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Taken October 2004 from London, England (Gatwick Airport) - LGW to Sharm El Sheikh (Ras Nasrani) - SSH

We flew from London Gatwick on Sunday 10th October. With our Holiday package we were provided with a flight upgrade to Premium Economy, which meant sitting in the upper section of a Boeing 747. After reading the comments on this website for Air Atlanta I became very concerned about our Flights. I therefore wanted to give our honest view of the service to help other concerned holidaymakers.

When we arrived to check in, approximately 2 1/2 hours before the flight, we were amazed to see the length of the queue. What made this worse was the location of the Check in desks, which were the last 4 desks of a row. This meant that the queue had to spiral around the side of the Check in desks and around to the back of the another check in area. It was not in an area at the back of the terminal, in fact it was not as far as the Virgin Check in area, which is at the back of the South Terminal building. Fortunately, due to our Premium Tickets we did not have to queue, despite our Tour operator informing us that we would. We did hear that the queue was dealt with quickly and took no longer than any other airline.

The plane was clearly older than most, but was by no means " falling apart". The Premium seating area is great and seated up to 16 people with a 45 inch pitch, so plenty of room even with the seat extension. The service was also very good, we had a choice of meals that was different to the standard class and complimentary drinks throughout the flight. The In flight entertainment was OK too, there is a number of music channels for everyones taste and we also had two films - Spider-man 2 and Dodge ball, both recent films. The film was displayed on a pull down screen located at the front of the Upper deck and although was not crystal clear was more than adequate.

On the way back, it was a little different I'm afraid to say. We were due to fly out at 19.10 from Sh-arm el Sheikh, but during the day our tour operator kindly informed us that there was currently a 4 hour delay. In the end it turned out that we left at 23.45 - 4 1/2 hours. The reason for the delay was the plane that Air Atlanta were using for our Flight was stranded in Florida due to a technical fault and they therefore had to send another and the time delay was for time it took to get it to Sh-arm. Rather than wait at the airport, our tour operator suggested waiting at our hotel until an 1 1/2 hours before the flight was due to depart and I was pretty relieved when we arrived at the airport, which resembles a building site at the moment while a new terminal building is being completed. More problems occurred when we embarked, the plane that they were now using was a different configuration to the one that we were supposed to be using. No-one had notified the check in staff and it was caused chaos and there was a lot of unhappy passengers, because some passengers were not able to sit where they wanted to and even in the Premium cabin we didn't escape. With the new configuration, there was only 12 seats and not the 16 that that was expected. This meant some passengers that had paid for an upgrade had to sit in the standard class area. Probably, the most bizarre situation that resulted from this, was that a family of four had been given a flight upgrade when the checked-in, despite the fact that all of the premium seats had been paid for.

Once, we eventually got on our way, the service was good again, seats great, in fact I actually got a couple of hours sleep which is something that I can never seem to do on a flight. No films on the way back.

Overall, I would say that providing we were able to upgrade I would have no hesitation flying with Air Atlanta. If we could not, I probably would look elsewhere.