WORST Flight of the year: BLUE AIR trip report, Birmingham - Cluj/Napoca, Boeing 737-800

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Date of Travel: NOVEMBER 2017
Airline: BLUE AIR
Flight #: 0B3752
Aircraft: Boeing 737-800
Livery: Liverpool Music City special Blue Air livery
Route: BHX-CLJ
Tail number: YR-BMH
Miles: 1199
Airborne time: 2h34m
Notes: Awful!

Thanks for finding my video and pressing play!

This is the worst flight experience I’ve had...if not ever, then certainly since I launched my channel a little over two years ago.

I’m an enthusiast and by default I enjoy flying. I’m positive about travel and although I try to remain honest, I’ll always be upbeat about what I’m doing where I can. After all, nobody wants to watch some guy flying round the world telling people week in week out how much it all sucks. But today’s report is an exception, because this was undeniably a completely rubbish experience and Blue Air don’t really care in my opinion.

I won’t waffle on in long paragraphs, just read this list of why it sucked:

BIRMINGHAM AIRPORT:

- Airport/station shuttle not working. No staff to explain why or how to get to the airport. Found my own way after giving up. No signposted route from the shuttle so it took me 30 minutes to walk trailing my bag.
- Awful, awful security line. Never seen it so bad at Birmingham, a normally good airport - and an airport I would normally advocate for. No idea what the issue was. Spent £5 to go fast track. Irritating.

BLUE AIR:

- Check in is contracted out to a third party. Agent wasn’t sure if my bag would be through checked to Bucharest, my final destination or whether I’d need to collect and recheck in Cluj. So I wasted 30 minutes in Cluj watching all the bags come out before concluding that it was indeed through checked.
- Boarding nonsense. Blue Air don’t have a monopoly on this trick, but I really really hate “boarding” and then waiting on a freezing cold/boiling hot airbridge while the aircraft actually gets ready. That’s plain inhospitable - keep us in the terminal where it is room temperature and don’t wind people up doing this!
- Tired cabin with obvious lack of maintenance on an older airframe.
- Inexplicably small storage net on the seat backs.
- Some of the worst scratches on a window I’ve ever seen. This made filming very hard when the sun was at certain angles. This meant I’ve had to make a decision not to use significant portions of footage including the takeoff roll (which is normally a mandatory part of my videos). Sorry if you like the takeoffs; I do too, but you couldn’t see anything and the footage was totally unusable. I don’t put stuff out that’s unwatchable.
- DIDN’T GET WHAT I PAID FOR - my meal wasn’t loaded. That was my dinner, and I’d paid for the meal as part of my fare. The crew did not even seem aware I was supposed to have a meal even though it’s in my booking confirmation and AVML was printed on my boarding card confirming this (for geeks: yes, AVML is Asian vegetarian meal but budget airlines use these codes to just denote “this guy’s ordered a standard meal”).
- Inappropriate material in an inflight magazine which will be read by children. Very surprised to see that if I’m honest. I found it hilarious, but also recognise that stuff ought not to be in an inflight magazine...
- Had a seat change without prior notification on my connecting flight, CLJ-OTP. Window to aisle. Luckily that was not a trip I planned to make a video on but I hate aisle seats and given my fare was top whack and included “preferential” seating it sucked more than usual.
- Went to complain at Blue Air’s website. The complaint field on the contact form has space for just 140 characters, the same as an old style Twitter message. Yep, condense the above into 140 characters to complain. This is the worst part in my opinion. It sums up the whole experience. Maddening, illogical, and not customer friendly.

I actively chastise people who turn their nose up at budget carriers but this poor experience was a shock to the system.

I have lots of videos coming out, including in midweek in the run up to New Year. Make sure you have your notifications set! 🛎

Enjoy the report.

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Видео WORST Flight of the year: BLUE AIR trip report, Birmingham - Cluj/Napoca, Boeing 737-800 канала Wingin’ It! Paul Lucas