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Oceansource.net guide to flying with Low-Cost Airlines

Low-Cost Airlines are taking over the skies, promising cheaper fares than charter airlines and scheduled services. But it’s often frustratingly difficult to actually find the cheapest fares in the first place, and frustratingly common to pay much more than the advertised price at the end of the day. Their prices are advertised ‘un-bundled’, that is, the price shown doesn’t include everything you have to pay, such as fuel surcharges, airport tax, government levies and even in some cases, wheelchair taxes. The websites are confusing and complicated because confused and frustrated people get fed up trying to find the give-away fares and settle for any price that doesn’t look too bad (until the taxes get piled on). You may still think you’ve got a bargain, but in many cases you’ll end up paying as much or more than any other non low-cost airline might have charged you. We’ve put this guide together to help you play the airlines at their own game and actually find the cheap flights they advertise so heavily, and also to avoid some of the common pitfalls where low cost airlines have developed a reputation for making the lion’s share of their enormous profits.

Finding cheap flights (the basics)

1. If you travel in busy periods – national holidays or weekends – there won’t be any cheap flights. For example, flights leaving on a Friday evening are never sold that cheaply by any of the low-cost operators, so there’s no point looking for them. The super-cheap fares are always at times when most people can’t travel easily, for example flights on a Wednesday morning.
   
   
2. The same applies to times of the day. Convenient times will be more expensive, so to find the cheaper flights you need to travel when most other people won’t want to.
   
   
3. If you want to find the cheap flights, look and book well ahead. Flights are released for sale six months in advance, so start thinking six months in advance. Some routes sell out faster than others, but remember if you feel you’ve missed a bargain flight on a Wednesday in six months time, wait a week and you’ll probably get onto the same flight a week later for the same price.
   
   
4. The websites aren’t designed to make it easy to find the lowest priced tickets, so there’s usually no easy way to quickly search for the lowest fares on the airlines websites themselves. However some third party sites have been built to interrogate the low-cost sites and find the cheapest fares quickly. Two very good sites are www.skyscanner.net and www.foundem.com. But ultimately you have to be flexible about your dates and spend time searching to find the cheapest flight.
   
   
5. Before you book, are you going where you actually want to go? Many low cost airlines advertise a destination but actually fly to a smaller (and for them, cheaper) airport up to 50 miles away. If you fly to Paris with Ryanair for example, you’ll land at Beauvais, 35 miles from the centre of the city. Since trekking through major cities with loads of watersports gear is a pain this can also work in your favor, but if you need to connect with another flight, catch a bus or get into the city for any other reason, it’s essential to know exactly where you’re flying, and find out the costs and frequency of public transport between these bases and city centres before booking the low cost flight.

Keeping costs down

1. Be careful with the number of bags you take on board. Nearly all the low cost airlines have complicated and strictly enforced rules regarding how much baggage you can take. Some charge by the bag, some by weight, but in all cases it’s worth checking the airline’s official policy very carefully.
   
   
2. Don’t wait to book. If you find a flight you’re 90% sure you want, don’t wait. Phone everyone else who’s interested and get the booking done. It may well go up or sell out by tomorrow.
   
   
3. Always try to pay for your ticket and any extras online, where there’s often a small discount.

Don’t pay for your mistakes

1. Don’t change your mind about when or where you want to go. Once you’re booked with any low cost airline you can’t cheaply change any aspect of the booking. For most you’ll have to pay to phone a call centre and then pay again to change the booking, often far more than the actual cost of the flight.
   
   
2. Don’t be late. If you turn up late for any of the low cost airlines you won’t get onto the plane, you won’t get put onto the next flight and you won’t get any money back either. If you’re going to be late because there’s a big queue at the check-in, go to the front and tell them.
   
   
3. Don’t go over your baggage allowance, you’ll be charged. (In many cases there isn’t a baggage allowance, so you’ll be charged anyway, but the less you can take, the less it’ll cost you).

Hidden costs and charges

1. Low Cost Airlines make a lot of their money from hidden taxes and charges. These charges are designed to look official – as if they’re nothing to do with the airlines itself  - but this isn’t the case. They’re actually set by each company and do vary a lot from airline to airline. The only way to know if you’re getting the best deal is to check all the low cost flights that go to your destination. Websites such as www.skyscanner.net and www.foundem.com do help, but are not infallible.
   
   
2. Credit/debit card charges. These are a rip-off, usually for two reasons. Firstly they’re added to the price at the last possible minute, as if it’s your fault for using awkward payment methods when there’s actually no other way of payment accepted apart from these cards – and they’re often charged per person per trip, not per credit or debit card transaction. So you’re not actually paying for the administrative cost of debiting the money off the card, you’re paying a sneaky extra charge. Nonetheless, you currently can’t avoid them. What’s more, they vary greatly from airline to airline, making it confusing. But generally it’s cheaper to use a debit card than a credit card. Do make sure you choose the cheapest card you can when booking.
   
