Rebranding must be all the rage amongst airlines at the moment, because we’ve seen plenty of new-look planes recently. And today, official Bitterwallet reader Bill brought our attention to the new Ryanair logo. You might have seen it before, but we hadn’t and that’s good enough for us. Ryanair are, as we call them in the office, the gift that keeps giving:
Three years ago, Sky Marshall O’Leary caused all manner of excitement amongst both the aviation industry and consumers – Ryanair would begin operating long-haul routes to the US for less than a tenner (not including taxes, credit card payments, baggage or online check-in fees) within three to four years. A new brand would be created to operate between Europe and six US cities, and as with its European services, passengers would pay for food and drinks consumed on-board, as well as in-flight entertainment.
For now, alas, the low-cost transatlantic dream is over. The Irish Examiner reports that O’Leary has put the plans on hold for several more years, because of a backlog in orders for long-haul aircraft. As you can imagine, the news has stunned the Bitterwallet team – for months we clung to the hope of coital relations that didn’t cost us money:
While it does little to sweeten a bitter stew of churning passenger dissatisfaction, we can take comfort in knowing that we in the UK are not the only ones protesting ridiculous airline fees. Brilliantly skewering American Airlines – one of the worst in the U.S. for tacking on fees – last December satirical news site The Onion’s headline proclaimed: “American Airlines Now Charging Fees to Non-Passengers.”
We could certainly go on at length about the indignities that are now automatically assumed to be part of air travel, but instead we want to help you avoid as many of those stupid fees as possible. Here are some tips for dealing with two of the stupidest: payment methods and baggage rules.
Here are two ways to pay less for the privilege of paying:
Note: when multiple bags are allowed, the weight limits are totals and do not average out across bags. In other words, if there is a 15 kg weight limit and two bags are allowed, you can’t get away with one 10 kg bag and one 20 kg bag on the theory that they average out to 15 kg.
A few ideas for making sure you stay under the weight limit include first and foremost, packing light. You can easily pay more to check a heavy piece of clothing than the clothing itself costs. While it is horribly wasteful, passengers have been known to chuck some of their packed stuff in the bin at the airport rather than pay the excess weight fees. Wearing rather than packing your heavy coat is a good idea, as is leaving room in your suitcase for things you purchase while on your trip. Some people are able to get all their gear into hand luggage and avoid checked baggage charges altogether.
Another idea to avoid much of this hassle altogether is to consider taking a non-budget airline. There are cases when, with fees added in, the “budget” airlines cost more than some of the special fares offered by British Airways. The ticket price will look obscene at first, but it will include the things that the budget airlines itemize and charge for a la carte. Plus you’ll still get snacks on-board. Let us know in the comments if you have any money saving tips for budget air travel.
In Ryanair News today, it’s not passengers that Sky Marshall O’Leary is aggravating, but other budget airlines. The announcement that Ryanair plans to fly 13 new routes out of Leeds Bradford Airport has upset the other budget airline that’s been based there for quite some time. Jet2.com are getting the arse about it, as the homepage of their site subtly makes clear:
The “full story” turns out to be a shocking catalogue of abuse that “other airlines” will dish out to hapless passengers, while conveniently ignoring their own charges and twisting the figures to boot:
Of course Ryanair could point out that Jet2.com charge up to £8 per seat, or up to £25 for one with extra legroom – “for a return flight, that’s up to £200 for a family of 4… just to sit down!” – and jet2.com obviously don’t mention that Ryanair has a different baggage allowance hence the massive discrepancy, or that their own pop-up list of additional charges doesn’t mention how much passengers are charged per additional kg of baggage – “the airline that hides the truth from you!” – and so on. You get the point.
The website is stuffed full with huge banners, pages of claims, ticker-tapes running across the screen. It’s such a knee-jerk reaction that makes jet2.com management look like petulant children, you can’t help but that feel a) it won’t make a dent in Ryanair’s passenger numbers once they roll into town, and b) jet2.com didn’t know a thing about Tuesday’s announcement until they saw the Sky Marshall in that bloody shirt.
Right then, so the Government is throwing its weight behind a proposal to phase out domestic air travel in the UK, and pour all resources into a high speed rail network. This 250mph, multi-billion pound network of steel will see 46 million air passengers drop out the sky and into the trains. The plan will then be rolled out to tackle short-haul flights to European destinations too. In total, the Government wants to “progressively replace” 1.9 million flights a year, and shunt the 169 million passengers flying onto a high-speed rail network.
Now, who would want to have a really good sweary rant about this on behalf of the budget airlines? Hang on, the phone is ringing:
“It is insane. The only link you have [between the UK and Europe] is one highly priced tunnel. People are not going to travel to the UK regions, including the Lake District and Cornwall, on a [Eurostar] train that only stops at Kent and London St Pancras.
