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Taken August 2002 from Manchester to La Romana

I did not have great expectations of JMC due to rumours of horribly small seat pitch and poor service on European routes. I was in for a pleasant surprise - I thought JMC were excellent on this flight. As a comparison, I am using Airtours (now MyTravel), the airline I flew with long haul last year.

The cabin crew on both outward and inward journies were very friendly, attentive and helpful, and always had a smile on their faces. This is in stark contrast to the Airtours crews who took 10 minutes to serve a glass of water when not much else was going on.

The flight was early going both ways, but then again I don't imagine getting a slot out of somewhere like La Romana is very difficult, it's a nice airport but tiny, in the middle of nowhere.

Legroom is as to be expected; 30in seat pitch on the A330-200, just about bearable for long haul, and JMC provide headphones, blankets, cushions and bottles of water free of charge. On Airtours, they charge £3 per set of headphones, and carry enough cushions for about 50 passengers of the 360 that the A330 carries.

The entertainment was very good, the only criticism being that the same movies were shown on the the outbound and inbound flights. The other channels were good. Everyone has their own 9-channel seatback TV on the A330.

Overall a very good flight, made enjoyable by the freebies and the excellent JMC crew - a refreshing change in today's profit-before-people environment.

Something did make me very angry however - during the descent into La Romana, the purser came on the PA and said someone had been smoking in the toilets despite all the warnings that had been given. These aircraft aren't fitted out to be smoking flights, there are no ashtrays, so where does the burning ash go? Whichever plonker that was, I hope you feel very proud of yourself. I would have liked to have seen them arrested - apparently the crew knew who it was.