Monthly Archives: November 2009

Flybe in £1 car offer

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We’re very used to the £1 – or even 1p flight offer here, and yes, we have booked these for ourselves, so we know that they DO exist, and that the extra charges on top CAN be avoided.

So I was interested to see that Flybe have come up with a new twist on the theme – the chance to rent a car for just £1 per day, again, inclusive of all taxes and charges. Potential renters should hurry though – whereas Ryanair sometimes boast of giving away 1,000,000 free seats, Flybe are just offering 500 £1 per day car rental opportunities through their partners Avis.

The deal is inclusive of mandatory charges, and I would assume that collision damage waivers can be avoided through having a good travel or car insurance policy, but that is probably something where they will try and sell the add on at the time of pick up.

The offer says:

“Simply book your car hire between 3rd and 14th November for rentals from 1st March 2010 until 30th June 2010. If you are lucky enough to find one of the £1 a day cars, you will see the £1 per day price in your reservation. But be sure to reserve it there and then because you may not see it again! The £1 rate is inclusive of all mandatory taxes and charges, so you really could drive away on a day’s car rental for just £1!”

I’ll have to admit that this offer is of limited interest to a train nerd like myself, but it may well be useful to the majority of passengers out there who like to pick up a car when they get to their destination.

Finding hidden cheap flights on Ryanair.com

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My brother and I have been talking about going to Morocco for a while, but we’ve never got round to booking. There’s an element of being cheapskates here, especially as Morocco is Ryanair’s only non-European destination, and it falls within the higher tax band. My cunning plan was to skip this tax difference by flying out through Gibraltar, and then taking the ferry.

This was as much about enjoying the journey as it was about keeping Gordon and Alistair’s mitts off my cash – sure, I don’t want them to have any more of it than necessary, but there’s no point in paying more for something just because you think it is taxed less.

So the Ryanair price ‘index’ isn’t quite down to zero at the moment – the confusing ’80% off our best fares’ doesn’t really mean much, when their cheapest fares are 1p – so are they now going to split the penny and offer me a flight for 0.2p? What the best deal actually meant was that the cheapest flights to Europe started from £3 – but their flights to Marrakech in Morocco were advertised at £34, from either Luton (much easier for my brother) or East Midlands (Coventry is fairly even between the two, but Luton is actually easier to get to on public transport).

So when clicking through to the results page, they have flights going down to £9.99, where the taxes and charges add up to £43, but they also have flights at just £10, and that is all you pay, full stop. Is this a glitch – I somewhat doubt it, that’s not Ryanair’s way of working. Is it a bargain – yeah, and return flights were also available a week later for just £10.

My brother had to get back to work a few days beforehand, and I have a concert to go to which made the £10 deal impossible. This is where Ryanair’s seemingly low fares suddenly rack up – the £9.99 flight working out at £45 with all the charges. So, time to head over to Easyjet to check out the price of that flight back from Gibraltar – £51 all in. For £6 more, I’m getting to enjoy flying out and back through different airports, and my Morocco trip should now include Casablanca aswell as Tangier. There will be a few extras for the train up to Tangier and the ferry to Algeciras, but for me that’s all part of the fun.

Happy travels!

*Note – ‘all in’ includes mandatory taxes and charges – in this case, I paid no fee for online check-in. Both of us are travelling without hand luggage, and I paid using my Co-op Visa Electron card.

7 Ways to Beat Air Passenger Duty Rises

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    Yesterday, Air Passenger Duty on short haul flights went up by £1, but much larger increases were imposed on long haul and premium service flights. These taxes are set to rise again in November 2010 – and even if a change of government looks likely, there is little to suggest that the Tories will reverse this policy.

