Over the past few years I have discovered a love of aviation; particularly in big passenger jets and have been known to do a bit of plane spotting from time to time. Part of this new hobby of mine involves watching a lot of flight reviews on YouTube which have inspired me to share my recent experience with TUI on my package holiday with them. 

I would like to think of myself as a relatively well travelled person, having been on a number of holidays abroad in my lifetime. Saying this, I have never flown with TUI until earlier on this month. In the past, I have opted for companies such as On The Beach, Thomas Cook or Jet2 as they have always had a better price. However, back in July when I was searching for holidays in October to either Cyprus or the Canaries, TUI were offering considerably better prices than Jet2.

In the end, I settled for a TUI holiday to Cyprus for a number of reasons. Firstly, I had recommendations from family for the hotel I was looking at and, more importantly, the weather. But possibly the main reason why we decided to go this route was due to the aircraft type TUI was using. Now you will have to bare with me whilst I have a little avgeek moment.

When booking the holiday I noticed TUI were using a Boeing 787 Dreamliner on their Manchester to Paphos route which is an aircraft I have always wanted to fly on. The 787 has revolutionised air travel in recent years due to some genuinely amazing engineering. It has huge economical engines and a truly stunning wing which flexes during flight. Honestly, it's just beautiful. If you have never seen one take off you need to go and find a video on YouTube. 

Anyway, my dreams were dampened shortly after booking the holiday as I realised that from October 1st, TUI would be using a Boeing 767 to fly the route to Paphos. What date do you think my holiday was booked for? October 1st, obviously. I had only just missed out. It wasn't all bad though, as I would still be experiencing a flight on a wide body aircraft that I have never flown on before and most airlines are now phasing out the 767 due to it being an older, less economical aircraft now.

I paid extra to book my seats because with the aircraft being a wide body I didn't want to be stuck in the middle aisles, I love being able to see out of the window. Although, it turned out that booking seats on the outbound leg of the flight was completely pointless and I'll tell you why shortly.

In the few days leading up to my holiday I was beginning to feel a little apprehensive. I'm not a fan of Manchester airport. I have flew from there a handful of times in the past and the experiences have never been great. Not only that, but I'm sure you are all aware about the airport staff shortage crisis that has been happening up and down the country all year. Lots of people had been reporting stupidly long queues at check in and security. Last time I flew from Manchester I remembered the line for security being long and chaotic and this was in 2017 so I was just imagining the worst. Not only that, but there had been a lot of reports of TUI having a lot of long delays and cancellations. I usually fly from Birmingham Airport and the TUI check in desks ALWAYS have such long queues there so I just assumed Manchester would be the same.

TUI fly from Terminal 2 at Manchester Airport which is a Terminal I believe I have flown from before with Thomas Cook. I found T2 quite easy to navigate, although the check in desks are quite a walk away from where the bus drops you off if you have parked your car at one of the airport car parks. It didn't take long to find the desks and I was shocked to see only a handful of people in the line. I will say that we did arrive very early, around 3 hours before our flight. This was because I wanted to allow extra time for security lines, but I also wanted to try and get the best seats that were available. Why would I need to do this when I'd pre-booked them I hear you say? Well I had noticed on the TUI app when checking holiday details the day before that they had changed the aircraft from the 767 to the 787.

Of course I was thrilled that I would be getting to fly on the Dreamliner after all but there was one problem. I had booked seats in row 40 on the 767 and there are only 39 rows with window seats on the 787. I was now worried I'd be stuck in the middle aisles like an Aldi Special Buy on the aircraft I'd been wanting to fly on for such a long time. Fortunately, luck was on my side, and arriving early had paid off. We managed to change our seats for the last remaining window seats in row 32.

Now that stress was over, it was time to head to security. I was prepared for the worst but hoping for the best and luck seemed to be on my side again as we breezed through! Ironically, there was a longer queue for fast track! The staff at security we're very helpful and very friendly, doing all they could to make sure everyone got through without any trouble. I could finally relax and let the excitement kick in.

However, my luck had finally run out and little did I know that I was now in for a lengthy delay. We we're called to the gate as scheduled but soon, our departure time came and went with boarding yet to commence. I heard final call announcements for out flight, but still we were all squished in at the gate with no sign of boarding. No one informed us what was happening for a good 45 minutes. At this point we were simply told that they were waiting for the aircraft to be cleaned. I'm pretty sure that this was a white lie as I had clocked our aircraft sitting at a remote stand many hours ago thanks to flightradar24 and it had been sitting there since the previous day. Bare in mind that this was an afternoon flight too.

Finally though, we are called to board the plane, starting with the seats from the back. We all squish onto buses and are carted across the airport to our plane; the mighty Boeing 787-8. Boarding from a remote stand can be a little irritating but it did provide an excellent view of the aircraft and I was able to get up close and personal with the huge engine. I didn't realise quite how large the engines on the 787 were until I was standing right next to one.

