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Taken September 2004 from London, England (Gatwick Airport) - LGW to Orlando Sanford International

Not cheap, disorganised, and shabby old aircraft contracted on most Travel City Direct flights to Florida. Distinct lack of customer service skills. My experience on these 2 flights is one that can only be described as both appalling and beyond belief...

We boarded our aircraft at approx 2.45pm on 12/9/04, on an obviously old looking plain white 747. On entering the aircraft and looking at the internal appearance, it was surprising that the plane was safe to fly at all. The seats were worn and faded, and the appearance generally dirty and dust lay around the tops of the luggage holds.

I had paid an extra £100 per person to travel upperdeck with more legroom and extra services, but was told that no seats are available upperdeck as these were in fact first class only. And we are seated in economy without any apology whatsoever.

Some 25 minutes later an anouncement said there would be a slight delay, due to a paperwork discrepancy, some time later we are told we did not have a first officer (unbelievable). They would do their best to get a replacement as soon as possible, we sat and sat until approx

5.50pm, when we were off after some 3 hours sat on a hot and dirty plane, but we were given complimentary tea, coffee and sandwiches.

The rest of the journey was quite smooth and reasonably comfortable, apart from the smell from the leaking toilets, and the obvious lack of morale from the cabin staff who had also had enough of making excuses.

The return flight was not much better, although this time we did get our upperdeck seating, and the plane was a bit newer and cleaner than the previous one.

The heat whilst sitting on the tarmac was unbearable, we are told the air conditioning had just broken down. After looking on another website I see an Air Atlanta plane had left Egypt some 3 days before with the same problem. Could it be the same one? Surely not...

We eventually begin to move away and then stop for several minutes, and are informed we have a problem with the door.

Oh how I wanted to walk off this plane, along with many others I think. After a while and a technician boarding the plane, we were given the OK to fly.

Again the cabin staff were miserable throughout the flight and certainly don't come up to the normal standard of service you would expect on a longhaul flight. And although not quite as old as our outgoing plane, this was nonetheless

an old aircraft in today's environment, and after reading other comments on the web they do seem to suffer many technical problems, on most of their flights.

Fly with these at your peril, never again for me though.

Virgin, BA, American or United in future and I'll gladly pay the extra £50-60 pp.

I understand that Air Atlanta provide most of the aircraft for Travel City Direct, but you may get lucky as they have 1 more modern 747 which shows TCD logo's.

GOOD LUCK

And if you fly with these, leave your review good or bad, it's the first time I've done this because I believe others should be aware of consumer comments. And despite the travelling, we did have an excellent holiday in La Quinta Lakeside Hotel, in Kissemee. HIGHLY RECOMENDED!