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THE ALVIATOR'S VERDICT
A largely painless low-cost airline experience that has less of a "nickel-and-dime" vibe compared to Ryanair, and Southend Airport is fun to fly out of as well – though I wouldn't eat anything, and the lack of WiFi is a missed revenue opportunity for them |
4.0
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In June 2025, I flew easyJet from London Southend to Amsterdam. The primary objective of booking this flight was to fly out of London’s Southend Airport, which was the one “London” airport I hadn’t flown out of before. However, I figured that I’ve never written a full review of a flight on easyJet, so figured this was a good time to do so.
I like easyJet, and as a brand I prefer them to Ryanair. I’d say that while typically there’s not much a reason to fly low-cost intra-Europe (many airlines offer a worse onboard service with more add-ons, for not much less cost), easyJet and Ryanair continue defy this trend, with lots of tickets still going for below £30. If you’re flying easyJet, weigh the Speedy Boarding fare against full-service options if bringing more than a carry-on bag, download some work before the flight, and don’t buy anything to eat onboard.
Here’s my experience flying easyJet (if you want to compare my experience with flying Ryanair, here’s a review I wrote of my Ryanair flight last year).
Booking My Flight on easyJet
I booked my flight on easyJet’s website, and found the fare off Google Flights (while a £29 flight isn’t atypical for easyJet, you do need to search around for such a fare). Once booking the flight, I had the option to choose between a Standard, Standard Plus, and Essentials package – as you can see below, it actually costs more to bring a cabin bag onboard than to check a hold bag, since most passengers prefer the former these days.
Afterwards, I was able to select a seat from £5.99 (if you don’t select at this stage the seat selection fee hops to £8.99 for a standard seat, and all other prices increase by £3).
Afterwards I could elect to add a large cabin bag for £32.99, which would come with Speedy Boarding. Unfortunately there’s no other way to get Speedy Boarding with easyJet anymore – the only way is to purchase a fare where you can bring on a large cabin bag. The maximum weight of the large cabin bag is 15 kg, which is generous, in fairness (the weight limit of your small bag is also 15 kg, though obviously it has different size requirements).
The next step was to add a hold bag if you wanted to – as you can see, a 15 kg hold bag actually costs less than a carry-on bag.
At this point, and perhaps as a slightly annoying and frictional step to the booking process (though not hugely so), easyJet forces you to create an account before you can actually book your flight. I have a pre-existing account (it only takes minutes to create), so just logged in, and paid. easyJet accepts American Express as a form of payment.
easyJet Ground Experience at Southend Airport
I got to Southend Airport at 2:30 PM ahead of a 4:55 PM flight, partially so I could get some time to check out what the airport was like. All but one flight per day out of Southend Airport is operated by easyJet (the remaining flight is operated by Cornish airline Eastern Airways), and it shows from the bright orange signage and equipment you see all the way throughout the airport. I suppose easyJet got a great bulk-buy deal out of these custom made stanchions when ordering these for Southend Airport.
easyJet Check-in and Bag Drop at Southend Airport
After clearing security and visiting the SKYLIFE lounge, I headed down the escalator to the gates at Southend Airport. Gate 6 was one of the ones closest to the escalators leading down from security, and it was more or less set up for boarding by the time I arrived.
Southend Airport Gate Area
The actual queue was originally blocked off by the bag checker, but my bag wasn’t checked when we started – I was simply invited to board in the Speedy Boarding aisle.
easyJet Cabin Bag Check
This is a whole lot of orange! By the way, one thing to note about easyJet is that they never actually give you the flight number with their IATA (2-digit) code at any point of the booking process, and that carried on at the airport. So the entire time the flight I was on was referred to as EJU 7551 (this is the same at Gatwick). If you see your flight referred to as U2 or EZY at the airport, I believe they’re referring to the same carrier, so be prepared for a little discrepancy in this regard.
Bright orange stanchions at Southend Airport
I was wondering whether the gate agent would be unfamiliar with the fact that I didn’t need a Schengen visa, so dropped by check-in for a visa check. The check-in agent printed my boarding pass and hand-wrote “no visa needed”. This turned out to be less helpful than I hoped, since the gate agent asked “who wrote this?”.
