Flightblogging.com

November 23, 2009

7 Habits of highly effective travel cheapskates

Filed under: Aviation Economics, British Airways, Budget airlines, Budget flights, Easyjet, Flybe — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — ja @ 3:22 pm

7 Habits of highly effective travel cheapskates (based on The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey)

1.       Be active – hunt out the best deals. Get on all the emailing lists, have your electron card ready – and if you see a great deal, book it before it has gone.

2.       Begin with multiple destinations in mind – where do you want to go this year? How will you get there cheaply and efficiently – and can you visit several destinations in one trip?

3.       Put First Class Second – cheapskates only travel luxury when someone else is paying.

4.       Think gin/gin – don’t forget those duty free bargains, but make sure they will fit into your carry-on bag if you are travelling with Ryanair. And remember that most ‘duty-free’ offers aren’t really duty-free anymore - so do you want to save a couple of pounds on a bottle of plonk, just to lug it around with you for a week?

5.       Seek to understand and be understood – learn at least a few basic words of the lingo in any country you are visiting. It will also help prevent you from being ripped off by popular tourist traps, and make you many more friends.

6.       Economise – find more ways to creatively cut down your travel costs. Travel light, stay with those Facebook friends you haven’t seen for 20 years and eat where the locals eat. Don’t take any equipment with you that you can live without - you are travelling remember, not working - do you really need that laptop with you?

7.       Be sharp about what you saw – don’t try and cram in everything, just because it is in someone else’s guidebook. Go and visit the places that will excite you most, and enjoy the journey on the way.

 

Happy travels :)

 

November 5, 2009

Is this the beginning of the end for bmibaby?

Filed under: Aviation Economics, Budget flights, Easyjet, Flybe — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — ja @ 9:41 pm

Following on from yesterday’s news that Lufthansa can’t find a suitable buyer for bmi, we’ve had confirmation today that jobs are going to be axed, and that routes will be curtailed at Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff.

So, is it wise for bmibaby to concentrate their efforts on one large base at East Midlands airports. They say that they want to concentrate on ‘growth routes’, but with growth comes competition, and Ryanair are already very well established at Castle Donnington. Right now, can bmibaby really push themselves as the ones who offer a ‘more pleasant’ experience over Ryanair’s cut-throat service, or will customers continue to vote with their wallets and choose the airline which gives them the cheapest fees? When going after business passengers, it is much easier to play on offering services which take people closer to where they want to go, but is this so important for the leisure passenger - especially when East Midlands airport itself is playing a hybrid game of serving the three cities of Nottingham, Leicester and Derby, and also trying to poach passengers from Birmingham, without being directly adjacent to any of these cities.

Easyjet might be out of the way at East Midlands, but there will have been obvious reasons why they made a commercial decision to pull out. Baby reducing their presence at Manchester leaves room for Jet 2 or Easyjet to add more services, whereas Ryanair and Flybe will swoon over any signs of weakness at Birmingham, and leave tiny with very little opportunity to come back in once the economy starts growing again. As for Cardiff? Not exactly Ryanair’s favourite airport a few years ago, but if baby reduce their presence there, Cardiff airport operators will have many more reasons to do a deal with Ryanair.

This scenario could easily see bmibaby exposed as a one-airport operator within a few months, with very few other places to go to. It would then be only a matter of time before Ryanair came in and made a pincer movement to finally kill off baby for good.

Why don’t no frills airlines offer more cheap flights to Greece?

Filed under: Airlines, Aviation Economics, Budget airlines, Budget flights, Easyjet, Flybe, Ryanair, Thomson / TUI — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — ja @ 9:29 pm

I was asked on twitter by @Korb0s why there aren’t any Ryanair flights to Greece. The question could of course be extended to why there aren’t more cheap flights to Greece from all of the budget airlines, with Easyjet and Jet2 perhaps being the main exceptions. I narrowed down the 140 characted twitter answer to two words (airport monopoly), and said I’d give a bit more explanation later. So here are the key reasons:

