I have to say I was looking forward to this fly it would probably be a complete lie.
In fact I've been pretty much dreaded in this fly since the day was booked .
You see my lovely wife Rach thought it would be funny to see me suffer on this flight that I'm about
to take today .I'm not sure I quite agree with her but anyway that's why I'm here at Manila
Airport terminal 3 about to take flight on the world's most cramped aircraft.
Hello Hi
Thank you Thank you
Now I've got my little yellow sticker on .
Cebu Pacific of these Airbus a330s
They normally seat 300 passengers but they're cramming 436 people on board them.
And sending them on these really long flights
and that's exactly what I'm doing today.
I'd be heading to Dubai on the torture machine today
on Cebu Pacific longest flight . A 10 hour fun fest of games, pot noodles and DVT.
But before I do a big thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring this video .
More on their all-in-one website design and hosting platform later in the video.
I wasn't thinking much to Manila Airport that was until I found somewhere to get some lunch.
Of all the airports in all the world I finally found one with a Kenny Rogers Roasters .
How cool is this ?
I haven't been in one of these but donkey's years didn't even know they still existed but here we go .
Nice fried chicken little bit of country music on the side .
I didn't get along to eat my chicken as Cebu wanted everyone at the boarding gate 90 minutes before departure .
Perfect thank you .
They seat everybody by zone and I was zone 8 at the front of the plane
so I was right at the back of the boarding gate.
From here I got my first glimpse of the flying prison that I'd be spending the next 10 hours on .
It's an A330-300 originally delivered to Cebu brand-new in 2014.
For once I was actually quite pleased that I was in the final boarding group
as it meant that I have less time sitting down on that really packed plane .
But alas it was all too soon until I was called for sentencing .
Okay here we go .
It was time to get on board and I had it gingerly down the boarding bridge onto the waiting A330.
No this one thank you.
Okay so on board. Chaos. Absolute chaos.
I've got an exit row so it's not too bad .
Seats a bit narrow though .
I was starting to feel quite smug that I've managed to bag an exit row .
Maybe a little to smug as the door was soon closed and robbed me of any leg room that I might have had .
if the legroom was one form of torture another was having to endure a horrendous remix
of Dua Lipa song One Kiss remixed as 'One Flight'.
On repeat
Constantly
on behalf of the captain and the crew I'd like to welcome you on board for
this A330 flight 5J014 for bound for Dubai.
We soon pushed back and got on our way.
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen my name is Angeleo F and welcome aboard Cebu Pacific.
Our route today then took us West out of the Philippines to cross Cambodia and Thailand
before crossing the Bay of Bengal into India.
We crossed India flying north of Mumbai and crossing the Arabian Sea towards the Omani coast
before commencing our approach into Dubai.
Flight time today was 9 hours and 42 minutes
cruising at 34, 36 and 40,000 feet.
I'd pre-ordered my meals on today's flight and it wasn't long before the cabin crew started bringing them round
First meal today was this beef dish which I'd chosen on the website
as it looked really good.
But in reality it wasn't that great.
So this aircraft then is wall-to-wall economy.
Most airlines have around 300 or so seats on the A330 .
Cebu have fitted 436 economy class seats to this in a 10 across configuration.
That many seats across as well it means that the seats are about 2 inches narrower
than on any other airline flighing the a330.
It really is a packed plane.
They really like to cram them on full but then the price they charge for these is incredibly low .
And I'll tell you at the end of the video how much I paid for this but
it's really good value for money .
If you can stomach the discomfort of being 400 and something passengers in an A330 .
If you don't prepay for your meals as I did you can't get a selection of food and drink from the buy onboard menu.
It's pretty cheap but there isn't a massive selection and they only take cash in Philippine pesos or US dollars .
So I was lucky I had a few dollars on me to get some water.
You're also lucky if you don't die of thirst.
They only came around a couple of times in the entire flight to sell drinks so
I made sure I stocked up on waters whenever they came round.
Better still take a packed lunch which is what most of the passengers seem to have done.
I was really proud of the Philippine passenger starts at the side of me
they managed to bring an entire KFC bucket meal onboard .
Hey I thought that was my thing?
I'm already envisaging I'm gonna get a few comments saying "you're cheating because you're sitting in the exit row".
For a start the exit row seats are actually narrower than the others.
Which are pretty narrow anyway so these ones are even narrower because they've got the fixed arm rests.
But also there's not any more legroom if you in the window either because the slide comes right across the seat in front of you.
And your not allowed to put your feet up there I've tried
and got told off already .
So it's still pretty tight even in these .
But the other reason is that it means I can get up and I wouldn't be able to get up and show you the rest of the plane otherwise.
if I was stuck in a window and two people were at the side of me .
So now about two hours into our flight I've got no idea where we are don't ask me that because
there's no moving map display , there's no, not even any screens
let alone any inflight entertainment system.
So i've got no idea where we are
but we're roughly 2 hours roughly after takeoff .
The more eagle eyed viewers amongst you may notice the hilarious t-shirt I'm wearing.
It was bought as a gift from my wife Rach.
to wear on this flight.
As if i don't feel daft enough walking around wearing this.
But nevermind
I'm going to take a wander towards the back of plane
to get an idea of just how many seats have crammed into this thing.
