Trip Report: AMS-FCO
I decided to meet up for a long weekend with a friend who was in Rome on a business trip. I had initially tried to fly Ryanair nonstop from Eindhoven, which would have been super convenient since the bus to the airport goes right by my apartment. However, I discovered that Ryanair, Wizz Air (the Hungarian/Romanian/Ukranian budget airline), and other budget airlines have problems accepting US-issued debit cards. I know because I tried booking on Ryanair and Wizz Air several times, and then called my bank to see why they declined the charge, and every time the bank would say there wasn't ever a charge attempted. I googled this and found someone who had this experience flying Air Asia, so I think this affects a lot of budget carriers. I then went over to EasyJet which accepts Amex (as a back up), and my debit card worked there. Debit cards generally have lower fees than credit cards on these budget airlines, and only EasyJet accepts Amex (at the highest fee rate).
Unfortunately flying EasyJet meant a trip to Schiphol to catch the flight. Not that I'm not used to it, but it added some time and cost to my journey. EasyJet flies out of the "M" gates which I've never visited before - I think these are the gates for the cheap airlines, EasyJet and Air Berlin. You wait in this central waiting area until you see on the TV monitors to "go to gate." As you can see, this waiting area is very red.
EasyJet allows online check-in SIXTY DAYS in advance of travel. I guess when you can't cancel your ticket the airline has no problems worrying about no-shows. I checked in online as soon as I booked my trip, and I got boarding group 2. I thought this was a pretty high up number. I mean, Delta goes up to group 9. Turns out there are only two groups for boarding! "Speedy boarding" passengers who pay extra to board a few minutes early, and "everyone else." Turns out that Speedy Boarding passegers only get a few extra minutes to choose their seats before the masses get unleashed onto the plane. Everyone seems to have a preference to board through the front of the plane even though there was a line to go up the air stairs. Going up the back meant I could have my selection of several different window seats.
The EasyJet plane really packs people in, but it doesn't feel inhumane like the Ryanair flight I took many years ago, where the safety information card was printed on the seat in front of you, and there wasn't a seat back pocket. Here, there was the customary inflight magazine, duty free magazine, and safety card. Seatback ads were on our flight, touting smokeless cigarettes.
I slept basically the whole two hours, and woke up on descent into Rome. EasyJet is 100% buy on board, which actually made the flight pretty relaxing for me because I didn't have to wonder if I missed some sort of snack service. I was so tired I preferred to sleep the whole way.
