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Ryanair’s latest seemingly middle of nowhere airport is just outside the picturesque town of Memmingen (FMM) in Bavaria, which they are marketing as ‘Munich West’. Cheap flights to Memmingen start on 1 May from London Stansted and Dublin. So is this going to be a viable alternative to taking flights to Munich Franz Josef Strauss airport (MUC), a facility that no-frills airlines have often described as being high cost, and aimed at traditional scheduled airlines like Lufthansa?On the other hand, Munich has recently become a bit of a hotbed for no-frills competition, with Aer Lingus launching cheap flights from Gatwick at the end of April, complementing easyJet’s existing routes from both Gatwick and Stansted. We looked at a weekend trip to Munich flying out on Friday 1 May, the launch date for this route, and returning on Sunday 3rd May:

Ryanair cheap flights to Memmingen

• Outbound flight — £.79. Depart Stansted 13:40 and arrive Memmingen 16:00.
• Outbound taxes and fees — £28.97.
• Return flight — £.79. Depart Memmingen 16:25 and arrive Stansted 16:45
• Return taxes and fees — £15.05.
• Credit or debit card handling fees — £9.50 (see article on how to avoid these)
• Return train fare from Memmingen to Munich — €39.20 (£37 — does not include transfer from Memmingen airport to centre).
• Total — £92.10.

easyJet cheap flights to Munich

   
• Outbound flight — £35.99. Depart Gatwick 12:55 and arrive Munich 15:45 — twice daily easyJet flights to Munich are also available from Stansted. Note that if you travelled the day before, the fare goes down to £25.99.
• Return flight — £23.99. Depart Munich 16:30 and arrive Gatwick 17:25. A cheaper flight is available in to Stansted for £18.99, but this means leaving Munich at 11:30 — a bit early for a weekend break. Alternatively, you could stay until 21:50 and catch a flight back to Stansted for £20.99.
• Debit card handling fee — £1.95.
• Total — £61.93.

Aer Lingus cheap flights to Munich

• Outbound flights — £14.99. Depart Gatwick 06:40 and arrive Munich 09:25 — if you are going to take a whole day of work, you might as well make an early start of it! As with easyJet, the flight is cheaper if you can go one day before — in fact, in this case Aer Lingus will ‘give’ it to you for nothing.
• Outbound taxes and charges — £20.
• Return fare — zero.
• Return taxes and charges — £9.99. Depart Munich 10:05 and arrive Gatwick at 11:05.
• Handling fee — £8 — as with Ryanair, this fee can be avoided by using an electron debit card, but Aer Lingus only tell you about that at the end of the booking process.
• Total — £52.98.

British Airways not so cheap flights to Munich

• £110 – depart Heathrow 07:50 and arrive Munich 10:55 / depart Munich 17:30 and return Heathrow 18:30.

Lufthansa decidedly expensive flights to Munich

• £157 — depart Heathrow 09:35 and arrive Munich 12:25 / depart Munich 19:10 and return Heathrow 20:10.

Verdict — as is so often the case, Ryanair’s seemingly cheap flights of £.79 in each direction become massively more expensive when all the extra charges are taken into account. Even this is before you add on the cost of a train fare from Memmingen airport in to Munich.

Memmingen itself actually looks like quite a pretty town, so it would be well worth a visit if you were in the area, but for the price comparison we have done here, it certainly can’t be seen as a cheap alternative to Munich. On the other hand, Aer Lingus’ new flights to Munich are an absolute steal, especially as the £8 handling fee can be avoided by using an electron debit card. This goes to show that a bit of competition at the main airport can be just as good as having a cheap alternative somewhere else, and gives the prospect of a weekend away in the Bavarian beer capital for less than £50.

We will certainly drink to that!