Cheap Travel

In Europe there has been a revolution on cheap flights over the last ten years. It all started with www.easyjet.co.uk who started offering prices from the UK to European destinations in the two digit range. London to Barcelona would typically be around 65 Euros.

Soon along came many others, including www.ryanair.co.uk, who still offer some of the cheapest flights to be found – if you don’t take anything more than hand luggage and make sure you check in online. With these low cost airlines the rules are reversed in that the longer in advance you book your flight, the cheaper it is. If you want to fly tomorrow then you might be paying top dollar – they want to encourage long term booking so as to be sure of their budgets.

Although low-cost airlines are starting up all over Europe, the range of Ryan Air and Easy Jet mean that the traveler’s best bet is often to travel from, say, Italy to Spain via London – it just means waiting around in airports for some hours whilst waiting for the connecting flight.

How do these companies offer such low prices? Well, for a start they cut back on expenses like free meals and drinks to the extent that they acquired the name ‘no-frills’ airlines. They sell overpriced airline food, drinks, headsets for the movie and duty-free to passengers bored out of their minds.

There’s some money in that but they also make good money from people buying tickets at the last minute. Everyone assumes that these low-cost airlines will always be the cheapest and so they don’t check around, just typing in their credit card details and buying their flight without further thought.

Of course they also include all kinds of hidden fees if you’re not really careful.

The low-cost airlines also team up with the tourist industry in the destinations they target to offer hotels, rental cars and other tours. It’s a tight business but it’s made it cheaper to fly around Europe than take the bus or train.

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