  1. Airports monopoly. Greek airports operate on a monopoly basis, and to paraphrase Ryanair’s route development manager, ‘they wouldn’t know a commercial deal if it came up to them and slapped them in the face’. One of Ryanair’s biggest driving factors in developing new routes is the ability to secure the best possible deals out of the airports it wants to fly to. This can make or break a route decision just as much as whether or not they actually forecast demand to be there. If they get their sums wrong about demand, they can quickly drop the route, if they can’t screw a good deal out of the airports, they are stuck with paying high handling fees forever - that is the crux of the matter.
  2. Seasonality - no-frills airlines prefer to operate routes which have demand throughout the year. The market for flights to Greece has traditionally been dominated by charter companies, who offer packages during the summer season. Greece is not typically seen as a winter sun destination, and unlike destinations like Barcelona (Girona) or Granada, there aren’t any Greek airports which are close to ski resorts.
  3. Dispersal - when no-frills airlines have competed well against charter operators, they have opened up routes where they can put on a reasonable frequency of flights, and where a good range of resorts can be accessed from the destination airports. Apart from the capital Athens, Greek destinations are scattered around a plethora of islands, making no-frills flight routes to any one island less likely to be viable.
  4. Distance - a flight from London to Alicante is 914 miles, whereas a flight to Athens is 1,485 miles. This extra flying distance doesn’t just burn up a lot more fuel, it also means more crewing time, and more usage of the aircraft. For example, Easyjet’s 6:20 flight from Gatwick to Athens doesn’t arrive back into Gatwick until 14:20 - effectively half the day gone to service just one route. Sure, passengers have a higher perception of value for the longer routes, but it is still easier to juggle slots around two shorter routes than one longer one. At a regional level, Flybe have opened up a number of routes into various regional airports in France, but Greece would simply be out of the range of the Bombardier Q400 aircraft that they use on these routes - although flights to Athens from Birmingham using their Embraer 195 jets would seem to make reasonable sense.
  5. Ancilliary revenue - this is just a theory, but I would guess that as many Greek island destinations are fairly small, a large proportion of passengers use transfer buses to get to and from the resorts they are staying at. There is less benefit from having a hire car, and people who do might be more likely to rent a car just for the day. If this is the case, it means less chance of earning extra money for the airlines - but they should at least sell a few more sandwiches onboard their flights.

As always, this is just my tuppence, but I hope it gives a few insights into why there aren’t more flights to Greece from the UK. James

November 3, 2009

Flybe in £1 car offer

Filed under: Flybe — Tags: , , — ja @ 2:58 pm

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.

November 2, 2009

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

Filed under: Environmental Issues, Flybe, Flybe — Tags: , , — ja @ 12:21 pm

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.

May 1, 2009

I’m waiting for my Electron Platinum Card

Filed under: Budget airlines, Budget flights, Flybe, Ryanair, Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — ja @ 7:52 pm

Reading through another airline forum, I have just seen another poster describe the Electron Debit Card, the budget flyer’s most flexible friend, as being ‘hard to get’.

Nothing could be further from the truth! The Electron card was designed for people with little or no credit history, and as such can only be used in electronic terminals where authorisation is included with every transaction, so that the user does not become overdrawn. Naturally, this includes the online booking systems of the low cost airlines, who appreciate the lower handling charges this card attracts. Or, they just appreciate the opportunity to apply extra charges to everyone who doesn’t use an electron card - it doesn’t really matter which way you look at it, the fact is simple - if you want really cheap flights, you must have an Electron Card.

A few years ago, I signed up to the American Express Platinum card, which claimed to offer all kinds of rewards to the frequent traveller. I found that I used very few of them, and when it came to claiming on their insurance, they were a total nightmare to deal with - but that piece of plastic certainly shined nicely in my wallet (and it stayed in good condition too, as so many retailers don’t take Amex).  The reality for me is that even though I do travel quite a bit through running this website, most of my flights are within Europe, and as I want to use my local airports as much as possible, most of my flights are from Birmingham or East Midlands, and they therefore tend to be with airlines which don’t reward loyalty with air miles or fancy points.

With the new breed of no frills airline, who needs loyalty points anyway? Why should I need to fly around the world three times to collect enough points for a return trip to Scotland, when I’ve just got back from a wonderful trip to Italy which set me back a mere £9 for the flight, all-in?

As I’ve said before, anyone can get an Electron Card, and you don’t need an MP’s expense account to qualify. Banks aren’t particularly keen to push the basic accounts which come with Electron cards as they aren’t going to make much profit from them, but they won’t stop you from opening the account. I use a Cashminder account from the Co-op bank, which can be topped up in any Post Office. I might not be able to get an Electron Platinum Card just yet, but when it comes to the no frills airlines, putting snobbery to one side is the way forward.

Powered by WordPress