Ryanair have now extended their reserved seating to cover all flights – but the service is still only available for the first two rows and for the extra legroom seats by the over-wing emergency exits.
The service costs €10 per person per flight sector. Other passengers can still pay €5 for priority boarding.
Does this make you any more likely to fly with Ryanair?
If you want to reach many destinations from regional airports like Birmingham, Manchester or Glasgow, you would expect to take a connecting flight through a major European hub airport.
But what about when you want flights to that hub itself? You would have thought that there would be enough capacity on the route for it to be cheaper to go direct with the airline which operates that hub facility. As it happens, the opposite is often the case, even when flights via that hub are cheaper than direct flights to the other hub.
Looking at flights to 10 hub airports served by direct and connecting flights from Birmingham, we found the following:
|
Hub airport
|
Airline
|
Direct £
|
Indirect £
|
Premium%
|
Airline
|
Via
|
| Brussels | Brussels Airlines | 255 | 200 | 28 | KLM | AMS |
| Copenhagen | SAS | 208 | 151 | 57 | KLM-AF | AMS / CDG |
| Dubai | Emirates | 470 | 339 | 131 | Swiss | ZRH |
| Frankfurt | Lufthansa | 396 | 151 | 245 | KLM | AMS |
| Istanbul | Turkish | 183 | 161 | 22 | KLM | AMS |
| Munich | Lufthansa | 193 | 151 | 42 | KLM | AMS |
| New York | Continental* | 437 | 369 | 68 | KLM-DL | AMS |
| Zurich | Swiss | 193 | 161 | 32 | KLM-AF | AMS / CDG |
Flight prices were searched using Expedia.co.uk for a 1 week trip (therefore including a Saturday night stay and often being cheaper), between 1st and 8th December. Only flights to Paris and Amsterdam were cheaper direct – hardly surprising considering how close they are, but Brussels still worked out more expensive to go direct.
Now these dates might be quite soon, but they are still before the mid-December Christmas rush. Looking forward to March next year, prices for direct flights to Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich fell below the prices for flight connections.
This shows that the network carriers are still charging hefty premiums for direct flights. This seems to fly in the face of environmental concerns over short haul flights being the most polluting – and two short haul flights when one will often do being particularly bad for the environment.
The low cost airlines have shown that point to point routes are what the customers want, and that they shouldn’t need to pay for the privilege. Most low cost airlines actively shun transfer passengers, as if one flight is late, they don’t want to deal with missed connections, and their smallprint makes it clear that they are your problem, not theirs.
Yet, of the routes featured, none have a low cost alternative from Birmingham. At a push, you could fly to Paris with Flybe, and then take Thalys to Brussels, or if your dates were flexible, you could find a cheap flight to Geneva and then train it to Zurich.
So will the legacy airlines ever wake up to the idea that direct flights should be cheaper for them to operate, better for the environment, and therefore cheaper for the consumer? Not without a heft taxation penalty against them, and UK Air Passenger Duty is onerous enough as it is. In the meantime, they will continue to charge more for the convenience of a direct service, especially if there isn’t a realistic low cost alternative.
Notes:
As I see that the Birmingham Airport twitter feed has many comments about the runway extension and the High Speed 2 railway proposals, I thought it was worth a quick reminder of just how many major European capital cities are not served by flights from Birmingham Airport.
Now I’m not just talking about Vaduz or Andorra-la-Vella, which don’t even have airports, these are major European capital cities, including the capital of the largest country in the EU (Germany), aswell as other major players such as the Spanish capital Madrid and the Polish capital Warsaw. Even Lisbon and Rome will not get Birmingham flights until the end of March 2012.
European capitals not served by flights from Birmingham
(but these are served by flights from Manchester or other UK regional airports):
| City | Birmingham | Manchester | Edinburgh |
Notes
|
| Athens |  |
 |
|
(previously operated by various airlines) |
| Berlin | |
|
|
(previously operated by BACON) |
| Helsinki | |
|
|
|
| Lisbon | (YES) | |
|
(new route starts 31 March 2012) |
| Moscow | |
|
|
|
| Oslo | |
|
|
(previously by Ryanair to TRF?) |
| Rome | (YES) | |
|
(new route starts 25 March 2012) |
| Stockholm | |
|
|
(previously by Ryanair to NYO?) |
| Vienna | |
|
|
|
| Warsaw | |
|
|
(previously operated by Norwegian) |
Now, surely I’m not being fair on Birmingham here? Aren’t there many other European capitals and major cities which are served by flights from Birmingham?
