# Super low fare european Airlines



## Bill4728 (Jun 6, 2008)

On a different thread, I asked about the difference in price between a one way vs round trip flight from Venice to Paris ($100 vs $1200)

What I was told was to look at some of the super low price airlines RyanAir, EasyJet & MyAir. They all fly direct and seem to do it at extremely low prices. 

But they unlike most airlines don't have their schedule posted past this fall (Trip is next April). 

What should I know about these airlines?

TIA


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## Linda74 (Jun 6, 2008)

You can check www.whichbudget.com to find routes of intraeuropean airlines.  We have flown Ryan a couple of times.  There are baggage restrictions and I would certainly not count on them getting where I wanted to go if I had another plane connection to make, but they will save you money and are certainly OK if they can fit your needs.


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## Kola (Jun 6, 2008)

I would consider any schedules and/or pricing posted today for April 2009 as highly questionable. All info about Ryanair is right here http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/

K.


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## Icarus (Jun 6, 2008)

Bill4728 said:


> What should I know about these airlines?
> 
> TIA



Not much, as long as you are only using them for point to point travel. (Assuming you realize that they are completely no-frills, including removing things like window shades from the planes.)

There's no connections, and no guarantees that you will make any connecting flights on their airline or any other airline. No connections means no interlining of baggage at all. I don't know if that applies to all of them, but it certainly applies to Ryan Air.

They also tend to fly from secondary airports, since they are cheaper to operate from. (Similar to SouthWests original model).

What I don't understand is how they can make money at those cheap fares given the cost of jet fuel.

-David


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## Keitht (Jun 6, 2008)

With many of the European LCC's virtually everything is an 'extra' and RyanAir are the most proficient at screwing the last bit of juice out of the traveller.  They are poorly rated by many people, and their customer service is allegedly non existent.
Before travelling with any of the LCC's check every bit of detail on their website.  To precis most of their t&c's they come down to "Whatever has gone wrong, it's never our fault."


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## Carolinian (Jun 7, 2008)

I have flown many of them.  The only delay I have had was a weather condition that impacted all airlines that day.  Always watch luggage restrictions, but I pack light and try to carry on rather than check baggage.  In this regard, EasyJet has the most generous carry-on luggage policy of any airline in Europe.  Some fly into remore airports, notably RyanAir, while others fly into the major airports.  Some LCC's have started pushing back against the big scam of  European legacy airlines which all nail you with a big fuel surcharge on the ''tax'' line in your ticket price, by quoting all-in prices instead, which is really refreshing.


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## eakhat (Jun 7, 2008)

My husband and I flew across the mountains from Geneva, Switzerland to Nice, France on a discount airline.  It was cheaper and took less time than the train we had planned on taking.  The flight went well--no extra charges or inconveniences; however, the downside is we arrived at 10:00 p.m. in an unfamiliar city.


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## eakhat (Jun 7, 2008)

Forgot to mention--on another flight from Barcelona to London I chose to pay $100 more to fly on a major airline because of the problem of leaving and arriving at airports that were inconveniently located.


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## Keitht (Jun 7, 2008)

Carolinian said:


> Some LCC's have started pushing back against the big scam of  European legacy airlines which all nail you with a big fuel surcharge on the ''tax'' line in your ticket price, by quoting all-in prices instead, which is really refreshing.



The quoting of all-in prices isn't some altruistic action on the part of LCCs.  It has been forced on them, in the UK at least, by legislation.  People were sick of seeing ads for 1p flights that actually cost 40 or 50 pounds.  That has been deemed to be 'false advertising'.


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## Carolinian (Jun 7, 2008)

LCC's use all-in prices other places, too, while the legacies still play the shell games with their fuel surcharges on the tax line, something that ought to be illegal.

Some airports used by LCC's are actually more convenient than those used by legacy airlines.  It is much easier and quicker to get into Bucharest from Baneasa airport used by the LCC's than it is from Otopeni airport used by the legacies, for example.


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## Laurie (Jun 7, 2008)

Here are a few useful tips, gleaned in part from a recent trip that used 3 different European airlines with different weight-limits:

1. They of course weigh your check-in bags, but rarely weigh your carry-on bags, they just don't enforce this. So if/when in doubt, go at or a bit under-limit on check-in bags, and over in your carry-ons (being ready to put heaviest stuff in your pockets if necessary - but it never was.). Or get to the airport a bit early, and go to the check-in counter of a different airline that's not busy - they might be willing to weigh your bags for you and you can make adjustments - they did for us and it helped a lot!!

2. Some routes aren't year-round, for instance destinations in ski regions and beach regions. Major cities like Paris and Venice will be though. But for other destinations, think about that, and don't make the mistake I made: I waited for routes to be posted later, but our trip to a ski destination was out-of-season, and there weren't any.

3. Be open to flying into a different city and connecting by other method (car, train etc) to where you want to end up, if the schedule works for you. www.whichbudget is great for that because you can see all the possible cities at a glance.  We needed to get to Austria where we were renting a car. I kept bombing out on workable schedules to Salzburg and Vienna, but finally found cheap workable flights to Klagenfurt, a city I'd never even heard of - perfect!  

4. Some major airlines also have been forced to match these lower rates, for example British Air has opened new routes within the UK that are incredibly cheap (eg London-Newquay).  So check out the bigger airlines in the countries you are traveling - Alitalia, Air France, etc.

5. There are wonderful b&b's which include airport pick-up and drop-off in their room prices. That helped us with flexibility on our last trip - we got over-the-pond FF flights returning from Milan because that was one of very few cities where FF flights were available. Milan wasn't on our destination list. So we used a cheap easyjet flight into Milan, an inexpensive b&b with airport transportation, and saved $$. If we'd had an extra day we could have toured Milan cheaply from there, too.


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