Flybe

✅ Trip Verified | Glasgow to Southampton. Departure gate staff announced to waiting passengers that boarding would be delayed by 10 minutes due to “technical issues”. Thirty minutes later passengers were still waiting. A passenger approached gate staff to ask why there had been no further information/announcements and was met by a shrug of the shoulders from the gate staff. After passengers were boarded we then sat for 20 minutes before take off. Flight departed 55 minutes late. If I had a £ for every time I’ve heard Flybe “apologise” for a delay...

✅ Trip Verified | Glasgow to Birmingham. Not to be recommended at all! Flybe doesn't care about customers. Not even sure why their is a line called "customer service" as they are useless. Your flight is delayed? They keep repeating you they can't do anything for you... A good will gesture to show their empathise to "their valued customers? Not at all... Overall, for such kind of flight, taking the car, the bus or the train would certainly be more interesting alternatives... Delays happen all the time, and strangely always less than 3 hours, allowing them not to be liable for any sort of compensation. Overall Flybe, I think some competition should certainly be beneficial for you to reconsider the sense of "customer service". But actually, when or if you finally realise that, it will most probably be too late, you would already have collapsed.. An upset regular customer among others.

✅ Trip Verified | Birmingham to Stuttgart. Be careful not to get ripped-off with hand luggage! They use a specific hand luggage size which is slightly smaller than normal IATA standards. If your luggage does not fit in by 1 cm, even if it weighs only 6kg, you have to pay 50 GBP. Using worn-out planes as well.

✅ Trip Verified | We had a return ticket from Heathrow to Newquay. Our carry on luggage fit the baggage size restriction at Heathrow but not at Newquay on our return, because Flybe made the size restriction smaller. The result was that we were charged £40 instead of £24 because online check in was no longer available. The customer service rep could not provide any justification for the reduced size for the same flight other than to say that many passengers had been surprised and had complained in the past. This is outrageous. The £40 charge will not change our lifestyle; it’s the principle that matters. We will never fly Flybe again unless there is no other option.

✅ Trip Verified | Southampton to Düsseldorf. I've travelled several times with Flybe before and used the SAME small hand luggage suitcase each time and I never had a problem going through all the checking and it fits in the overhead cabin inside the plane. All of a sudden, they decide to enforce this "strict" baggage checking policy and charged me £40 to check in my bag just because it didn't fit in their ridiculous metal baggage checker by around 1cm. I told them I had no money so the girl that was working on the check-in desk at 17:00 on July 9th told me that I could buy some bags from WHSmith and put my things in them which would mean that I would have to leave my suitcase there which they would "dispose of". So to confirm this, my friend who was with me, asked the other woman who was checking everyone's baggage about this at the line and she said only 2 bags are allowed, so my backpack and then 1 shopping bag I could take. What nonsense? One is telling me to fill up all my things in a few bags (which she denied later even though my friend heard it too) and another is telling us that I can only take 1 other plastic bag with me! How in the world can I fit all my things in 1 plastic bag? And when I told her this, she said we would have to discard some items too then! Other option was to buy a £15 bag from the machine and also discard my suitcase. I was at risk of missing my flight so I decided to pay with my German card and they don't accept maestro. Such money-grabbing tactics for around 1cm of extra luggage space despite the fact that I have taken this same bag several times before on Flybe and it fits in the overhead cabin storage. The funny part is that the flight had so many empty seats on it which means plenty of empty overhead cabin storage too. Make sure you find a cabin bag that can hardly fit much in it if you want to fly with Flybe.

