by Harsha Dewa

Created on: April 19, 2008

Having our recent experience from a 2week holiday in Goa booked with First Choice (a British company), I thought I would tell you about my mixed feelings towards them.

This has been the second holiday we have booked with First Choice but the first time we have used FC airlines.

Our flight was scheduled Gatwick to Goa direct flight leaving on Saturday 4.30pm. We arrived very early hoping to check in our luggage and then enjoy some relaxed stress free hours roaming in duty free and having lunch. We arrived at Gatwick by 11am and once we found where we had to check in we were astonished at the mile long (slight over exaggeration) queue. Thinking we were going to be spending a few hours standing in the line luckily it was fast moving and we were at check -in within 40mins.

Once at check-in we booked in our luggage and requested window seats. We hoped that as we had arrived early, we would be able to select our seats.

At this point I was thinking about all the different ways First Choice were trying to make money out of us being a chartered flight. For an upgrade to premium class it was 89 per person. It doesn't seem that expensive but when there is 4of you traveling and you start converting all your extra's into Rupees, it does seem a lot so we decided against upgrading.

We were then told we had to pay an extra 35 for an extra 3" of legroom. It certainly does add up but again we declined.

At this point we were told there was an hour delay on the flight which didn't seem that bad. An extra hour roaming duty free or even catching up on sleep seemed fine.

We noticed our flight number up on the screen which stated 'please wait' and we constantly glanced at it in case of any change. Slowly all the flights before ours showed up the gate numbers and then were wiped of the screen once the flight had left.

At about 4.30 we were still waiting and 'please wait' remained on the screen next to our flight number. Hmmmm.....didn't seem promising as normally you are notified of which gate number you had to go to in order to board the plane.

Impatience was growing on us so me and a friend we were traveling with went to have some look at the shops (again). I spotted the information desk and noticed a few people there so we went over to find out an update. The lady behind the desk asked if we were inquiring about the Goa flight and then went on to saying it had been delayed until........wait for it.................8.30pm.

I was not happy as you can imagine. How else would we have known about

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