It isn't long before boarding is complete and it seemed as if luck was back on my side as the seat at the end of our row was free. Unfortunately, this is when the captain announced that they were still waiting for our luggage to be loaded and we could expect to be waiting at least another 20 minutes before they arrived. Everyone was very obviously frustrated with this but at least the captain had the decency to inform us what was happening. Soon, the luggage was loaded and everyone buckled up ready to go. However, we weren't going anywhere. Due to our delayed boarding and then having to wait for the luggage to be loaded, the captain informed us we had now missed out take off time slot and would now have to wait another 30 minutes before air traffic control would clear us to leave the gate. By now we were around 2 hours delayed.

Finally, I feel the plane on the move, we were being pushed back and the engines began to spool into life. This was the moment I'd been waiting for. Despite the 787 having huge engines, the engineers have worked their magic once more to make them much quieter than any other aircraft jet engine of the past. We joined the queue of planes waiting to depart, because this is Manchester, and there is always a long queue of planes heading to the runway at the same time. It's not long before we are lined up with the engines throttled up to full power and are shooting down the runway. At last, we are in the air and on our way. 

Getting comfy on the Dreamliner wasn't too difficult. The seats were very comfortable, with lots of padding but the leg room wasn't amazing. It was standard leg room for most budget airlines but I couldn't help but think how uncomfortable it would be on the long haul flights Dreamliners are traditionally used for. As this aircraft is designed for long haul flights, each seat back was fitted with an In Flight Entertainment (IFE) screen. Unfortunately I am unable to go into any detail about TUI's IFE as there seemed to be an error with them on this flight. The flight crew were aware of this error and rebooted the system before departure but it didn't seem to fix the issue. Some of them were working and some weren't, and of course none of the ones on our row were working. I wasn't anticipating to have IFE so I had come prepared in advance with a book and some downloaded videos on my iPad but it would have been nice to watch the flight map. Instead I had to peak around the seat to look at the one in front.

The cabin itself was also quite worn and dirty. Down the side of my seat by the window there were lots of crumbs and bits that just made me feel a little gross. This is another factor which made me think our previous delay in boarding wasn't caused by the aircraft being cleaned. The cabin crew were okay and the service was standard, nothing fantastic but did the job. I will point out that TUI is a cashless airline which I don't believe was information made available before boarding the aircraft. You can use Apple Pay on board which kind of blows my mind considering your phone is in airplane mode.

We made up some time in the air thanks to a very strong tailwind (at one point we were flying at over 700mph) and when we arrived in Cyprus we didn't have to hang around for our bags. We had hired a car so didn't have to use the transfer TUI provide to the hotel. The hotel itself was fine, although I never saw a TUI rep the whole time I was there.

The flight back was on the 767 we were originally booked on, which I was pleased with. I didn't have to worry about seat allocation again and I would be getting to experience another aircraft. The TUI staff at the check in desks at Paphos airport were very helpful and friendly but they were busy. There were a lot of flights leaving at the same sort of time but they did have all the check in desks open at the same time so they were trying their best. 

Our flight home was delayed, and once again, we weren't given any information as to why. I think in total we were delayed by an hour, so not too bad but still rather irritating at 11pm. I was pleasantly surprised when we boarded the aircraft as it had recently been refurbished and was actually in better condition than the much younger Dreamliner we had flown out on. The seats weren't as comfy, and although the 767 is a wide body aircraft, TUI use theirs for medium haul flights so there was no IFE. Again, I was not expecting any anyway, and you certainly wouldn't expect it on the likes of Easy Jet, Jet2 or Ryanair, who also fly this route. Similarly to our outbound flight, the cabin crew were nothing special but perfectly okay. 

I rather enjoyed the take off on the 767, it seemed much more powerful than the 787 and was a nice little thrilling experience. I'm not sure of that is true or whether the pilot just decided to throttle up a little quicker but still. I also noticed just how much quieter the 787 is compared to other aircraft. The 767 was quite noisy and I couldn't get comfortable enough to get some sleep.

We arrived into Manchester a couple of hours later and thankfully we weren't at a remote stand. However, our seats were at the back of an aircraft which was holding over 250 passengers so it took about half an hour for  us to actually disembark the plane. We were parked at what seemed like the furtherest gate possible too, as it was a long walk to passport control where we were greeted by a large, slow moving queue. By this point it is 3am might I add. I thought that the long walk and the queue for passport control would mean that our bags would be waiting for us on the carrousel but no. The bags came out very slowly, and naturally ours were part of the last load to come out. I didn't get home until 5am. This is why I dislike Manchester Airport. Not only that but whenever I fly from Manchester I always notice that fellow passengers have no respect for the cabin. The way they left the plane was absolutely disgusting, there was rubbish all over the place. There is simply no excuse to leave a plane in that state as the cabin through came to collect rubbish twice during the flight.

Overall, I probably wont be in any rush to fly TUI again. The avgeek in me likes TUI as they have a greater variety of aircraft but the other side of me would much rather fly with someone else next time, even if it does mean listening to Jess Glynn over and over. Let's be honest, Jet2 are TUI's main competitor for European package holidays and, in my opinion, they do a much better job. I struggled with TUI's 15kg hold luggage limit, which is very low compared to Jet2's 22kg. The staff and service on Jet2 are much better too, well, in my experience anyway. Also, Jet2 employ their own ground crews so you are less likely to get delays with luggage such as the ones I faced with TUI. 

Thank you so much if you managed to get this far. I would love to hear your comments in response to this post!