Budget Travel Series: Flights

When in Europe, and especially when you are fortunate like us and live close to London Stansted Airport or Luton Airport, you have the HUGE advantage of two competing no-frills, budget airlines: Easy Jet and Ryan Air.

For Ryan Air, we look for the flights with the “Free Online Check-In.” This saves you the cost of taxes and fees, which is usually most of the price with these airlines. With the exception of maybe 1, all of our flights have cost us less than 50 GBP (~$83 USD) for a round-trip ticket. The bottom line is that we don’t go somewhere unless we can get a cheap flight. In our experience, Easy Jet is pricier than Ryan Air; however, they usually fly to main airports so you save the travel costs associated with getting to cities from rural airports. For Ryan Air, make sure to determine the cost to get to your final destination and incorporate that into your ticket price before deciding between the two airlines.

Both airlines make their money with the “extras,” and they get you with higher fees if you don’t know the system. Here are some of the tips we have learned:

1. The first “extra” is baggage. For no cost, you can take 1 carry-on bag weighing up to 10 kg (~** lbs) and measuring 20x40x55 cm. For our friends in the United States, this is considerably smaller than what you are used to taking on U.S. flights. For an additional cost, you can check bags, but you will pay based on weight (for example, you pay 20 GBP to check 1 bag weighing up to 15 kg (~** lbs) round-trip). As a result, Brian and I have gotten very good at packing our luggage wisely. We maximize our carry-on bags and tend to travel with only 1 checked bag that usually tops out at 14.9 kg. We have traveled only using carry-on, but some airports wouldn’t allow us to take our camera tripod on-board. (HUGE tip: Buy a small luggage scale to take with you. It saves you from having to redistribute weight at the airport, and even if there are scales in the airports, you usually have to pay for them.)
2. The second “extra” you will encounter during the booking process is the potential upgrade to speedy boarding. Both airlines do not have assigned seats; therefore, it is first-come, first-served. However, you do not need to purchase this upgrade. The key is to get to the airport early and patiently queue once the gate number has been announced. If you do this, you will get a good seat even on a crowded flight.
3. The next “extra” is food and drink on-board. Just like the movies, it definitely saves you tons of money to bring your own drinks and snacks. Ryan Air and Easy Jet offers them, but at ridiculous prices (I made this mistake once and paid 2 GBP (~3.33 USD) for a mini-can of Pepsi). Now, as soon as we get through Security, we buy a huge bottle of water or other non-alcoholic drink (you can’t bring your own alcohol on the plane). We take those and pre-packed snacks with us in case we want to eat something while on the plane.
4. Other “extras” that will cost you include Ryan Air scratch lottery cards, smokeless cigarettes, and duty-free items available through the airline catalogue.

So this is the first major part of how we have been able to travel affordably throughout Europe. Stay tuned tomorrow for our tips on booking nice, but affordable, hotels.