My boarding pass was promptly scanned without issue afterwards, though, and we were ushered into a slightly greenhouse-style hallway, where we had to wait for ~10-15 minutes before we were welcome to board the aircraft. The airport agents were quite friendly, and asked whether anyone needed a chair while we waited, due to the heat within the hallway.
easyJet A320 at Southend Airport
We were eventually welcome to board the aircraft, and I had a lovely view of our Southend-based OE-ICB, a 10-year-old aircraft that would be flying us down to Amsterdam today.
Boarding our easyJet A320 at Southend Airport
easyJet Flight U27551
Friday, June 20, 2025
Origin: London Southend (SEN) Gate: 6 Dep: 16:55 (16:55)
Destination: Amsterdam (AMS) Gate: H6 Arr: 19:00 (18:45)
Duration: 1 h 5 min (50 min)
Aircraft: Airbus A320 Reg: OE-ICB
Seat: 25A (Standard Class)
easyJet A320 Cabin and Seat
easyJet’s A320s feature 186 seats, outfitted in smart black-and-orange upholstery. The cabin looks quite smart, and the matte black and orange are quite a nice combination, in my opinion (I know I chastised this when flying Singapore Airlines premium economy, though admittedly that’s a slightly different caliber). There was a little seatback advertising card at the back of every seat.
easyJet A320 Cabin
I’d assigned myself seat 25A, seven rows form the back of the cabin. These seats have no recline function, though as slimline seats with 29″ seat pitch, legroom isn’t terrible. As you’d expect for a low-cost carrier, there aren’t headrests or anything, though there is a seat pocket.
easyJet A320 Legroom
easyJet uses Recaro SL3510 seats, which I generally appreciate, though the tray tables on these seats are substantially smaller (as they don’t take up the full width of the seat). I don’t like how small these tray tables are, though on this short flight this didn’t bother me too much.
easyJet A320 Tray Table
There are absolutely zero frills on easyJet’s A320 – there’s no WiFi, no streaming entertainment, or anything else. However, the seats themselves are comfortable. It’s my understanding that all of easyJet’s A320s have this seat, whereas some of easyJet’s A319s have the older seats – while they’re more comfortable, the 29″ seat pitch is a little more difficult to navigate, given how thick the seatbacks are.
easyJet’s older seats, on some A319s
It was a hot day in London, so I was very glad to have an air nozzle. There was also a good wing view from my seat, as well as a view of the neighbouring (empty) gate stands.
easyJet A320 View
This is a decent cabin, and the slimline seats are absolutely fine for a few hours. I like that the seats have a large seat pocket, even though I don’t like the small tray table.
However, I’m not really asking for luxury when commenting why low-cost airlines don’t install WiFi. WiFi is such a good revenue opportunity for a low-cost airline, since you bring a competitive advantage, as well as being able to charge passengers even more with ancillary revenue – I wish more low-cost airlines would add WiFi, as I personally see it as such an overall value-add to the experience (especially when there’s not much more onboard to do or enjoy).
Taking off from Southend Airport
The captain came onto the PA and informed us of a flight time of 35 minutes – this might actually be one of the shortest flights I’ve ever flown. Afterwards, a safety demonstration was completed. Albeit this flight being out of Southend Airport, it was actually completely full, to my surprise.
We began a pushback a couple of minutes early, and taxied over to runway 05, where we’d be departing. Part of this involved back-taxiing on runway 05 before doing a 180° and departing (tragically, this is the same runway where Zeusch Aviation Flight 1 corkscrewed into the ground, killing 4 passengers).
Taxiing at Southend Airport
We taxied past the fascinating general aviation terminal at Southend Airport, where there was a large handful of planes that you wouldn’t typically see at a larger airport.
