Why Not to Fly on Air Transat

I flew on Air Transat for the first time last week to Germany and will probably be the last. On my 5 star scale, I give it 3 stars. There's a reason why their fares are so low.

It's a Canadian based "holiday" airline which goes to Europe during the summer and the Caribbean during the winter. Schedules are limited so you have to be flexible with your travel dates. They usually fly between each of their destinations 3 days a week.

You won't find them on Travelocity.ca so that means you have to search for their tickets on their own site. Just looking at the fares for August to go to Germany, their tickets are around $650 while the lowest on Travelocity is $1000. And FYI: They don't have frequent flyer miles either.

Pre-boarding:

If you want to choose your seat before the flight, you have to pay an extra fee, which we didn't do. My boyfriend and I almost couldn't sit together but maybe it's because we had booked our tickets separately. When we got to the check-in counter (they don't offer online or kiosk check-in), there was only 1 pair next to each other remaining. Maybe it's also because we were one of the last people to check-in...

During the flight:

Three movies were shown and you had to pay for the crappy headsets, so it's a good thing I had my own on board. I have noise canceling earphones which I totally recommend for flights. However, their audio had a lot of background noise--my headphones only canceled out the background noise from the plane, just so I could hear the movie's background noise better!

They have the old style 15" TVs that are placed every 5-6 rows in the middle isle and if you need to read the German subtitles because you can't understand the English or French audio, good luck! They had a big projector screen on the front wall of the economy section, so I would recommend arriving at the airport early to get this front seats.

I was surprised to see that even their "Club Class" had one main projection screen to look at and didn't have individual screens. Their seats weren't fancy like any other first or business class on other airlines.

Be prepared to feel cramped no matter how small you are. I'm 5'4" and 120lbs and I even felt cramped...not necessarily my seat because my butt fit just fine, but just the whole plane in general. They configured the seating so that 9 seats fit across the plane when most other airlines fit 8 in the same type of aircraft. That means their seats were narrower than normal and also less leg room. My legs are short so that's not a problem for me, but my boyfriend who's about 6'4", his knees were snug against the seat in front of him.

Although relatively small, all the seats are leather, which I think you're supposed to find luxurious. I don't know if the leather actually is more comfortable or your mind tricks you into believing that because we've been trained to believe leather is "better". You can't pull the trays out like most other planes. That means when you're eating and the person in front has their seat reclined, your head bangs up against the seat. That's when you use the Chinese rice bowl technique to eat: you hold up the food container right in front of your mouth and eat from there.

The food was ok so really no complaints there. They don't offer free alcohol like any other North American based airline. Their staff could be better trained though, or maybe we were on the training plane. On one flight, our row was missed on two food/drink services. And then at one point, I saw the head attendant give a tray and pot to another attendant and told her to say to people "Would you like some coffee." Talk about learning on the job!

Well, if all that just sounds finicky and you still want to go with them for their lowest price, make sure you bring books, magazines, video games, headphones, whatever, to help you get through the flight!

You can read other people's reviews of Air Transat here:
http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/transat.htm