Review of easyJet flight Lyon → Lyon in Economy

Hello and welcome to my 2017 summer flight series…and to this flight going to…NOWHERE!!

Teaser:

Here is my itinerary to Spain and Canada:

1. U24421 from Lyon to Madrid on the 07/07/2017 (you are here)
1bis. IB3735 from Lyon to Madrid on the 10/07/2017
2. IB3230 from Madrid to Rome on the 14/07/2017
3. AC891 from Rome to Toronto on the 14/07/2017
4. AC125 from Toronto to Vancouver on the 14/07/2017
5. AC840 from Vancouver to Frankfurt on the 06/08/2017
6. LH234 from Frankfurt to Rome on the 07/08/2017
7. IB3233 from Rome to Madrid on the 07/08/2017

Pre-flight:

2 months ago, I just bought a one-ride ticket with Easyjet, which was quite affordable for the pic-summer-period (65€).
One month later, I checked-in online and got my boarding pass, i´d be seating on 16A, a window seat (yeaaaaahhhhh!!!).

Easyjet Flight 4421:

On July, 7th, I was finally on holydays and wanted to go to see my fam in Madrid for a week.
My trip starts by getting to the airport barely 3 hours before SCHEDULED departure. As public transit to the airport is reeeeeaaaally expensive (15€ a ride…), I got there by car, traffic was okay. Getting to the airport is quite easy and well signed. Here, we can see the airport train station, designed by Santiago Calatrava, emblematic of LYS.

Then, I headed straight to the brand-new built Terminal 1B, which will totally replace the AWFUL Terminal 3 by 2018.

After parking the car, as I had plenty of time, I had a tour of the new terminal:

Then, I had a look at the FIDS, my flight was on-time (at the time..)

And went upstairs to the security check as I hadn´t any luggage to check-in

I like the design of the new terminal it reminds me to the train station that you can see from the new one

Then, it was time to go to the security check which was quick and efficient:

After clearing security, we headed to the boarding gates…unfortunately, the new boarding gates are not yet opened as jobs are still be doing inside the terminal… so let´s get to the dumbest terminal ever: LYS T3!

It´s quiteeeee a long walk, you don´t want to be in a rush ^^ (15 minutes approx.), for me it was okay!

Finally, we arrived to the boarding gates, the hall was cleaner and less crowded than the last time I went (http://flight-report.com/en/report/19465/EasyJet-U24355-Lyon-LYS-Nantes-NTE)

Altough T3 is a non-spotter friendly terminal, toilets (which were clean) are the only spot where you can take pics of planes (it´s quite strange I know ;-)).

Then, we went through the duty free stores heading to the border controls (because of France state of emergency, France is out of Schengen area), that we cleared quickly

We still had 1 hour left before boarding time so we took a seat and chilled.

Half an hour before scheduled depature (18:10), first boarding announcement was made and we made it to…another waiting room…

After waiting for at least another half an hour in the the very crowed room and with some disturbing people (unfortunately, these will be important after…), we were told that because of very bad weather in Madrid, our flight was delayed for an undetermined duration even if our plane was parked, waiting for us.

Today´s ride would be a 13 year-old A319 with Easyjet old livery:

Finally, at 7pm, 20 minutes ahead scheduled departure time, we were cleared to board the plane by the rear door (yessssssss)

An Air Arabia A320 to Casablanca was parked next to us:

The cabin is also the old Easyjet cabin with unconfortable seats but still okay for a 1/2/3 hour ride:

Pitch is the average of a low cost carrier:

Our luggage was stored in the overhead lockers, the overhead pannel is an Airbus traditionnal one:

Today´s stuff into the back seat pocket in front of us:

Then, we waited and waited…

And at 7:30pm, the captain made the first announcement and told us that will be starting engines in the next 40 MINUTES, so 1h30 late… pax started complaining and remember the young peolple partying in the waiting room? Well, they were shouting, drinking and everything…guess what happened next?…

…you got it the "Gendarmerie" (police) breaked into the plane and sent off the disturbing people. This, took a while…and of course, we lost our slot, which meant that we had to wait for another one at 9pm, 2 hours and half ahead of scheduled departure…so I had plenty of time to spot some birds from my window seat

Finally, the cabin crew had a good idea: serving a hot glass of water after 2 hours on board…long life to Flight-Report though!

It was now 9pm and we were supposed to be pushing back by this time…but the captain took for a LAST time the micro and said: "Ladies and Gentleman, our 9pm slot has been cancelled and we can´t wait anymore because the crew has ran out of working hours… blablabla"… the flight was cancelled. As you can imagine, the pax got very angry and everything… but we couldn´t even deboard the plane because ground personnal were working on another plane…we had to wait another 20 minutes…

Then people started leaving the plane:

And there we were, back to the same tarmac than 3 hours ago, good light though ^^

Then, we walked back to the departure hall, where the passengers picked up their luggage and while, we quickly headed to the Easyjet reclaim desk, where things kept going wrong…
First of all, there were only 3 EMPLOYEES for 150 passengers, which made pax even more angry. Then, we waited for 20 minutes and one of the airline personnel told the crowd that everyone was going to be either refunded or rebooked on another flight BUT as it was a pic-week, flights to MAD with Easyjet were all full until Monday, 17th, 10 days later!!! Employees even looked for flights from other french/swiss/spanish cities…every flight was full for the coming week…you can imagine how mad at Easyjet staff were the passengers…

At this time, passengers started looking for a refund on Easyjet App and looking for other flights on Iberia, Vueling, Air France flights…want to pay 300€ for a single ride flight??? HELL NO!!!
My first move was to go to check Kayak.com flight options…I immediately ranaway from it… Then, I got the idea to check if there were any available seats on Iberia Express flight on Monday…there were 2 just for us!!! But worthed 250€ each… but as I had 4.000 Iberia Avios, I rushed to see if we could buy these seats with these Avios…1.900×2=3.800 Avios (+70€×2=140€) YESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!! I immediately bought the tickets and even if I ran out of Iberia miles, I saved nearly 350€! Afterwards, I left the airport (it was 11pm) as it was a complete mess, while people were still asking for hotel nights and restaurant dinner (they can request that)…

At the time I have written this report, I have asked for the Easyjet ticket refund + the 250€ compensation the EU law establishes for a delay of more than 3 hours or a cancellation. I haven´t received any answer yet…
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the rest of the trip and for the (hopefully!) real LYS-MAD on Monday, July 10th with Iberia Express!
Alvaro.