the charters only work on 7 and 14 days generally, on set days, so if you want date flexibility and ifferent durations schedule is the way to go.

[Mark256]

As Dmrevis said it is all about personal experiences, so I thought I would let you know our experience with flying with Monarch.
we flew out in late July 06 from Gatwick and had a 5 hour due to the aircraft arriving late due to technical problems, The plane was very cramped , no seat back screens and you had to pay for headphones to watch he larger screen that came down every 8 rows or so.
The real problems were on the way back arrived at Sanford at about 1400 for a 1700ish flight home, got slightly worried as the displays had no departure time for our flight, but at about 1530 a check in desk was allocated and we all started to line up. Stood there not moving for 2 hours with no on telling us what was going on, then at 1800 was told that our flight would not be leaving that day but would go tomorrow, but we was still to check in all our luggage but take out what we needed for overnight (the problem being that this was days after the plane bombing arrests in the UK and you would not be allowed to take any hand luggae on the plane). We then waited for over 2 hours for coaches to take us to a hotel which turned out to be next door to Sea World. On the coach journey we actually saw a Monarch rep who informed us that in fact our flight would not leave until the following evening (so we would have a whole day to kill with no change of clothes, swimwear etc).
The following day there was no sign of a rep to let us know what was going on, so we went out and brought new t shirts to change into and some swimwear for the kids so that they could use the pool as we had to stay close to the hotel as we did not know what time we was leaving. At about 1530 a rep turned up and told us that the coaches would be leaving in an hour to take us back to Sanford, and our flight would leave at 1930. so because we could not take any hand luggage or check anything else in we had to dump all clothes we was not wearing and all our toiletries.
we arrived at Sanford at 1700 and through security (which was inforcing the new rules vert tightly). We then sat in departures and waited and waited and waited with no sign of any Monarch staff. Eventually an announcment was made that the flight was due in at 2200 and we would depart at 0000 (another 6 hour wait at the airport).
at 2200 we saw the plane arrive much to everyone's relief. Again we waited to start to board but nothing happened. there was one person on the desk but he worked for the airport and not Monarch and he had no information to tell us. Then at 0015 about 10 armed police officers walked in to the departure lounge and we wondered what was going on, but they was obviously there to stop a riot as an announcment was made that becuse the flight crew had were up to there limit on hours that the flight would not be leaving that night and we were all to be taken to another hotel for the remander of the night and return in the morning (Monarch must have known this was the case hours before but had just left us sitting in the airport for hours. I quess its cheaper then us sitting in a hotel!!!)
The coaches picked us up at 0100 and took us to a hotel nearby but we was told at check in that the coaches would pick us up at 0600 to take us back to Sanford for a 0900 flight (so only 3 1/2 hours sleep).
we was picked up at 0600 and taken to Sanford, went through security again and the waited in depatures from 0700 until 1300 when we eventulally departed, the reason they gave was a'technical problem' on our original plane so we had a replacment which was a totally different configeration so anyone that had paid to upgrade to premium economy had standard seats. oh i almost forgot the plane did not have the range of our existing plane so we had to stop to refuel in St John's Canada on the way home.
We eventually got home some 42 hours late, hardley saw any Monarch staff and in no way recieved an appoligy.
when we got back to Gatwick and received our luggage most people's were soaked through and everything in them was wet or ruined, seems they had left them outside at Sanford all the time we was waiting and we had one of the heaviest storms of the summer
Sorry if this turned in to a bit of a rant but it was hell, I know these things do happen but it was the way we were treated by Monarch that really go to me, they did not care one bit and I will never fly with them again.
oh yes a when I got back to Gatwick my car would not start!!!!!!!! :angry::angry::angry:

[Claire71]

Mark that has to be one of the worst delay stories I've ever heard, I hope you received some compensation but it would have to be pretty good to make up for that fiasco:angry:A friend of mine flew to the states with the now defunct Maxjet last summer ( a business class only airline) and on return their flight was cancelled due to a 'technical fault'. There were a few spare economy seats available that night with VA with whom Maxjet had a reciprocal agreement or they were offered an overnight hotel stay and a free upgrade to first class with VA the next morning, no prizes for guessing which option she chose! :laughing: Apparently this was quite a regular occurence on Maxjet flights - might explain why they went bust:confused: It's a shame though because they were one of the few airlines to offer business class at an affordable price for us mere mortals and we were going to use them this year although it would have ment an indirect flight.

[Claire71]

Hi Mark, just read my post and owing to my poor grammar it sounds like I'm implying that the way you've told your delay story is bad when actually you've explained it really well :happy-thumb Now I'm confusing myself:confused: Sorry

[Mark256]

Claire
Even though nearly all the passanges joined together to demand compensation from Monarch they refused. After 6 month's trying we gave up, the only compensation we got was through insurance which was £100 each.

[Claire71]

That's appalling but not suprising unfortunately. It seems that more and more these days large companies are unwilling to correct mistakes and apologise for their incompetence. We all know and understand that sometimes delays are unavoidable particularly when involving a security alert however that does not prevent airlines from keeping their customers well informed, well fed and rested if necessary and apologising and compensating if the delays are their fault. Your story is enough to put me off from travelling with Nonarch however attractive the price may be and I'm sure others on here would think twice too - if only large corporations realised how corrosive a negative customer experience can be then perhaps they might try harder to retain our custom perhaps but for now whilst people are prepared to pay they don't have to care

[Crackerbarrel]

I've flown to Florida twice with Monarch and found them to be pretty poor. I don't like Sanford airport either.