SkyEurope and Malev win Traveller Magazine Awards

killerwhale65 · Post by **killerwhale65** » 18 Feb 2006, 18:36

SkyEurope, a low cost carrier, has been chosen best low cost carrier of 2005 by the readers of The Traveler Magazine. It's the second time the airline is awarded with this title.

The award for Best Airline of the Year is for the Hungarian carrier Malev. Malev is, following AEA (Association of European Airlines), the fourth best airline in terms of punctuality.

Source: Luchtvaartnieuws

earthman · Post by **earthman** » 19 Feb 2006, 02:59

Did those voters even try to fly with them?

killerwhale65 · Post by **killerwhale65** » 19 Feb 2006, 13:40

lol, i don't know. Why do you ask? Are they not good?

earthman · Post by **earthman** » 19 Feb 2006, 17:29

They do not really care about their passengers, so if you fly with them, you sould pray that your flight does not get cancelled.

They also seem to cancel a lot of routes after starting to sell tickets on them, but before they start flying them, just like WizzAir. I would almost start to think that this is a way to get short-term zero-interest loans.

rares_dan · Post by **rares_dan** » 19 Feb 2006, 18:02

There are many stories. Some are true some are not... For my concerne I was always content with them and I have over 10 flights(round trips) with NE/5P. There were never canceled flights, 80% were on time(some of them even earlier then scheduled) and the others 20% arrived within 20 minutes of scheduled time of arival. Each time the planes were clean no mather if there were a morning or an afternoon/night flight. Only 1 time my bags were missing but I don't think that was 5P fault. It happend at ORY and the bag was found and delivered to me later that day(the flight arrived at 09:25 in the morning). As it concerned the canceled routes this is something new for them: 2 routes were canceled in the past 2 weekes. But maybe this is an economical decision as NE/5P starts new routes(maybe more profitables) from beggining of summer schedule.
I don't want to be missunderstood... I have pleasent experiences as well with W6, EZY or FR but my preferend LCC remains NE/5P.

beaucaire · Post by **beaucaire** » 19 Feb 2006, 18:03

Malev dont seem to have very good food - checking on "airlinemeals" their meal-trays don't look very appealing to me- strange they come in first !
Sky Europe seems also an odd choice- Air Berlin to me has a better service offer than Sky !

earthman · Post by **earthman** » 20 Feb 2006, 03:37

They cancelled AMS-POZ before it started, and it was supposed to start this march. My mother had bought a ticket for one of these flights.

She also once had a ticket for AMS-WAW, when that route still was operating. The ticket was for dec. 22nd or 23rd or something like that, one of the last days before xmas. The flight got cancelled (fog or something like that), and they offered her a new flight for december 28th, i.e. after xmas. She took a refund and got on a KLM flight the very next day.

At least when my LOT flight got cancelled three weeks ago, they offered me a seat on a KLM flight which would depart a few hours later. (I opted for a flight 5 days later, but that is a completely different story.) I've also heard a first-hand account of how LOT once asked KLM to send a bigger plane to WAW to transport stranded LOT passengers.

Another SkyEurope AMS-WAW story, a friend of a friend (but this is someone I've actually met on a few occasions) got to AMS, only to find out that the flight had been cancelled. They offered her a seat on the flight to KRK instead, which departed much later that day. They said the flight might fly on to WAW from there, but of course it didn't. And no, SkyEurope did not bother to offer any further assistance in getting to WAW. And that was somewhere in the middle of the night.

I'm not sure whether I had two return flights or one return one single flight with them, but none of them were cancelled. Though one came close, had an hour delay, and they were not sure if it would get cancelled. Once we were on the plane, the pilot was kind enough to announce that the delay was caused by moisture in the antenna of some communications device shorting the thing out, but fortunately it dried. On the other flight the pilot didn't say a word during the whole flight. My only other complaint is that some of the overhead bins in the aft section were not available to passengers because the crew stuffed them with soda cans.

rares_dan · Post by **rares_dan** » 20 Feb 2006, 10:30

Maybe their service in Poland is worse. In Hungary(BUD) everithing it's OK. And I must say that their service is improving each day. 1 year ago for example there were frequent 20-30 minutes delays(I was lucky and didn't catch many of those) but now almost all flights are on time.

iechist · Post by **iechist** » 20 Feb 2006, 10:59

beaucaire wrote:Malev dont seem to have very good food - checking on "airlinemeals" their meal-trays don't look very appealing to me- strange they come in first !
Sky Europe seems also an odd choice- Air Berlin to me has a better service offer than Sky !

Even in economy, Malev have full bottles of wine and come around refilling the glasses. I'm sure the food seems great by the end of the flight...

RobinZartos · Post by **RobinZartos** » 27 Aug 2006, 20:41

I can speak with experience, as I have already flown about 15-20 flights on Malév and I do have to admit that in those times when I flew Malév, I speak of 1 year ago, it was one of the best airlines I had ever flown, in every case. What stuck into my mind were the eternal smiling eyes on the faces of the flight attendants, which, in my opinion, showed how they kept loving their job.

About the food, I could never complain. They used to pass several times with hot bread, cheese and hungarian salami along the cabin. I don't know if they still do this.

In short, I can't imagine the airline as how it is explained here.

eurofighter · Post by **eurofighter** » 27 Aug 2006, 21:37

I flew once with both airlines.

Malev is in my opinion not special in comparison to other traditional airlines. Not worse neither much better, except for the seat pitch in economy which seems very generous in their Boeing 737-400!

SkyEurope changed the schedule for my outbound flight BRU-KRK. I was informed several weeks in advance and had to respond to an e-mail confirming that I could take this flight.

Both outbound and return flight were fine and on time. I will take them again this winter.

AirbusA350 · Post by **AirbusA350** » 28 Aug 2006, 04:50

rares_dan wrote:Maybe their service in Poland is worse. In Hungary(BUD) everithing it's OK. And I must say that their service is improving each day. 1 year ago for example there were frequent 20-30 minutes delays(I was lucky and didn't catch many of those) but now almost all flights are on time.

Their service is quite good out of KRK- especially-since it's their main base in Poland. NE has 3 73G's (737-700) based in KRK with another soon to join the fleet, they're doing a lot to become the main carrier out of KRK and I think that they have already won their spotlight. It's tough to hang around an airport where there are other no-frills carriers biting at you with U2 and FR leading the way.

However, I do see what earthman has on his mind. NE's run ins with WAW and later with POZ seam a bit unstable for a carrier of such caliber. It's needless to say that there is a week spot in every airline and it's quite a cliche. NE still advertises WAW as it's base with only two destinations in form of FCO and ORY, they gave up many routes from WAW giving up their podium to W6. Another painful fact for NE/5P are financial difficulties which are not something out of the ordinary in these days, but NE/5P manages to stay at the top of their game offering a compatible service.