   
3. People in the UK should start to see airlines stopping the practice of unbundling fares (splitting the cost up into fuel surcharges, airport taxes and so on as mentioned in the point above). In February 2007 airlines were given three months by the Government Office of Fair Trading to end this practice and actually advertise the real price of the ticket. However that deadline has passed and the airlines are currently still advertising £0.01p flights that work out at nearly £200 once you add on all the charges!
   
   
4. Some taxes are unavoidable, and not the airlines’ fault. For example the UK Government doubled Air Passenger Duty in 2007 meaning the following charges are unavoidable for anyone flying in or out of the UK: £10 per person for each UK domestic flight, £10 per person for flights from the UK to an EU/EEA airport, £40 per person for flights from the UK to an airport outside the EU/EEA. There’s no point trying to find a flight that doesn’t have these taxes because they all have to, by law.
   
   
5. Having said that, very very occasionally you can avoid them. Sometimes airlines will pay this tax themselves when offering sales. RyanAir famously did this early in 2007 for its Summer Sale. Many flights were actually sold for £0.01 meaning RyanAir swallowed all the taxes and credit card charges itself. Critics argued that it did this to generate masses of publicity and confuse people, but it still did it!

Finally, as an example of how we think you should compare all your options when booking flights the following looks at a flight from London to Marrakech in Morocco for a recent surftrip. The only way to see if you’re really getting a good deal is to add up everything that each option will actually cost you before you can actually compare prices.

Lets assume I want to go to Marrakech, Morocco in about three month’s time. I’m flexible about the dates and where I fly from, therefore I have access to all the lowest fares around on each of the low cost airlines. I also want to take a windsurf and surfboard (that I’ll put in just one board, and one quiver bag.) Here’s what I find:

RyanAir fly from London Luton to Marrakech – I’m able to select an outbound and return £0.01 flight, which initially looks a fantastic bargain and by far the best option. However once all the taxes have been added on it comes to £71.85. Once I’ve paid the £15 each way to take one board, the total is £101.85. I’ve then got to actually pay, so now face the credit or debit charge fees, which brings me up to a final total of £107.85 (credit card) or £103.25 (debit card).

EasyJet also fly London Luton to Marrakech – EasyJet now shows you most of the actual cost at the point of selecting your flights, so they look more expensive. The cheapest I could find were an outbound price of £40.99 (that a £0.99 flight plus the £40 air passenger duty for flying outside the EU), and an inbound flight at £15.49. However the total came to a little more than the £56.48 that these add up to. The price including taxes was £79.98, and with the £30 for a windsurfer added it totalled £109.98. Once you’ve paid the credit card charge this comes to £114.93 or £111.48.

Atlas Blue (a Moroccan low cost carrier) also fly to Marrakech but from London Gatwick rather than Luton. Their website operates more on the EasyJet mould – you can see most of the taxes at the point of selecting your flights. The total with Atlas Blue came to £86.35. Atlas Blue doesn’t publish how much it charges for carrying a windsurf board, but told us via Oceansource.net that it’s a flat rate of £30 for the return trip. Hence £116.35.

Having checked these three sites I then went to www.skyscanner.net which found the cheapest flight for me at £79.85 (which was on EasyJet flights each way, and so I should add the £30 for taking windsurfing gear – hence £109.85 – and I’ll need to pay the credit or debit card charge when actually booking).

www.foundem.com did slightly better, but not much. It found flights for 71.00 exactly but it was difficult to discover which actual airline that was with, hence hard to work out how much to add on for taking kit. Assuming £30, it beats RyanAir’s price coming in at £101 exactly.

Finally I decided to check flights to other airports in Morocco that would suit me, namely Agadir. The cheapest flight I found to here was (via www.foundem.com) £206.00 (or £236.00 including taking kit). This was a charter airline rather than a low cost airline.

Conclusions: Well here’s a surprise - there’s not a big difference between the low cost airlines outside of their actual sales (most of them advertise sales nearly all the time but in reality simply move the cost of the flight between their various taxes). If there are no genuine sales on when you need to book, it makes more sense to go with the easiest option for you – i.e. the most convenient airport and on a flight at the most convenient time. Having said that, in this case there’s a small saving to be had by flying RyanAir, although it’s hard not to feel slightly cheated that its £0.01 pence flights turn out to cost you significantly over £100!

Last updated: September 21, 2007

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