“[Rail is] a valid alternative if you don’t mind the inefficiency and high cost of rail services.
“On [return] domestic flights from Glasgow to London, passengers are paying £20 in taxes while they continue to subsidise the shit out of the railways. Substituting one form of transport that is heavily taxed for a form of transport that is heavily subsidised is not the answer.”
Sky Marshall O’Leary of Ryanair, everyone. Obviously the chief executive of Europe’s largest short-haul airline wouldn’t be in favour of seeing his planes blown out the sky by jet fighters and surface-to-air missiles. Because that’s what they’d do.
[Guardian]
This family paid £40 to be silhouettted before their flight
Here’s a message to all of you who regularly bitch and moan about your awful experiences with Ryanair and other similarly crappy airlines who stiff you with added charges that they seem to pull out of the air like a deranged giant plucking an eagle out of the sky for a snack.
The message is ‘start complaining to the Air Transport Users Council instead.’ Well, keep complaining here too, because we enjoy reading it.
The aforementioned AUC have just announced an 11% increase in the number of passenger moans and gripes they’ve received over the past year – and more and more of those moans and gripes are about more and more add-on charges as the ‘budget’ airlines gradually plump up their profits.
Tina Tietjen, the council’s chairman, revealed that the increase in complaints was in spite of the introduction of new legislation that is designed to enhance the rights of passengers.
Possibly missing a 'T'
She said: “We received an increase in complaints about the extra charges airlines have introduced for services previously included in the fare. This has brought benefits to passengers in terms of potentially cheaper fares for those that don’t need to use these services.”
“But many passengers who contacted us were concerned that they were often not getting value for money for what they were paying for these services.”
The AUC are the official sky-based watchdog for the UK so if you want your voice to be heard by someone with the power to make a difference, bookmark their website right next to this one.
If you haven’t booked up for your Summer holiday yet, here’s a few off-beat travel site suggestions that are worth a peek to find a bargain or dodge a bullet:
Travelistic
A decent way to get advice up-front before you reach a destination, Travelistic has hundreds of videos covering dozens of destinations. There are how-to and transport guides, top tips and tourist information videos, and most of them look pretty professional, so don’t expect too many fanboy-cut mash-ups.
Tripr.tv
If want a peek around a hotel before you book, see if there’s footage of it at Tripr.tv. This site used to be reminiscent of the Lynn-Faulds Wood era of Watchdog, featuring videos of hotels taken by previous guests, documenting their various states of disrepair/inadequate toilet plumbing/infestation. Now it appears to have been astroturfed with reviews from the hotels themselves, but it’s still worth searching to see if yours is featured – in any case you’ll know what to expect for your money before you book.
Travel Etiquette
Because every country on the planet doesn’t serve egg and chips, and because everyone you meet won’t respond to you slowly shouting basic English at them, there’s Travel Etiquette. It’ll come as no shock that the French “may seem very direct and brusque in the way in which they speak” or that you should “dress well and conduct yourself with a degree of quiet confidence” in Italy. But there are plenty of nuances and tips for ensuring you don’t receive a punch in the mouth while a Brit abroad.
Twitter
No apologies for banging on about Twitter yet again, because it’s simply one of the quickest ways to spot cheap deals, pumped out directly by the companies themselves. Some travel companies to follow right now include jet2.com, United Airlines and Expedia, but you should also follow the likes of Wendy Perrin, Consumer News Editor for Conde Naste Traveler. Perrin is one of the most savvy travel writers in the business, and CN Traveler has a strict policy of not accepting or promoting third party trips, so her recommendations are made without financial bias.
Best Flights
We recommended this Australian website last week, because it keeps an eye on over 75 budget airlines around the world, and keeps users up-to-date with any special offers they’re promoting. The user-interface beyond the initial price checking front page is a little lame, but if your travels are guided by deals then it’s a great way to see what prices are available around the world.
As far as we’re aware, Ryanair has never come out and openly admitted to treating passengers like dogshit. The passengers themselves accuse the airline of doing so all the time, but clearly it’d be financial suicide for Sky Marshall O’Leary to do the same. So what’s all this about then?
After ramping up the month’s column inches by jumping on the standing room bandwagon, Ryanair’s website is running a poll to see whether passengers would pay less to stand rather than sit on flights. Below the link to the poll, there’s a link that says Ryanair’s corporate song – I’m still standing:
Not sure what to expect, you click on the link and find a YouTube video made by the breakfast show at a Dublin radio station:
Now it’s hardly the first parody to suggest Sky Marshall O’Leary doesn’t give a damn about passengers, but why the hell is Ryanair linking to it? Doesn’t that provide endorsement to what’s been said? Is Ryanair laughing at it, or with it? Or are they well aware that standing room flights will never happen, and so are instead playing along with the gag and promoting a pointless poll that wastes everyone’s time? We honestly don’t know.
