Category Archives: Budget flights

When flights to hub airports are still cheaper if you go indirect

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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:

  • *Continental dates were 2nd-9th December. No direct Continental flights found in March 2012.
  • AF = Air France, DL = Delta
  • AMS = Amsterdam, CDG = Paris CDG, ZRH = Zurich

Is Turku an alternative for flights to Helsinki?

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Whenever Ryanair start cheap flights to somewhere new, we always wonder whether or not they are also trying to appeal to passengers to use their new airport as an alternative to an existing major city airport.

Sometimes they will make a big song and dance about it (e.g. Memmingen for Munich), even when the alternative is ambitious at best. Yet sometimes, the opposite can be the case – Ryanair may not actively promote a destination as being an alternative, but passengers might still use it, especially if the main city airport is congested or expensive to fly into.

So, is Turku a realistic ‘Helsinki West’?

In many ways, even if it is, this is only in supplement to Ryanair’s long established flights to Tampere – with both cities being just under a 2 hours drive away from Helsinki. Although the train journey from Turku to Helsinki is also around 2 hours, the journey from Tampere is a faster run – taking just 90 minutes.

Despite these short distances, there are actually operational flight routes between Helsinki and both Turku and Tampere, operated by Flybe Nordic on behalf of Finnair. So this would be a rare case of a Ryanair alternative city actually being so far away from the other city that you can actually fly over the distance. Yet, on the face of it, these extremely short internal flights seem utterly pointless – a bit like Flybe operating flights from Birmingham to Gatwick, and exactly the sort of thing that would get Friends of the Earth hopping mad.

So is there really a big cost saving by taking ‘cheap’ flights to Tampere or Turku instead? Going on base prices, Ryanair offer little saving over fierce Nordic rivals Fly Norwegian, especially as the latter does not charge for hidden extras like debit car payments. Unfortunately, the market for budget flights to Helsinki is not as competitive as it has been, now that easyJet no longer offer any flights to Finland, and Blue1 just offer flights to Helsinki from Edinburgh.

Helsinki Airport lags behind its Scandinavian rivals in that Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm airports all have fast and direct rail links to their respective city centres. Yet, even on the slow bus, it is still far easier to get to the centre of Helsinki from Helsinki airport than from the other two.

In fact, the question should really be the other way round – to what extent is Helsinki airport still the best option for reaching Turku, Tampere and other cities in southern Finland which have airports? In the case of Tampere, you can even take a short (10-15 minute) bus or taxi ride to nearby Tikkurila station, from where the train to Tampere takes just 75 minutes.

As with any destination, it is always worth mixing and matching in and outbound flights, so you can see both cities for not much more (and sometimes even less) than the price of visiting one. Considering that Helsinki Vantaa Airport is a delightful icon of Finnish design, we would suggest flying into Turku or Tampere and out of Helsinki.

Budget airline car hire ripoffs exposed (Malaga Airport car hire)

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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:

  • Comparisons were done for Malaga Airport car hire between 22nd and 29th March 2012, searching for the cheapest car available with no extras added on.
  • Since doing initial check, prices were checked again on October 20th, with the cheapest car coming in at an even lower price – just £39!

Liverpool to Belfast – Flybe yield to Easyjet

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So Flybe have said that they are pulling out of their Liverpool to Belfast flights, and have come out with the predictable line about high taxes being the reason for the route being axes.

Now even though we agree with Flybe on this issue, it should be perfectly clear that the axing of this route is a simple case of them yielding to fierce competition from a larger rival. Now larger isn’t just about the size (and therefore the marketing clout) of the airline – easyJet were able to operate larger aircraft on this route at much higher frequencies. Flybe can often still compete against airlines that use larger aircraft, as they can offer better timings and higher frequencies, but on the Belfast – Liverpool route, they were only doing 3 flights each day, compared to 7 daily flights from easyJet.

Easyjet use Belfast International Airport, whereas Flybe use Belfast City, but even if this is more convenient for access to and from the centre of Belfast, Easyjet make up for this by offering a better frequency. Easyjet also have a much more natural customer base at both ends of this route, whereas Flybe have always struggled at airports like Liverpool and Bristol.

 

Is this the beginning of the end for bmibaby?

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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?

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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

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!