European Capital* Cities which are served by Birmingham flights:
| City | Birmingham | Manchester | Edinburgh | |
| Amsterdam* | |
|
|
|
| Brussels | |
|
|
|
| Copenhagen | |
|
|
|
| Dublin | |
|
|
|
| Istanbul* | |
|
|
|
| Paris | |
|
|
|
| Prague | |
|
|
|
| Zurich* | |
|
|
In virtually all of the above cases, other the cities served from Birmingham are also served from Edinburgh. European cities which are served by Birmingham flights, but not by flights from Manchester, are few and far between.
If there is any unfairness, it is that there are numerous cities in Germany which are both more commercially important than Berlin, and which are served from Birmingham. Yet, Berlin is still important in its own right, both for business, and as a key city break destination. If there are flights to Berlin from several other UK airports, then why not from Birmingham, especially as the new Brandenburg Airport should create an opportunity for new routes.
Surely, it would be easier to create incentives for the airlines already at Birmingham to open up new routes to some of these key cities, rather than chasing much harder to win contracts for flights to Asia, which have so far failed to materialise in any great way from Manchester, and which would be even less likely to work from Birmingham, given its proxmimity to London. And why should anyone fork out a hefty High Speed 2 rail fare to arrive in some field right on the edge of the Birmingham Airport complex, when Virgin Trains will take them to within a two minute shuttle ride of the main terminal building, with an only marginally longer journey time?
Notes:
At a time when budget airlines are increasingly being criticised over their ever-extending list of unavoidable extra charges, there is perhaps one area where they are being even more brazen, and this is when it comes to adding on a hire car to their flight booking process.
We looked at flights to Malaga from all the major budget airlines which offer flights from the UK to Spain, and this time compared the cost of the car hire for one week, rather than just looking at the cost of the flights to Malaga, which showed relatively little variance in price, even from different UK regional airports.
Out of six airlines we looked at, five included a car hire quote as part of the booking process, which customers had to opt out of in order to avoid booking through the airline’s partner. Jet2 was the only airline not to include an opt-out-only car hire booking quote, so this had to be looked up separately.
In most cases, the airlines have entered into an affiliate agreement with a major car hire provider — Hertz in the case of Aer Lingus and Ryanair, Europcar with easyJet and Avis with Flybe. In all of these four cases, the cost of a hire car was substantially more than the cost quoted using car hire comparison engines, with Aer Lingus working out at the most expensive at £312.80, a staggering 627% more than the cheapest price. Of the airlines which gave a direct booking option, Ryanair were the cheapest at £122.99, even though this was also booked through Hertz.
Meanwhile, the Bmibaby were by far the cheapest of the airlines which included car hire booking as part of the flight booking process, as they are powered by car hire comparison engine Cartrawler, who compare prices across a number of different car hire companies, instead of sticking to just one major brand.The price with Bmibaby was £67.48, but even this was still more than half as expensive again as the cheapest option.
Jet2 were the cheapest of the airlines we looked at, coming in at £51.06, and this was through their Jet2cars.com website, which is powered by Carhire3000.
| AIRLINE | PARTNER | COST |
| RYANAIR | HERTZ | £122.99 |
| EASYJET | EUROPCAR | £129.00 |
| AER LINGUS | HERTZ | £312.80 |
| BMIBABY | CARTRAWLER | £67.48 |
| FLYBE | AVIS | £157.98 |
| JET2 | CARHIRE3000 | £51.06 |
Cheapest Malaga Airport Car Hire
So what was the cheapest option? We looked at two leading car hire price comparison websites — carrentals.co.uk and carhiresearch.co.uk, and both gave us car options for just £43.
Conclusions
Car hire might well be an optional extra on low-cost airline websites, but users still need to make sure they opt out of it to avoid being charged.
These airlines aren’t stupid, so we can only assume that they have done their calculations, and they know that they will get a certain percentage of people who will opt in at these prices. Quite how anyone will pay over £300 for a week’s basic off-season car rental in Malaga is beyond us, but Aer Lingus clearly seem to think that some people will. The lowest prices we looked at might be for the very cheapest model car with less well known agencies, but the price differences are still vast. Where is the logic in booking cheap flights and expensive car hire?
Do you need a car for a visit to Malaga?
Meanwhile, another option is to consider whether or not you need a hire car at your destination in the first place. We are developing a new website, Carornocar.com, to provide advice on car hire and public transport options in a range of destinations around the world. Do you think a hire car is necessary to make the best out of a trip to Malaga and the surrounding Andalusia region? Or can you get around without one? See what we say, and let us know whether you agree or not – Car Or No Car’s Malaga Car Hire Verdict.
Notes:
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has confirmed plans to get rid of two of the three toilets which are fitted as ‘bog’ standard on its Boeing 737-800 aircraft.
What Ryanair Toilets will look like if they go down to one per plane
On the surface of it, this seems like a clever idea – on Ryanair’s shortest routes, like its London to Dublin hops, it is very rare to see all toilets used at the same time. This move will send out the message that Ryanair are even more keen to be seen as a company which operates buses with wings, rather than full service aircraft, so this will encourage people to use the toilets inside the airport terminals.
