I have only ever flown with Monarch on three seperate occassions. They carry all the promises of a low budget airline: family friendly, punctual, comfortable. This certainly is not the case.
My first flying experience with Monarch was early 2008. I flew back from Tenerife with my then 6 month old daugher and grandparents. Monarch had not reserved the seat I paid for, luckily the man they had passed it on to saw that I had a baby and very kindly allowed me to sit there with no fuss.
Following this experience I decided I would fly with XL in future, a slightly more expensive but more reliable airline. Unfortunately they went in to administration due to the credit crunch and we were forced to book our flights with Monarch.
So in Christmas 2008 we flew from London Gatwick Airport to Sur Reina Sofia Tenerife. Unfortunately the flight was late, something which cannot be helped due to the tempremental weather conditions in Britain. What could be helped was the way Monarch dealt with the situation. There were no announcements made and no information available as to when the flight would depart.
Ninety minutes later we boarded the plane, but by this point my daughter was distressed at being made to stay in her pushchair and my fiance was irritable due to lack of information. They then failed to let disabled users and pushchair carriers on board first and provided no structure to their boarding process.
When we arrived in Tenerife my granddad told me Monarch had sold all three of his seats on the way out. He always pays for one extra seat as he has a bad back and is very tall, so the extra leg room option doesn’t provide enough respite.
Upon boarding a family of three had his seats, being the kind person he is he didn’t dispute with them he only disputed with Monarch who then told him he should have checked more vigorously and offered a measly £130 as compensation.
On our way back we were too almost conned out of our seats. The air steward tried to convince us that our daughter was too young to have her own seat. We had checked with the health and safety regulations and brought a suitable baby seat on board as well as paying £500, so we weren’t about to allow them to sell it on.Altogether Monarch is disorganised, the staff are poorly trained and they show no consideration for their customers.