I’m happy to report that the flights all went well. In my book a good flight is one that starts at one airport and ends wheels first at another.
Continental (at least if this trip was anything to go by) provided top-notch service. Much much better than Delta, Air France or Alitalia–the last three airlines we’ve flown to Europe on. I would say that Continental almost matches British Airways. I’m going to start using the LA to Cleveland, Cleveland to Gatwick route from now on until experience (or lack of available seating) changes my mind.
The flight from Gatwick to Prague was on an airline called easyJet. EasyJet flies all over the place in Europe for bargain basement prices–I think it cost us about $30 apiece to make the trip. The planes are new Airbuses (which I’m not crazy about) with the seats crammed tightly together, and every time we’ve flown them, they’ve been full. EasyJet is much like Southwest in that you board in herds and grab whatever seats are available. And easyJet has taken the concept of “no frills” to new heights. They pass out the inflight magazines, then pick them up at the end of the flight, and they charge for ALL beverages and snacks.
An observation that I’ve made based on a database of three easyJet flights is that given their choice of seats Europeans always go for the window seats first whereas Americans (based on about a thousand Southwest Airlines flights) seem to prefer the aisle