Just return from a return trip to Malaga with Monarch after a twenty year gap since my last Monarch flight and a change to this airline after so many issues with Jet2 on cabin luggage.
On our return I remembered my vow of twenty years ago never to fly with Monarch again and wish I had stuck to it.
Priority booking is a joke, I can understand now why passengers in the departure lounge queried why we had purchased, seat allocation booked virtually a year ago are not guaranteed it seems, leg room even for someone 5' 8" is insufficient. Your unable to print your return boarding cards out at the same time as your outboard, you must wait until 28 days to departure. cabin staff were very unprofessional on the return trip.
The lack of awareness of staff is breathtaking. At LBA gate 5 we were as disabled led to the lift to access the first floor. We were then told only stairs to get back down to the ground level again for the walkway, asked how we were going to managed this the girl just shrugged her shoulders. It seems that to go back the way we came by the lift to the ground floor would put us in a loading stream for another aircraft, it seemed the first disabled persons they had met. We were then told our fault as not book special assistance, which we dont need, let those who need have the benefit, we just cant do stairs.
At Malaga we were sat in front of the gate in the disabled seating and you would have thought us invisible, not once did the gate staff ask us the type of assistance we required ( we arrived at the gate 90 minutes before take off time), this has never before happened in all our time flying, we had booked PB, but there was no line or call on loading.
On our return there we received an email from Monarch asking us to rate our trip, there is actually a question did you buy allocated seats and did you received them yes or no, they obviously know they have an issue. Unfortunately having spent 20 minutes filling in the report advised at the end they could not enter into a one to one conversation with my issues, but thanked me for my input.
Unfortunately have booked flight through to Monarch until October 2017, has cost us £200 a flight to change the names on these flights to our children, there going to stand the cost of changing dates/times and rebooked with Jet2.
Ten days before the Monarch flight we flew with Ryanair, what a difference, priority booking observed, seat allocation observed, leg room far superior, disabled assistance wonderful, cabin temperature/humidity perfect on our guages, not in the red, staff supportive and responsive, cabin staff professional