General aviation aircraft at Southend Airport
We were wheels-up from runway 05 at around 5:05 PM, and we headed northeast for a bit, before veering our course to a slightly more easterly path in order to head towards Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. The views upon takeoff were of beautiful Essex, and I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Takeoff from Southend Airport
easyJet A320 Buy-On-Board Meal Service
As you’d expect for a flight with a 35 minute flight time, the buy-on-board service kickstarted as soon as possible. We were flying easyJet Europe, the airport’s European division (this particular aircraft is based in Southend, but registered in Austria), and the menu onboard would’ve been for their selection, which you can find here (not very different at all to easyJet UK’s menu, which can be found here – easyJet’s UK division has more planes based in Luton and Gatwick). If you’d prefer not to click into the external links, you can find the meal deals below, which involve a meal, a snack, and a drink.
easyJet A320 Menu Selections
Due to the short flight time, hot options were not possible onboard our flight. Therefore, I picked a Mediterranean quinoa salad, just to give it a try. It wasn’t good – it had a strange, briny taste to it, and I couldn’t finish the full portion. I’ve not had good experiences with eating on easyJet generally, and would go hungry on my next flight.
This cost €9 (£7.82/HK$83) for a meal and a drink (I chose water) – it was some of the worst €9 I’ve ever spent, though I was keen to order something for the review.
easyJet A320 Mediterranean Salad and Water
Before we make sweeping general statements about buy-on-board food quality on low-cost carriers, Norwegian offered one of the best onboard meals I’ve had, and I’d gladly pay for it again. Suffice to say that easyJet didn’t match that caliber of food quality.
I won’t dedicate a section to service in this review, though everyone I interacted with was friendly.
Landing into Amsterdam Schiphol Airport
The rest of the flight was uneventful, and by the time flight attendants came around to collect rubbish, it was time to land at Schiphol Airport. It was quite cloudless, so we had a good view of the Holland Coast, before beginning our final descent into Schiphol Airport.
Views upon landing into Schiphol Airport
We touched down at 6:35 PM, and had an approximately 10-minute taxi around the airport – we were even taxiing quite quickly. First we passed the KLM/Transavia area, which I’d be flying out of later in the evening.
Taxiing at Schiphol Airport
Then we taxied past a Qatar Airways 777 and Aeromexico 787.
Taxiing past the Oneworld area at Schiphol Airport
Then we taxied past a leisure carrier area, with a TUI 787 and SunExpress 737 parked there.
Taxiing past the leisure carrier area at Schiphol Airport
Finally we found the H gates, where a majority of Ryanair and easyJet flights were parked. These gates were non-Schengen gates for low-cost airlines operating to the UK (amongst other non-Schengen destinations), and it was quite funny to pull in here after passing through all the different airlines operating to Schiphol Airport.
Found the “reduced” section at Schiphol Airport!
Deplaning was quite straightforward, though there wasn’t a jetbridge – we walked into the terminal and up a set of stairs. Boarding from Schiphol Airport’s H gates seems a bit grim, since some of the lines spilled over into a walkway shared between departures and arrivals (bearing in mind that Ryanair and easyJet start the boarding process for their flights well before the plane actually arrives).
easyJet A320 at Schiphol Airport
Schiphol Airport doesn’t require clearing security again when transiting (at least that’s been my experience the few times I’ve flown into the airport). So, from gate H6, I followed the signs to clear immigration and made it to the Schengen area of the airport, where my Transavia flight to Paris would be departing.
Conclusion: easyJet’s A320 Experience
Whenever a low-cost airline is nothing to write home about, it’s a compliment. easyJet passes the mark in that regard – it genuinely is nothing to write home about, especially for the vast majority of shorthaul flights within Europe. The seats are passable, people on the flight are friendly, and there’s nothing actively unpleasant about the ground experience (apart from having to wait for your flight on the tarmac, which I still prefer to a bus gate anyway). There’s no internet onboard and the buy-on-board selection is weak as ever, though generally I didn’t mind this flight at all.
There’s the general question of whether a flight on low-cost airlines within Europe is even worth it after you factor in all the add-ons. However, unlike a lot of “low-cost” airlines within Europe with rising prices, you’ll still quite regularly get <£30 tickets on easyJet. This makes them regularly significantly cheaper than full-service carriers such as British Airways even when adding a bag (though not always, so I’d weigh my options up first before booking my next intra-Europe holiday flight).
I think all in all I still prefer easyJet to Ryanair, due to the marginally more spacious A320 cabins, as well as the less nickel-and-dime-y vibe (e.g. their IT, checking in at the airport, etc.).
Do you prefer easyJet or Ryanair? Why?