    This list was due for a little bit more embellishment, which I’ll try and get round to later in the week, but in the meantime, here are the key suggestions:

    1. Take a Private Jet – you will pay no taxes at all this way.
    2. Let Michael O’Leary pay your taxes – can’t afford a private jet? Look out for Ryanair’s special offers when they pay the taxes for you.
    3. Island hop around Scotland – ‘public service obligation’ flights in the Scottish Highlands & Islands are exempt from duty – and the views are simply stunning.
    4. Take the ferry or Eurostar to Paris or Amsterdam, and fly long haul from there – or even hop over to any European hub on a budget flight, and then continue from there. APD stings you much harder on long haul flights.
    5. Offset the tax by saving on duty free, or not paying other airline hidden charges – ok, so the government sees air passengers as an easy target. Chill out, and enjoy some savings on duty free. The best deals might be at your destination – shop around to see, but even though there aren’t any duty free allowances on short haul flights to EU destinations, these aren’t the ones with the highest taxes. Why not get the best of both worlds and fly via Switzerland or Norway – short haul destinations which also have a duty free allowance. If you don’t have a Visa Electron card by now, then you really can’t whinge about air passenger duty if you are booking flights with a low cost carrier like Easyjet or Ryanair. The taxes aren’t usually avoidable, but the card handling fees always are.
    6. Go all the way by train- this is easier than you might think, and thanks to the new Eurostar links to the continent, you’d be amazed how far you can get in a day from London – and think how much more you see on the way. Don’t fancy a long journey home by train? At least the return flight won’t be taxed so badly, as APD is only levied on the outbound journey – Alistair hasn’t thought out a way of taxing people to come in to the UK yet, but don’t encourage him too much!
    7. Take the ferry to Morocco (from Gibraltar) – ok, so the ferry fare will cost you about as much as the tax you will save, but Gibraltar is a great place to land, and why not add a ferry trip to your African adventure?

    ICARUS fell out of the sky – I hope Flybe’s planes don’t

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    So, congratulations to Flybe on winning the ICARUS award, which is actually an award for environmental progress, which I am sure they very strongly deserve, given their commitment to fleet modernisation and environmental labelling.

    But I can’t help from wondering which idiot came up with the name ICARUS for this award. Do they not know the story, or do they have a different version? In the one I know, Icarus flew too close to the sun, and his wings melted, so he plummeted straight out of the sky. The story is supposed to be a warning to those who have too lofty ambitions.

    Now we’ve come a long way since the legend of Icarus – and yes, one day we might be able to float around like birds with massive wax wings. Correction – some people already like to put on silly bird suits and throw themselves of mountains. Good luck to them – I’m sure it is a great adrenaline rush. But this is just NOT the best name to associate with an award for an airline. To me, it sounds just too much like the Darwin Awards for human stupidity. Oddly enough, there is an airline called ‘Darwin Airline’, and in a cuthroat industry where only the strongest survive, I’m amazed to say that they are still going (double check, yes they are). I flew with them once from Berne to London City – even though that route has since become extinct.

    So I might get myself in trouble for saying this, but I think you’d get the same answer if you asked any traveller in your local pub – which airline would you most associate with an ‘Icarus Award’ this year. Answers on a postcard from Rio please.

    At last they admit it – flight taxes pay for bank bailouts

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    At long last, Chancellor Alistair Darling has said what we’ve known all along – that flight taxes (Air Passenger Duty) are used to sort out the dodgy banks, and nothing to do with the environment. Speaking to Northeast website The Journal last week, Darlin said:

    I am quite blunt about it, we need to raise money to pay for some of the things we have done. If unemployment goes up there is a cost obviously to the family, there is cost in increased benefits, Northern Rock has cost a lot of money.

    Now to be honest, no-one is going to step forward and offer their sympathy for the bankers, but many would still say that the bailouts had to be made in order to save the financial services industry. So, should airlines be made to suffer so another sector can survive?

    Well, Darling seems to think so:

    But if you think about it, what we are doing is putting a pound on to your average ticket, which about three quarters of people travel on. And you consider the cost of an air ticket, I don’t think a pound is that unreasonable.

