Express Jet Review

After reading a recent review on American Airlines, I asked myself is there any airline which would rate 5 stars from my experience. Some trips I have had on Swiss Air would be close, but the flight was pretty expensive. The only airline that I was particularly impressed with the cost, service, amenities, and flight every time has been Express Jet.

I am an frequent occasional business traveler but not with such frequency that I have lots of status. Every so often I get status on American Airlines or Delta which means I flew 25k miles on their airline in a year. I have been on many of the US and foreign airlines and none have quite impressed me as much as Express Jet.

Now, I have to admit that while I have never had a problem with Express Jet I have also not flown the frequently enough to know if they have problems. But, its the only airline service which never has disappointed me for the price I pay.

Where to start? First, they are a discount airline with inexpensive fares directly to limited destinations. They also fly as a Delta or Continental connection (many more Continental flights than Delta from my experience). As far as I know, they only fly Embraer jets, which are small planes (tall people must duck when walking down the aisles) and have 3 or 4 seats across an aisle with no middle seat. The window seats can be more narrow on some of the models. The planes are a bit older, but come with comfortable leather seats and XM Radio complete with free headsets.

Starting with those free headsets, you realize this company does not try to nickel and dime you. They bring a significant amount of "healthy" food for you, even on a short flight. On a Raleigh to Jacksonville flight (about 1.5 hrs) I was given a fresh deli sandwich, pasta salad, healthy snack crackers, a cookie, a full can of soda (and offered a second) and a mint. This was a 50 seat plane and the flight attendant made 4 trips in that 90 minutes. That, to me, is great service. Also, for merely $1 you can buy a beer or wine. If thats not a great deal, I don't know what else is.

The only thing I could imagine Express Jet doing to make the flight better is to add Satellite TV in the cabin...but those jets are a bit small for that and the Satellite Radio is a nice touch.