The ONE CENT flight

Hello and welcome to another trip report. I'm on my way to the gate here at Gatwick Airport's

south terminal and today I'm taking a flight that cost me just one euro cent. I'm flying with

Level to Vienna. Enjoy the video. Last summer Level opened a base at Vienna and started serving

Gatwick Airport. They had promotional one euro cent fares on offer for a very short time and I

is lucky enough to take advantage of one. Both Vwelling and Level are IAG Group Airlines. They're

owned by the same multinational company. Despite Gatwick South being the nicer of the terminals here

it does suffer from having to walk all the way through the duty-free area just to get to

departures. Still, they've got to make their money somehow, I guess. Normally, I'd use my

priority pass card to get into one of the lounges here at Gatwick. Here in the South Terminal

the only one on the scheme is the number one lounge, which is often very busy. Priority Pass

know this, and to that end, they've extended their deals to cover a number of restaurants

This is the grain store. Here, Priority Pass have a deal where you can get £15 off the bill

There's no minimum spend, and you don't actually have to spend more than £15 to take advantage of

the offer. My breakfast came to £14.95, and I had to pay nothing, other than leaving a tip

of course, for the staff. One of the places I get inspiration for future trips is actually

at the airport. I love seeing all the different aircraft heading to different destinations

and I promise to travel on Orrini at some point in the near future. Gatwick has become a much nicer place to take a flight over the last 10 years or so

There are now quiet zones in both terminals, and there's a cool cutaway where you can look

inside the baggage handling facility at Gatwick. It's a mesmerising facility. I could watch it all day, but I have a plane to catch

one of my habits whenever i'm traveling is to have a look at flight radar 24 to find the inbound

aircraft that's going to form my flight i can see my aircraft today has just landed although i think

the gps is a little off the gates at the very south end of the south terminal command an excellent

view over the runway i've therefore got a good vantage point to see today's aircraft this a321

of level turning in. And my main impression is that the livery is incredibly boring

and perhaps deliberately so, although I'll come on to that a little later. The livery rather reminds me of some of the default AI planes in Flight Simulator which I used to play when I was a kid

On board level operate a standard A321 all economy layout in a 3-3 configuration

But I have got a great tip for you. If you're into paying for your seat selection you might notice that these two emergency

exit rows look great, but the three behind them look even better

Strangely, despite that row of seats having the best legroom on the entire aircraft, they're

not categorised as emergency exit rows. can see here 12A, B, C, D, E and F are all green and that means they're regular seats that don't

attract the $13.99 fee for exit rows. My seat was down the back of the aircraft and you can see from

the red seat belt here that this aircraft actually used to belong to Air Berlin. The seat pitch was

incredibly generous for a back of the aircraft economy seat. However, Level are an aggressively

low-cost airline and I wouldn't be surprised if they later configured these aircraft with more

seats to cram more people in. All exits are clearly marked with the word exit

Draw lights lead you to this exit. Upon departure from Gatwick into fluffy cloud skies it time for us to take a look at today route London Gatwick to Vienna is 778 miles and the flight will take us exactly two hours today at 34 feet

The first thing I noticed when I explored the seat is this literature from the airline

which explains its mantra as a low-cost airline, allegedly standing up for our right to fly

Gatwick to Vienna is also operated by EasyJet, and it's interesting to see Level's pricing strategy

Some dates are quite expensive. You can see there's 101 euro here, 55 euro now and again

and down to as low as 40 euros or even 36 euros, depending on the exact day you want to travel

On average, during my research, I found them to be a little cheaper than EasyJet

Even when you account for all the additional things like seat selection and bags, they still come out slightly cheaper

Personally, I quite like EasyJet and find them a very consistent carrier, so it's interesting to find that Level are trying to undercut them

However, in my view, they're offering an inferior service. Since this video was made, Level have expanded at Vienna to include 18 destinations

They also have a long-haul base at Barcelona, operating to North and South America

This flight took place on a beautiful summer's day, and the views of Kent are spectacular

We even get a very good look at Ashford Airport. Formerly RAF Manston, this closed airfield is now being turned into an emergency lorry park

We cross the continental coast at Ostend. I've lost count of the number of times I've spotted this airport

when I'm on my way somewhere in Central Europe. Level is a seriously budget carrier

and there's no in-flight entertainment, as is common throughout Europe. However, there is the bonus of having charge points at every seat on board

To be honest, when I travelled, it was in between mealtimes and didn't feel like having anything substantial from the onboard menu

However, let me show you a little footage here from the return flight where I did have something

The menu on level is pretty nicely presented. Because I really wanted to get some food to show you guys what it would be like on board

and whether it's worth the expense, I went for the Vienna deal. 10 euros for a snack, drink and a sandwich

The sandwich, in my case, was this delicious looking croque monsieur, a French ham and cheese toasted sandwich

Now I did have a problem in actually purchasing this. This sped up footage is in real life nearly four minutes long

and that's how long it took me to purchase this. There was some problem with the card machine that

the flight attendants were trying to fight all the way up the aisle with every single passenger I don know if it was early teething problems or just a problem with that particular card machine but it wasn good for the staff and I felt sorry for them Anyway after a few minutes one of the flight crew came back with this heated croque monsieur

sandwich. It didn't look too bad from the outside, but once I was inside the wrapping

it was absolutely horrendous. This is not a croque monsieur and calling it one, I think

would cause a diplomatic incident with the French. In the end, I only had a few bites

Anyway, back to the outbound flight, which is the focus of this video

After a couple of hours, we're descending gently into Vienna. While we're watching the aircraft descend, let me know in the comments below if you've

ever purchased a flight for one cent, or maybe even less. Perhaps you went for free one time on some promotion

Anyway, let me know in the comments section below. so to sum up on whether i think level is good value now there's no point me assessing this

as a one cent flight i took it because it was insanely insanely cheap and because i wanted to

show you guys the airline however you can't buy the flights for one cent anymore they're the prices

that i highlighted earlier in the video and to be honest even though they're a good 10 to 20

cheaper than easyjet i rather prefer easyjet they're a much more reliable and consistent carrier

The one thing that really stood out for me about Level is the fact that it was such a boring and insipid airline

There's almost no character to this operation whatsoever, and I think that's deliberate

My own personal suspicion is that Level is a holding company for IAG to purchase a large, low-cost carrier

Norwegian? Perhaps. Watch out. It's just a hunch, and I don't claim to be some airline industry yst

but please do let me know what your gut feeling is in the comments. And that's it guys that is the end of today's trip report. I'm on my way home now

Let me know what you thought of a level in the comments below Make sure you give this video a thumbs up and definitely subscribe if you haven't already for more content just like this

Until next time. See you around We'll be right back