    The problem of course is that it isn’t “just a pound” on the average flight ticket. Last year, air passenger duty was doubled overnight in a move which saw one of the few taxes to have been reduced under the Labour government get re-stealthed. To make matters worse and add insult to injury, taxes had to be collected on flights which were already paid for – as if the chancellor (and former transport minister) was more interested in act of vengeance than a fair tax. Of course, Mr Darling, as MP for Edinburgh Central, is a fully paid-up member of the “you shouldn’t fly but I will” brigade, and that’s long before we bring up the issue of MP’s expenses.

    Unlike some airlines and passengers, I don’t have a problem with air passengers paying their way through a ‘reasonable’ level of taxation – and I fully accept that the aviation industry must pay for its environmental costs. But let’s not forget that whereas motoring taxes are supposed to pay for the upkeep of the roads, usage of airports is already covered by separate airport handling fees levied by the (predominantly) private companies who run Britain’s airports.

    Environmental costs should be covered by a global carbon trading agreement, due to be discussed in Copenhagen next month. Of course there’s loads of other arguments about the benefits of switching passengers from short hop flights to high speed rail, but that’s for another time. Or maybe, if that’s where APD funds were being directed, the travelling public wouldn’t mind so much. Mr Darling, if you are reading this, that isn’t an excuse to double APD again on you’re next whim!

     

     

     

     

    Ryanair switch from high tax to high sun destinations

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    So in their latest media release, Ryanair have stated that they are moving away from ‘high tax’ countries like the UK and Ireland, and setting up more routes in countries which have ‘reduced, or even cancelled their taxes’ – countries like Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy.

    The release states:

    Traffic at many Irish and UK airports has slumped, with Ireland facing a decline of 15% of its air traffic, and the UK set to lose almost 10% of its traffic.  We again call on the British and Irish Governments to scrap these stupid tourist taxes and reduce airport charges.  VAT receipts on visitor spend alone would be a multiple of the revenues generated from these tourist taxes.  The Belgian, Dutch, Greek and Spanish governments have led the way by scrapping passenger taxes and/or reducing airport charges (in some cases to zero) in order to stimulate traffic growth.  We are switching a material proportion of Ryanair’s Winter capacity and growth away from high tax, high cost countries like Britain and Ireland in favour of “no tax”, lower cost countries like Belgium, Holland, Italy and Spain. 

    Now let’s not pretend that the low countries make any significant impact on Ryanair’s route network – they only have one signficant base here, and that is at Brussels Charleroi, which has been subject to different controversies over airport subsidies. So the real move from summer to winter is from the UK and Ireland to Spain and Italy.

    Is this really all about tax, or does it have more to do with there being just a little bit more sunshine in these countries over the winter months?

    Ryanair to stop growing?

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    Reading through Ryanair’s latest results figures, it seems that Shannon Airport might not be the only company which doesn’t want to yield to their aggressive cost-cutting demands. Ryanair have been in talks with Boeing about the potential delivery of another 200 aircraft, which they want to wrap up before the end of the year.

    It looks like working with other manufacturers isn’t on the table – Ryanair famously ‘fell out’ with Airbus after ‘nearly’ doing a deal, and then walking away to Boeing just before the contract was signed. Ordering smaller Embraer E-195 jets might give Ryanair access to some of Europe’s smaller runway airports, but they seem to have put enough obscure places on the map without the need for such aircraft, and operated a dual-aircraft fleet just doesn’t seem to be in accordance with Ryanair’s low cost model.

    The release states:

    We see no point in continuing to grow rapidly in a declining yield environment, where our main aircraft partner is unwilling to play its part in our cost reduction programme by passing on some of the enormous savings which Boeing have enjoyed both from suppliers and more efficient manufacturing in recent years. We would prefer to grow, but if Boeing doesn’t share our vision, then I believe that Ryanair should change course before the end of this fiscal year and manage the airline  over the next three years to maximise cash for distribution to shareholders.