Right now, I should be somewhere in Scandinavia, probably crossing the glorious Oresund Bridge between Copenhagen in Denmark and Malmo in Sweden. I booked my outbound flight from Birmingham to Billund via one of Ryanair’s £1 special offers, but never got round to booking the rest of the trip, and then other commitments this week meant I couldn’t go anyway.

So what put me off booking the rest of the trip? Well, the problem is that when you can get a flight for £1, all taxes and hidden charges included (I have an Electron Card), everything else just seems so much more expensive. I wanted to head all the way up to Helsinki in Finland, mainly to visit the garden suburb of Tapiola, which is reputed to be one of the best places to live in the World. But by the time I had added in the cost of a ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki (I like to get in a couple of ferry trips each year), and all the rail travel, it all got out of hand very quickly – and that’s long before I’ve had my first pint of Carlsberg!

So I wonder just how many other people avail themselves of Ryanair’s free or £1 flights, and then don’t turn up? Or are people who do this so keen to protect their ‘investment’ that these special offer flights actually have a very good turn out? Whatever the case, Ryanair have always claimed that they never over-book passengers, i.e. if each flight has 189 seats, they only sell 189, and no more. This doesn’t sound like particularly sound economics, considering that there are always going to be no-shows, and logic would imply that the proportion of no-shows goes up as the fares get cheaper. With Ryanair’s keenness to put bums on seats at any cost, it does seem surprising that they won’t oversell their flights by even one or two seats.

Anyway, as I write this, Ryanair have just launched another £1 ticket sale. This time, I might see if I can nail down a return flight as well as an outbound one, and make sure I get to go somewhere a little bit cheaper than Denmark and Sweden.