Low cost airlines, holding your nose and biting your tongue!

Me at the Bernabau stadium Madrid, this trip was on Easyjet.

If most people cared to admit it they have used a low cost airline at some point, it is undoubtedly 9 times out of 10 going to be the best priced option . They are big business, so much so that certain airlines (Ryanair) can afford to cut flight schedules on a whim and run a media campaign on the basis that “no publicity is bad publicity” and still survive.

Our Ryanair plane at Girona airport last March

See this link for one example from our website forum on Ryanair  , this airline almost perpetuates its own bad rep on purpose and the public are outraged for a couple of days but then book another flight as they need to get to somewhere in Europe cheaply. So are they that bad?  Personally I’m not sure, I certainly hate some of their practices as they seem so unnecessary and petty. I recently booked some flights and forgot to add on baggage at the time of booking, I went back in to the booking online about 5 minutes later to amend this around to what I needed. Much to my chagrin I found the price had pretty much trebled for this baggage, as I said, petty and unnecessary, needless to say their customer service didn’t want to know so I had to pay it.

Now my response to this was, I’ll never fly with your airline again, you so and so’s  (insert generic swearword as required if you like) but now alas I’m going to have to go to Barcelona next year for an important family wedding and Ryanair fly from Bournemouth which is sooooo convenient for me in Southampton so I’m in a quandary. That’s where the problem lies, Low cost airlines are good at what they do to some extent. Not in the traditional way by offering a good service or looking after their customers but by offering a choice and a million and one little niches and different flight routes that other airlines dont do and usually at a fairly decent cost. For me I’m not sure if your BA’s and Iberia’s etc are any different in their service as how often do BA staff go on strike (in reality exactly the same as what happened with Ryanair recently) or systems fail or that they just cancel flights? Quite often, is the answer so maybe its all just in perception, Ryanair BAD, British airways,GOOD and maybe it is all just down to a preconceived idea that scheduled airlines are always better.

Also I’ve mentioned Ryanair a lot as they are the worst of the lot (even Air Asia in the far east is way better in my opinion) but Easyjet is an airline I flown on lots, never had a single problem in terms of delays, flight cancellations and has always been great for us. There are also ones like Norwegian doing longhaul and Wizzair, Blue air and so on, which I’ve not experienced but certainly have some interesting routes.

A recent report shows that low cost airlines make an extra £2.6billion a year purely in ancillary add ons like bags, pre paid seats etc like I mentioned before. In my experience they are always cheaper, however the way its always worked when I’ve booked with them, they tend to sucker you in and put on a ton of add ons after the fact which IS the business for them essentially if you look at those figures.

I haven’t really flown a lot of charter airlines in my time like Thomsons and Thomas Cook but I’ve flown a lot of scheduled and a lot of low cost, both here and abroad and can honestly say on the short haul routes I dont think the experience is much different once you are on the plane. The main hassle, for me, is in the waiting and queuing and this is considerable as you tend to be penned up at the gate and have to stand in line to be boarded, then queue to actually get on the plane as well. Personally I think this part is worth it if it will save you £150 and I am happy to put up with a little bit of discomfort for that sort of monetary saving. Also airports like Luton and Stansted are not the same nice experience (I think)  as some of the terminals at Heathrow even though the huge amount of people at all of them mean the difference is negated. I would always prefer to fly from a local, smaller airport like most people but I would however drive a couple of hours to Stansted quite happily if it meant my holiday cost was halved.

So there we go, I would hold my nose, bite my tongue and just get on with it when faced with flying a low cost airline. Would my expectations be sky high? No definitely not. Do I like the Michael O’Leary and Ryanair style, no I dont either, but fly with them I would,as long as the price was right.