Aegean Airlines

LHR-ATH return. Crew very friendly and efficient. Food fine - greek oriented cuisine with complementary drinks. Seats comfortable reasonable legroom. As we had young children check in staff put priority labels on our bags for us. My only minor complaints would be at Heathrow they have just 3 or so desks and only open these a couple of hours or so before departure so you have to queue up to check the bags in - web check in is not that straightforward - I was unable to check us all in together but had to do it as 4 separate check ins. Also unable to purchase a ticket online for my son as he was 1yr old at time of booking but 2yrs old when flying and their website could not handle that. Otherwise a very pleasant start and finish to our holiday.

Athens to Santorini. Aegean have a modern fleet of mostly A320s. The flight was short but efficient. Seats comfortable. Business lounge in Athens is small but has a great variety of food.

MUC-ATH. The seating was standard European Business with the middle seat blocked. The highlight of the flight was the meal which was a pasta dish with shrimp calamari and tomato sauce - simply excellent. Friendly crew and good service as well as the meal.

ATH to FRA. Nice clean A320 polite and smiling crew. Service consisted of nice hot dish (unusual these days for short haul) and dessert Just one round of drinks (wine and beers available free of charge) but those who asked were served a second one with a smile. Crew perhaps a bit too tolerant with passengers who did not respect the seat belt sign during taxiing. .

LHR-ATH-LHR. Booked at the last minute because of the BA strike. BMI lounge excellent at T1 Swissport lounge at Athens almost as good. Modern clean A321-200 seats 2A/C outbound & 1D/F inbound. FAs excellent. Food service rather rushed outbound with no pre-lunch drinks and no offer of champagne pre take-off. Food average quality but good to have the Greek accent. Food service and quality similar inbound and still no sign of champagne. IFE unusually provided on a 4 hr flight but consisted of just a single film on overhead drop-down LCD screens. Priority baggage return worked remarkably well both outbound and inbound and the general efficiency of the new Athens airport was a delight. Overall a good product.

Customer support uninterested and never answer emails (despite the fact that I am a Gold card holder). Only contracted lounge in ATH if you are flying extra-Schengen. Unacceptable for the largest carrier in Greece since two of the most popular destinations are extra-Schengen: London and Larnaca. Some of the flight attendants have the nasty habit of ignoring passengers and thereby forgetting to bring drinks or meals to some. Hidden charges - this is not a no- frills airline yet you get charged for booking your flight online (10 EUR) there is no way around this fee as if you buy it over the phone you pay as well if you buy at their ticket desk as well.

Athens - Tel Aviv return. The price was fair flight was pleasant staff polite cabin clean the food very average as usual!

BRU-ATH-BRU. Both flights very nice new aircraft on time decent food (hot meal) with entertainment and this on a 2.5 hour flight.

I have travelled many times with Aegean Airlines from Berlin to Athens Athens to Larnaca but also in domestic flights in Greece. In general I would say that it is a very good company as long as everything goes well and you DONT need anything from the customer support. In that case you have to wait for hours (sometimes days) for someone to pick up the phone quite often to tell you that she/he is not competent to respond to your question and as such your call will be forwarded. Surprisingly 9 out of 10 times nobody will pick up the forwarded call. Another malicious trick they are doing is saying that you should wait for the responsible person to call you. Something that may happen after a week or so if you get lucky. They also have the bad habit of not informing the passengers for delays or other unexpected event that may jeopardise the trip. I missed a flight once (one of the very few that departed that day) because the advice of the Athens airport information desk (Aegean did not pick up the phone or the line was busy from 9 in the morning till midnight) to to my question if the flight will be delayed-cancelled or not was to go at the airport four o'clock in the morning and hope that the flight will take place otherwise ask the Aegean people there. I didn't risk it. As a result I was waiting 4 months to get the taxes from the ticket back. There are also hidden charges as using the internet to book tickets involves a fee the same applies though if you book the tickets by phone.

I recently flew from Athens to Milan. One extra bag cost 325 Euro. I could have purchased two tickets providing for two adults with bags for each less expensive. The counter agents were disinterested and responded to each other in Greek which I do not understand. This practice is unreasonable and unacceptable.