I mean basic is not the word
There's no entertainment
There's no comfort . There's no wifi.
There's nothing really. Just a basic bog standard basic plane.
With a whole lot of seats inside .
I'm going to take a wander down to the back of the plane.
Let's see just how many rows we could find.
And how long it takes us to walk right to the back of this A330 with 436 passengers on it.
Lets go and have a walk round .
Right right down at the back of the Cebu a300.
All 436 seats that way .
Crazy
Now we're doing a competition on board. Yay
Walking through this plane you really get a feel for how they cram them in .
A seat pitch of 30 inches is the same as Ryanair but the seats are an inch narrower than Ryanair's.
This is bad news if like me you have an ample backside and long legs.
Having endured the sole piece of in-flight entertainment to the fun game
I returned to my seat to watch some of my own entertainment.
Out of the window there was more entertainment of sorts
As I watched the Sun go down over well wherever we were ?
I don't know
So I watched a couple of Top Gear Grand Tours.
Watched a bit of YouTube of downloaded to my phone .
Thinking we maybe quite a way through the flight.
But I've just looked and we're only 3 hours in.
Another 6 hours left to go.
Good lord and it's getting really uncomfortable now.
So we're now just over four and a half hours into the flight
and the sun's just going down out of the window.
Still absolutely no idea where I am. It's kind of the worst thing about this flight really.
There's just no idea where you are because there's no moving map or anything.
It's like flying Ryanair for a nine-hour flight .
Starting to hurt me now as well really uncomfortable.
Seats are really hard it's like sitting on a bench .
I'm getting a right numb backside now.
But we're halfway through I think.
Unless you've picked up a tail wind or something which of course we don't know.
A bit of an update we're now 5 hours and 30 minutes into this flight
on this awful awful aircraft.
Oh my god
This flight is just tedious man absolutely tedious.
The hard seats are just kinda the beginning of it.
Yes they are really uncomfortable my backside is like so like sore from sitting on it for so long.
But then there's the fact that there's no entertainment.
There's no flight map.
There is no wifi .There is no food service.
They don't come round with food or anything.
Just the most tedious thing about it is is there I've got no idea where I am.
I just know that I'm somewhere between Manila and Dubai.
When we're five and a half hours.
I'm imagining they were probably somewhere
I mean it was about five hours to Nepal to Dubai when I did that.
And we've got four and a half hours left to run so
I imagine we probably
coming up towards the coast of Iran or somewhere like that.
Maybe.
Over the sea potentially.
And in fact you know what i'm going to do bit of a challenge now it's 20 past 1.
U.K time right now so
When I edit the video I'm going to see where we were.
At 20 past one.
And see just how close I was.
Are we actually coming up to the coast of Iran
Or
is it going to be even worse .
Oh please don't let it be worse.
Except it was worse.
Much worse actually .
In fact we were only just crossing the east coast of India at this point.
let alone being over the Arabian Sea going towards Iran .
And to make matters even worse the cabin was now in total darkness.
I didn't even have the entertainment factor of watching the other passengers anymore.
Things were looking grim.
Well slightly grimmer than they were anyway.
Things brightened up slightly when the cabin crew emerged to do another meal service.
This time I had the Pinoy spaghetti which wasn't too bad.
Well actually on second thoughts after looking at it again
yeah
So update. oh this is grim.
This bathroom is just bloody grim.
It's like nearly 3/4 of the way through the flight now
two hours left to run now.
Till we land at Dubai.
I still got no clue where abouts on planet Earth we actually are.
I think I was wrong earlier because I didn't see any lights.
Some lights had appeared out the window then they disappeared again.
So I've no idea . We're over the sea I believe or over a load of cloud .
One way or another
We've still got 2 hours left.
Who knows where abouts we are on planet earth?
(Cebu pacific advert )
Thanks .
Perfect! Lets buy some Cebu pacific merchandise to remind us of this terrible airplane to ride on.
Yeah 2 hours left
And thats like a flight to Spain isn't it.
So think of it like that.
And I'll be not too far to go .
I just can not wait to step off this thing.
By this point in the flight the cabin was now like the end of a disaster movie
with bodies strewn across seats and the narrow aisles now even trickier to negotiate.
When I eventually reach my seat though there was some welcome news .
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We started our descent towards the welcoming lights of Dubai.
Now it's time to talk about that price .
Including the seat allocation and the pre booked meals this ticket cost me the grand total
of £135.20p
For this flight of over 4000 miles and 9 hours long it works out to just 3 pence per mile.
And this wasn't even the sale price it's the normal price .
For this price you can't deny is a super economical way of flying,
Finally after over 10 hours sitting on this tubular prison I was free .
The air felt good , my legs started to work again and ahead of me the luxury of Dubai Airport .
Beckoning me with its golden shiny arms.
So then here at Dubai after what felt like the world's longest flight with Cebu Pacific.
I mean I've done 17 18-hour flight in economy before
and they didn't see him anywhere near as long as that one.
It was just horrendous
Let me know what you thought to Cebu Pacific down in the comments below .
Would you fly them even if they were that really cheap price from Manila .
All the way over here to Dubai .
Let me know down in the comments but in the meantime
as always thanks for watching take care and I'll see you next time .