✅ Trip Verified | Glasgow to Birmingham. Flybe are working a clever scam, by basically conning passengers into a false believe their cabin bags are acceptable. They appear to have adopted a policy of allowing you to take cabin bags, not to their size requirements, on outgoing flights so that you assume these will be ok on return flights. So when you arrive for the return flight they will then require you to prove the bags meet their tight requirements, to the letter and beyond. Only at certain times do they apply their 'fairer' policy of zero tolerance on baggage it seems. In my case I snapped the plastic cover off the wheels of my cheap case that was upside down so that it fit completely into their baggage sizer. Only for the aggressive ground staff to inform me that I have to put the bag in feet first. I asked where this was stated? Most shocking is the aggressive and rude attitude of the ground staff. They absolutely delight in charging you £40 at the desk or £50 at boarding to take your bags on-board. This appears to be a deliberate con. The ground staff then feel completely free of offering any customer service and become rude and aggressive. The words used by the ground staff I have heard are repeated by different individuals, for example I have heard the statement " the ground staff at the outgoing airport didn't do their job properly" I heard and seen referenced by other passengers on here, therefore shows they are actually trained to apply this con and what wording to use.

Not Verified | Glasgow to Birmingham. I don’t understand how Flybe won an award for punctuality. I have flown 4 times in the last 4 weeks. 2 flights were cancelled and the other 2 were delayed by more than 2 hours. My experience in flying with them each week this year is that at least 25% are cancelled and more than 2/3 are delayed. They don't have the nickname Fly(may)be for nothing. I’ve worked out that on average it would be faster to drive. What a dreadful airline.

Not Verified | For me, Flybe continues to do what I want of it. Took a day-trip from Birmingham to Aberdeen, outward on 9:15 flight and return on 20:45 from Aberdeen. Outward: left on time, arrived 10 minutes early. Return: departure and arrival both about 15 minutes late. The aircraft was comfortable enough for an hour and fifteen minutes; staff were pleasant, didn't sample the refreshments but they looked fairly priced and there was no hard sell.

✅ Trip Verified | Aberdeen to London. Like many of the people who have flown with Flybe recently, baggage is my main issues with this airline, having been charged £50 at the gate. My bag was not actually measured, so quite how they deemed this too large, I don't know, particularly as it was the same bag I have always used on Flybe flights. I have raised this with the airline but to no avail (possibly because they had copied and pasted the wrong canned response - they apologised for my dissatisfaction with my flight from Exeter) With such a decrepit fleet (and my goodness, it's showing its age), they do not have a realistic approach to cabin baggage; people do not fly like they did in 90s and the overhead lockers are not fit for purpose. Far better to cut their losses and say nothing is allowed on board, save for a plastic bag/handbag, rather than obfuscate. At least expectations would be managed better. But the problem clearly goes deeper than baggage policy; the willingness of a company to try to put things right is an indication, I feel, of how much they actual care about repeat business. And I'm just not sure they do care any more This used to be an cheerful, efficient airline that was decent value for money. I would now actively discourage people from using them. Under the current leadership, Flybe has the perpetual feel of a company dying a slow death, fully aware that their policies and lack of customer service will annoy people, but just trying to get through another day without going bust. The sad thing is, probably not before time.

Not Verified | Manchester to Paris CDG. Awful airline. That for me is hard to avoid given the number of flights they operate from Manchester to Europe. Last year they were always late, or cancelling flights, quite profitable actually through compensation claims, but useless if you wanted to arrive. Now they have their cabin baggage rules. Book an Air France coded flight from Manchester to somewhere via Paris. If you are very unlucky its operated by FlyBe. Who have started to apply their baggage rules rather than the Air France ones. Smaller than almost everyone else in the world. Ref samsonite UK hand luggage size restrictions dimensions. Unpleasant ground staff. "You should have seen that it was Flybe when you booked" But most business passengers don't book. An agent does it, and you get an Air France flight code. It's an Air France code and I have Skyteam elite level. Go join the normal queue to be told you bag is too big, we aren't operating the desk with the big Skyteam elite banner over it. Worst of all totally rude. Which I suppose I might be if I worked for such a rubbish company. I'd say I would avoid but I often have no option. I guess I'll just take every opportunity to make their lives as miserable as they make mine.