Using German Wings Blind Booking to Visit London: Our Experience

Using German Wings Blind Booking to Visit London: Our Experience - My husband Bill and I are temporarily living near Stuttgart, Germany. We know we're going to be living in Germany for a limited time, so we're determined to see as much as we can. A couple of months ago, Bill told me about German Wings, a budget airline with hubs in Cologne, Berlin, and Stuttgart. Bill was thinking we could use the airline to visit some cities that aren't as convenient to drive to from where we live. I was a little skeptical, since the term "budget airline" always brings to mind extremely cramped seats, cattle call boarding, and lots of nickel and dimeing. But then, we found out about blind booking and decided we had to give German Wings a chance.

What is blind booking?

Simply put blind booking is, as German Wings defines it, booking and paying for a flight before you know where you're going. The object is for you to get a cheap flight to a great city while German Wings sells seats on flights that are undersold. With a little flexibility and an adventurous spirit, this can be a win/win deal for everyone.

How does blind booking work?

Blind bookings are accessed from German Wings' Web site. The airline offers blind bookings from Cologne, Berlin, and Stuttgart. Several popular European destinations are grouped into specific "themes". You choose which theme is most appealing, input your travel dates, pay your fare, then wait to find out where you're going.

Cologne offers the most choices for blind booking, with six different themes available. By contrast, Stuttgart offers four themes and Berlin offers one.

Our booking experience

We chose the Metropolis Westeurope blind booking from Stuttgart. This grouping included the cities of Barcelona, Berlin, Hamburg, Lisbon, London, Madrid, Rome, and Vienna, any of which would have been cities we would have chosen to visit without blind booking. We wanted to travel during the Martin Luther King holiday, so we chose January 16th as our departure date and January 19th for our return. After we put in our travel dates and other preferences, we paid for the flight. Each leg of the trip cost 19.99 euros per person, including taxes and fees. Then, we held our breath and waited to find out where we were going. After a minute or two, we had tickets to London's Stanstead airport for the Martin Luther King holiday weekend! The total cost for round trip tickets to London for both of us was the euro equivalent of about $145!

What about excluding cities?

Bill and I are considering trying a blind booking through the Metropolis Easteurope grouping of cities. That group includes Belgrade, Bucharest, Budapest, Dresden, Katowice, Leipzig, Sarajevo, Warsaw, and Zagreb. We have already been to Dresden and though it was a lovely city, we'd like to go somewhere else. German Wings offers the simple solution of allowing us to exclude up to three cities. The only catch is, there is a five euro charge for each city excluded. That's five euros per person, per leg. With two travelers, excluding one city for a round trip ticket would cost an extra twenty euros. Excluding three cities would cost an extra sixty euros and may defeat the purpose of blind booking.

More fine print

It's important to remember that German Wings is a budget airline. That means that it's no frills. There is no first or business class seating and each traveler is allowed to check one bag at 23 kilos or less. Each kilo over the limit results in a five euro charge. Carry on luggage is limited to no more than 8 kilos per person. Handbags, coats, and umbrellas are not counted under the limit. If you want food or drink you pay for it, but that's becoming par for the course in airline travel.

It's important to remember that once you buy your tickets, they are non-refundable. That means you might end up with a flight that leaves at a less than desirable time. Our flight from Stuttgart to London left in the mid-afternoon, but our flight from London to Stuttgart left at 8:00am. Since we were staying in downtown London and Stanstead Airport is about a 45 minute train ride from London, that meant we had to get up very early to make the flight. We also had to pay for the train ride to and from London.

Our flight experience

I mentioned earlier that I was a little nervous about flying on German Wings, even though I'd heard they were a good airline. I needn't have worried. While the seats were a bit cramped, there was assigned seating. That meant that Bill and I were seated next to each other. The flights in both directions were only about half full, so we ended up with a three seat row to ourselves both ways! Better yet, the flights were only 75 minutes each direction, much faster than driving or taking a train.

The flight attendants were very professional. They all spoke German and English and all announcements were given in both languages. We enjoyed pleasant flights in both directions and wouldn't hesitate to fly German Wings again.

A little more about German Wings

Although blind booking is only offered from the Berlin, Stuttgart, and Cologne airports, German Wings offers flights to over sixty European cities. They go everywhere from Lisbon to Moscow. German Wings can even accommodate dogs and cats, as long as they weigh under 8 kilograms when in their carrier.

Overall

Bill and I had a great time experimenting with blind booking and are looking forward to trying it again soon. If you're in Germany and live near Cologne, Stuttgart, or Berlin, you might want to give it a try yourself!