It’s the question that consumes the mind of Sky Marshall O’Leary every waking moment of the day; how can Ryanair squeeze a few more pence out the cost of flying? There are rumours that O’Leary has already bought Michael Jackson’s oxygen chamber to enhance his frugal thinking neurons. It’s a worthwhile investment, if true, because for every penny per passenger per flight that the airline can shave off the cost of operations, Ryanair save over half a million quid a year.
So how do budget carriers do it? Metro have created a chart to show you exactly where the savings come from (click on the link to see this full size):
The biggest savings come simply from packing passengers in like sardines; a budget airline rams 20 more seats into the same space, compared to a full-price carrier. As we know (and as the illustration explains) airline operators rely on a combination of factors to deliver low-cost air travel, which is why the Sky Marshall wouldn’t hesitate to ask passengers to remove their limbs if he could get away with it.
Regardless of their reputation, when times are tighter than a pig in a passage you find yourself putting your holiday in the hands of a budget airline. And while not everyone has a bad experience of these skymongerers, it’s all too easy to have your wallet burgled. Here are three optional extras from three budget airlines to avoid this Summer:
easyJet – Speedy Boarding (£6.50 per person, per flight)
easyJet don’t allocate seats on booking, so there’s often a scrum for the precious few seats with extra legroom, or those near the front of the plane – as if boarding first makes any difference once you’re all waiting for your bags. Regardless, easyJet offer Speedy Boarding so you can “be among the first through the gate to get the widest choice of seats”.
For a family of four, Speedy Boarding on a return flight will cost you £52. Unless you’ve flown the route several times and know the boarding procedures inside out, don’t bother. Many airports in both the UK and abroad require shuttle buses to transport you from the terminal building to the plane. Speedy boarding may guarantee you’re the first to board the bus, but you’ll have no guarantee of boarding the plane ahead of the pack.
easyJet at least acknowledge the criticism; when Speedy Boarding is offered during the booking procedure online, the text reads:
“You have to be at the gate when boarding starts. If you’re bussed to the aircraft we can’t always guarantee you’re off the bus first.”
Even that is misleading; “we can’t always guarantee” should read “we cannot guarantee”. Don’t use this service. Ever.
Jet2 – seat reservations (£5.99 per person, per flight)
If you’ve booked a Jet2 flight before, you may have already been stung by this dreadful “family tax” – we like to call it that, because that’s exactly what it is.
Travel with the premium airlines, and you receive seat reservations as part of the ticket price. Travel with other budget airlines – easyJet, Ryanair – and you sit where you like. Not so with Jet2; your seats aren’t reserved, but neither is it a free-for-all – you have to pay to reserve a standard seat, or leave it to the luck of the draw on the day. The website warns you:
“Make sure you all sit together by selecting your seats now!”
How is that different to easyJet or Ryanair? Because out of fear they won’t be able sit with their partners or worse, their kids, people start paying £5.99 per person per flight to reserve seats on the plane. That means plenty of bog-standard seats are already booked in advance, so out of fear of having to sit three rows away from your child, you have no choice but to do the same. For a family of four, that’s an additional cost of £48.
We tried contacting parent company Dart Group PLC for comment but they haven’t answered, so we’re happy to brand them as a family unfriendly airline until they do.
Oh, and don’t think we didn’t notice, Jet2, that you’ve have just pushed up the prices of the optional extras in the past week, just in time for the Summer bookings. An extra pound has been added to both checking in bags and seat selection – a family of four with two bags who want to sit near one another have another £12 to shell out, compared to a week ago. Cheers.
Ryanair – gift vouchers (available in multiples of £25)
We’re not sure who would appreciate the gift of a Ryanair flight, but clearly there are people who know somebody. If you’re thinking of helping out by buying these as a gift, a couple of points to consider first. First are the terms and conditions, which include:
So unlike probably every other gift voucher you’ve ever bought, you’ll pay Ryanair extra for guaranteeing them business, the vouchers are worthless after six months and even if they’re only part-spent, Ryanair keeps the rest of the cash.
One other point worth noting – the vouchers are dispatched by email; if, for whatever reason (and there are plenty) the individual doesn’t receive the voucher, they have to phone a premium rate number for assistance. Our advice? Give them the money, or buy the flights on their behalf.
For all the bitching and moaning that’s done about budget airlines (and we’ve pitched in with more than our fair share), occasionally you discover one that gets it dead right. Frustratingly, Air New Zealand are on the wrong side of the planet so you’ll have to take my word for it. But you do believe me, right? It’s like when I said you can cut a pane of glass underwater with a pair of scissors. Just trust me on this.