The move is subject to certification from Boeing.
Of course, this move will cause concern for people with medical conditions that make them need to use the toilet more – at least with two toilets, there should be one free if the other is occupied, but cutting back to one could make things difficult.
The promise is that these changes will only be applied on aicraft which operate the very shortest routes, but it is worth remembering that Ryanair have a single fleet policy, meaning that any aircraft could be use to operate any route at any time, including longer flights down to destinations like the Canary Islands or Greece.
I wouldn’t want to be caught short on one of those flights.
So Ryanair have just announced that they will no longer be accepting Visa Electron as a means of payment in order to avoid their £5 card transaction fee.
Does this mean the end of their famous 1p flights, or indeed of any of their lowest price offers, where on any given day it is usually possible to book a flight somewhere on their network for less than £10, without paying any additional charges at all?
Well, unfortunately, it no longer seems possible to get away from these fees completely. Ryanair will still accept fee-free payment for all purchases made using Pre-paid Mastercards, but what they have effectively done is outsourced the fee charging to another provider. I’ve had a look around, and I can’t find any company offering totally fee-free pre-paid cards – why would they – at least banks can find extra ways of making revenue from their customers (sounds familiar?), whereas pre-paid card issuers can only really make money from levying a fee for the card itself, and maybe a few extra pennies by selling on the data.
So what’s the best option? Really depends on how often you expect to fly with Ryanair, whether or not the other airlines will follow suit, and of course – how long this particular loop hole will last. First there was no fee for debit card purchases, then there was only no fee if you paid by electron, and now there is only no fee if you load up a pre-paid Mastercard. But who’s to say they won’t switch their allegiances to Visa come the end of next year?
To Ryanair, this is a clever cat & mouse game of making sure the majority of their customers pay the £5 card handling fee with their bookings. As a one-off charge, this wouldn’t be so bad, but the charge is levied on each sector – yup, that’s £40 for a family of four making a return trip. We might have grown used to extra charges in the airline industry, but there’s something particularly irritating about being asked to pay a fee just for the privilege of spending your money with a company. At least with airport charges, you know the airport is doing something, and with Air Passenger Duty, you know it is a rip-off tax which has nothing to do with the environment, but the money is going to a good cause like bankers’ bailouts. Even when you pay £3 for a cup of muddy coffee, you can at least physically see that you are getting something in return. But shell out £5 just to pay for your booking, and what do you see? Nothing – and we know this transaction only costs the airlines a few pennies to process.
Now I’m not going to say that Ryanair should scrap the card handling fee – we know that it is only by levying these extra charges that they are able to offer the 1p flights in the first place – so all I can suggest is that if you fly with Ryanair regularly, it is worth looking for a pre-paid Mastercard which charges the lowest possible fees. This will depend on your usage levels – look out for:
Pre-paid Mastercard Fees
I’ve checked out a few price comparsion tables, the most informative being What Prepaid Card - although as with many of these websites, other options may be available. For frequent Ryanair bookers (especially if you have a habit of booking loads of flights, but not always turning up), the CashPlus Premium account looks like the best deal – pay a one off fee of £29.99, and you can then enjoy free (1p) flights ‘forever’ – or at least until the next change of Ryanair policy.
Less regular users would be better off with The Sun Prepaid Mastercard – a much lower application fee of £6.49, but you will be charged between 50p and £1.50 per booking (2.95% of value within these limits). This is still much more acceptable than shelling out £5 a pop.
I’m flying to Billund next week, courtesy of those kind folks at Ryanair, who sold me a one-way flight to Billund from Birmingham for just 1p. There’s various places in Denmark, Sweden and Finland that I want to visit, and I’ll be flying back from Helsinki to Gatwick with easyJet.
A few weeks ago, my brother went to a wedding in Malmo, Sweden, which is just across the fantastic Oresund bridge from Copenhagen. He flew with SAS direct from Birmingham to Copenhagen, and was waxing lyrical about the service. That’s all well and good, but in these price conscious times, it isn’t surprising to find so many people grabbing the cheap flights with Ryanair.
Now I know that everyone’s motivations for travel are different, but if you wanted to visit three of Denmark top attractions, then you might well start in Billund, which is home to Legoland, before heading on to Copenhagen via Odense, which is the birthplace of author Hans Christian Andersen.
Personally, I’m off to immerse myself in Danish urban design, so Odense’s network of urban parks will be the highlight of my trip, but say you are visiting various different places in Denmark, and you have a choice between flying with Ryanair to Billund (flights available from London Stansted, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Dublin) or with another airline to Copenhagen (wider choice of different departure airports).
Which would you do?