Which? has been snooping around the websites of the budget airlines, and you’ll never guess what they found. It turns out that two airlines are charging eczema sufferers a mandatory cleaning fee for shedding their skin in the cabin.  No, not really – it’s more obvious than that. The consumer folk discovered that baggage fees and credit card booking charges can increase the cost of a flight by nearly 30 per cent.

The number one villain for pumping up the prices was Ryanair, which added over 29 per cent – £50 – to a flight to Malaga from the East Midlands booked for February when a bag was checked in and a credit card used. Which? then booked in with bmibaby and the price of their flight to Paris increased by a quarter, while a flight to Malaga increased by 23 per cent.

Budget airlines battle over ancillary charges (artist's impression)

EasyJet was the hero of the piece for consistently offering the lowest luggage and credit card charges out of the four airlines checked, although the additional charges still added 17 per cent to two of the flights checked by the consumer bods.

Of course, while it pains us to stick up for the budget airlines in any way, plenty of people booking short-haul flights to Europe are taking short city breaks and will never require a case to be booked into the hold. Racking up the ancillary revenue through credit card charges on the other hand – that’s an outrageous practise that few other retailers would ever get away with.

[The Guardian]

Another day, another major airline struggling to stay afloat. This time it’s the turn of BMI - Heathrow’s second largest operator behind British Airways, and employer of over 4,400 people. There’s another restructuring scheme underway to stem losses as the industry continues to bleed money, which is likely to lead to 600 staff losing their jobs.

BMI has already warned that it needs the best part of £200 million if it’s to continue operating in the future, following losses of £155 million last year and expected losses of up £200 million this year.

As well as the job losses (which follow recent cuts by bmibaby), BMI will also put an end to several loss-leading routes; flights from Heathrow to Brussels, Tel Aviv, Kiev and Aleppo will end in January, while its Amsterdam route will close in March and flights to Palma and Vienna will not be restarted in the summer.

[The Times]

A smorgasbord of budget airline news popping a cap in your ass, ladies and gentlemen, and NONE of it involves Sky Marshall O’Leary. Yes, you’re welcome:

Hang on to your hats – Jet2.com has been named Passenger Airline of the Year 2009 by the Baltic Air Charter Association. The budget airline received the accolade at the Baltic Air Charter Association’s 60th anniversary lunch and awards for excellence at the Guildhall in London last week. You’ll know what a big deal this is when you hear the awards were hosted by none other than BBC presenter Clare Balding. Exactly

easyJet has begun a four day sale with up to 30 per cent off all flights; we’ve just had a quick gander at the dates and costs, and there are plenty of flights to Europe in January for under £40 return, although we haven’t seen much yet that was cheaper compared to a week or two ago.

Budget airline news war breaks out (artist's impression)

Monarch has joined forces with the she-devil of online payments, PayPal, to give customers the chance to win back the cost of their flights. Passengers booking flights through the website and paying through PayPal will be entered into a nationwide prize draw, and 500 PayPal customers will win back the value of their transactions each week.

bmibaby proves to be the runt of the budget airline litter – nearly 160 staff are eyeballing redundancy as the company considers the now legendary restructuring option to save itself. 54 pilot and 82 cabin crew positions at Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff airports at risk, and the airline is reducing its number of aircraft from 17 to 12 next year. A dozen planes. Really, why bother – put on buses or something.

Ah, Ryanair. You may have the scent of desperation and attitude of a pimp in a passage when it comes to customer policy, but at least you’ve a solid online strategy. Who cares if you don’t understand the point of blogging or defend outrageous and offensive blog posts made by your staff. And does it matter that your website still looks like an educational tool for colour-blind toddlers? Not at all.

At least you’ve got Google Ads sussed though, eh? You’ve realised you can make a pretty penny or two by displaying contextual advertising that’s entirely appropriate to your customer. Or perhaps you haven’t:

Maybe somebody should log into Google AdSense and take a look at the Competitive Ad Filter, instead of driving customers to their competitors. Unless it’s an elaborate plan by Ryanair to bankrupt the likes of bmibaby, which if you asked them about, they’d probably insist it was. Numpties.