Budget airline flight extras exposed
14.12.09
Checking luggage into the hold or using a credit card to pay can add almost 30% to the advertised price of budget airline flights, new research by Which? has revealled.
The Consumers Association's Holiday magazine compared luggage and payment-method costs for passengers flying with budget airlines bmibaby, easyJet, Ryanair and Jet2 to four destinations - Paris, Rome, Malaga in Spain and Faro in Portugal. They found the price of a flight to Paris with bmibaby increased by around 25% when one piece of hold luggage was checked in and the ticket was booked using a credit card, and the price of a flight to Malaga increased by 23%
Jet was found to add the most to the cost of a flight for the charges - £92.16 – this was an increase of just 10% on the advertised ticket price. Ryanair charges £50 extra across all its routes for checking in a hold bag and paying with a credit card; an increase of between 8% - 29% on the advertised cost of the fare. easyJet consistently had the lowest luggage and card charges of the four airlines, ranging from £26 to £38 extra, but in one case this still amounted to a 17% increase on the advertised price.
Which? Holiday head of research Rochelle Turner said:’It’s hard to believe that any airline could justify increasing the ticket price by almost a third just for checking a bag into the hold and paying on a credit card – two services that not too long ago were included in the price.'
‘Airlines argue that they are being fairer to customers who don’t use these services. But, in reality, how many people don’t use a credit or debit card to pay for their flights, or travel without luggage? These aren’t extra services. They are part and parcel of taking a flight.’
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