Travelling across New Zealand by air is comparable to flights between the UK and mainland Europe; from Queenstown on the South Island to Auckland on the North Island takes the best part of two hours. There are several budget airlines criss-crossing the country, including Jetstar and Pacific Blue, but Air New Zealand stands out because it doesn’t feel like a budget airline.
You can expect to pay less than $200 NZ (about £78) to fly between the major cities by booking a fortnight or so in advance, so pricing feels more in line with the likes of Easyjet than Ryanair, but the difference is clear. For starters, there are many brand new and recently refurbished aircraft in the fleet; the seats are fully upholstered with adjustable headrests and plenty of additional legroom for grumbling lanky twats, like me. Secondly, there’s a trolley service. And it’s free. Snacks and drinks throughout the flight, without patting your pockets down for change. Third, there’s not a scratchcard in sight.
So you’ve got budget prices and an on-board service that still provides one. Anything else? Actually, yes. No credit card fees, one piece of checked luggage for free, self-service check-in (if Ryanair get this right, it’ll be a real advance for UK budget travel) and electronic boarding passes for customers with smartphones.
Maybe it’s because this is a domestic airline with a big brother to aspire to – here’s one traveller’s account of Air New Zealand’s international service. Obviously you’re not going to travel halfway around the world to test their flights out, but it’s good to know that it can be done properly, and there’s an affordable airline out there that doesn’t make you feel like a needle-marked, smack-craving whore.
We’re thinking of creating an automatic response generator for the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA). Instead of bothering to consider complaints against budget airlines who are inevitably found guilty of breaking advertising rules, they can pay a chimpanzee to type a couple of details into the generator and produce the findings without wasting any valuable thought on the matter:
Step 1 – Fill out form below:
The ASA noted [insert airline name] believed they had complied with the CAP Code and had tried to avoid making claims that had been identified as problematic in previous adjudications. We considered however that readers were likely to infer from the claim [insert headline] that [insert airline name] were offering “free” flights. We considered flights could not be advertised as “free” if consumers had to pay non-optional taxes and duties. Because we understood that consumers would have to pay taxes and duties, we concluded that the implication that the flights were “free” was misleading
Step 2 – Press F4 to update website
Step 3 – Eat bananas and fling faeces at the window
The latest budget airline to advertise flights in a misleading manner is Aer Lingus, who couldn’t understand how anybody could read the headline “NO AER FARE” and assume the flights would be free. Idiots, they assumed, incorrectly:
Aer Lingus said the ad clearly communicated that no air fare was payable, as indicated by the claim “NO AER FARE”. Aer Lingus pointed out that the ad also clearly communicated that taxes and charges had to be paid: the text “Just pay taxes and charges” appeared immediately below the headline claim in large font. They added that they had avoided claiming that flights were “free” or that the ad promoted a “flight giveaway” as they understood that would have gone against guidance.
The ASA disagreed, pointing out that people are more likely to read the headline as stating the flights would be free, which they weren’t. The ASA also took issue with Aer Lingus failing to state the all-inclusive price of the flights, since the headline suggested the flights would be free. Which they weren’t. Still.
How did the ASA deal with yet another example of budget airlines misleading the consumer? They may have slapped the backs of their legs with a ruler, but we haven’t been told. Otherwise, nothing whatsoever. Look out for the next example of piss-taking going unpunished, coming soon.
It’s either an urban myth or an established fact that the plastic-molded seating in McDonalds is designed to become arse-numbingly uncomfortable after 10 minutes or so, in order to move people out the “restaurants” as soon as they’ve chowed down. But what would happen if forced to sit in similarly unsympathetic seating with less legroom, six miles in the air for up to half a day? You may find out soon enough.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary is expected to announce his airline will begin offering transatlantic flights for just 10 Euros. While that sounds like an outrageously generous bargain, just take a moment to consider the conditions you’d endure on such a flight, and the clientèle you’d be sharing the cabin with. A two hour trip to Prague rammed with stag parties and a dozen roaringly drunk fat-mouthed women is grim. Tolerating them for up to 6,000 miles is likely to induce psychosis.
Ryanair has today announced a drop of almost 50% in its half-year profits due to a doubling in fuel costs. Perhaps not entirely understanding that having less money to spend usually means… well, having less money to spend, O’Leary said: “We’ll just have to keep flying more aircraft, opening up more routes and offering people more cheap flights.
“Economy class will be very cheap – around €10. But our business class will be very expensive. There’s always 10-15% who’ll pay whatever it costs for a wide seat.”
The transatlantic flights are likely to depart from Stansted and Dublin airports to New York, Florida, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston, and begin towards the end of next year.
Sounds like a bargain, doesn’t it? Hold that thought. (more…)
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