When I was booking my flights to Perpignan, I chose the tickets which had the best price combination and flight times for our travel dates. BHX is relatively easy to get to from central London, not taking much longer to get to than STN!

BHX-PGF
Flybe BE1729 G-JEAM BAE146-300
Dep: 14:25
Arr: 17.35
Seat 1F

We checked in pretty quickly at BHX, with virtually no queue for the Flybe desks. Wasn't too impressed with the waiting lounge in Birmingham, made T1@LHR seem a nice place to be. Our flight was called for boarding slightly later than expected.



We soon found ourselves in a queue for the gate, which seemed quite long considering the size of the plane. The staff were quite efficient at keeping us all moving, and even walked along the line to collect the passes.

We were sent out to the aircraft across the apron...










I managed to get some shots of some of the other aircraft.








We were unfortunately surrounded by screaming babies so I decided to put my iRiver on full volume (turned off for takeoff) and look out the window.

On the taxi for a southbound takeoff we passed some of the airport utilities



Soon after takeoff, somewhere between Birmingham and Reading we flew over an airfield that looked as if was holding an airshow. I could see a Vulcan/Victor at the end of the runway... Any ideas, it was Sat 18th June.



I was impressed by the comfy leather seats Flybe, and the cabin staff seemed very friendly. I also particularly enjoyed the low altitude as you get such a good view, we can't have gone much above 25,000ft? The two hour flight went past pretty quickly.

The approach to the airport was quite steep, particularly due to the mountains quite close to the end of the runway! Perpignan was a really tiny airport. There was a forest fire fighting plane waiting to depart as we came in, probably to combat the bush fires I saw on the approach.


Also an AirFrance A320 from Paris:


It was quite funny as we came to out stand. The French airport workers were too busy having a chat next the the Air France plane, to realise we'd landed. We were already turning on to our stand by the time he was running to guide us to a stop.


We only had to wait about 10 mins for our bags to come out, that said, they didn't have to go very far!

PGF-STN
Ryanair FR937 EI-DCT 737-8AS
Dep 1655
Arr 17.50

After a great holiday it was time to come home. This time we were with Ryanair. Checkin wasn't too bad, but the waiting room wasn't great - nothing to do, except watch all the other passengers lurking and plotting how to get in the best position for the scrum when the flight started boarding. No sooner had the last passenger been disembarked, were we boarded onto the flight. Ryanair certainly don't like their assets sitting around too long!

Looked to be a pretty new plane, and we headed for the back entrance due to the shorter queue:




We managed to get some decent seats close to the front, around row 10 I think.

The pilot was quite chatty before we departed telling us all kinds of stuff. We were to be at 40000ft, which is pretty high for such a short hop, I think we were flying over some storms. Also he explained we would climb fast initially before powering back and making some tight turns to avoid disturbing the locals.



We took off to the NE, away from the main Perpignan town, and as suggested made a series of tight turns.



Again the flight was comfortable, and this time we had a snack from the Ryanair trolley. There wasn't too much to see out of the window owing to all the cloud. The descent into STN was cool, as we spent a decent amount of time surfing between two layers of cloud, giving a real impression of our speed.



A few turns, and a glide later we were one the ground at STN, followed closely by two more Ryanair 737s.


We had to wait about a 1/2 hour for the bags to arrive, but were soon on our way back.

In summary I think I prefered the Flybe flight as we had allocated seats. Also STN is a real pain to get to. Having said that, I'll always fly with the best combination of price, time and airport location; airline preference is not the key.