Are LCCs cheap?

[LGS6753]

The average fare charged by Ryanair/EasyJet is around £40. That's each way. And it excludes taxes and charges that add over £10 a leg for ex-UK operations. So the average return fare is over £100.
For that, you don't get a ticket, you pay extra for in-flight meals, newspapers and drinks, there's no travel agent's commission (and often a surcharge if you pay by credit card), and you don't get a reserved seat.
Now look at how much you pay for a UK-originating charter (seat-only). That price includes all taxes, travel agent's commission, in-flight meals, reserved seats, etc.
Although the prices do differ, the LCCs are not massively cheaper. You can see how they do it - all pioneered by the charter operators, just marketed differently.

Thinks..............

[Avman]

Ah, you've given it some thought. The average LCC punter hasn't got the brains to do that!

[speedbird_heavy]

Myself and the better half managed to fly from CWL to DUB with Ryanair for £2.50 return. With taxes etc etc the total fare came to £48.65 for the two of us.

Just to compare I did a little experiment.

BRS - DUB - BRS
17th AUG - 19th AUG
1 Adult.

EI - £59.40 return
FR - £29.87 return

BRS - EDI - BRS
17th AUG - 19th AUG
1 Adult

BA £59.00
U2 £40.98

Ryanair are nearly half the price................! Easyjet on the other hand........£8 difference. I think I'd fly BA to EDI and FR to DUB

[LGS6753]

Speedbird heavy -

Sorry to be personal, but is your better half really called Mrs Heavy?

[Buster the Bear]

What easyJet and Ryanair started was the demise of rip off fares by the flag and major carriers, who were traditionally the only carriers.

Now, more often than not, fares generally between flag/majors and Lo-Co are very close.

The £40 fare is very good value no mater where you are flying compared to public transport. This fare average makes money for the airlines, so all the discounts by the new Lo-Co players will only last a season or two. By then they will have run out of HM Govt region/EU aid, or gone out of business anyway.

[MerchantVenturer]

I suppose I'm one of Avman's average LCC punters as I use easyJet quite a lot from Bristol for leisure trips in the company of Mrs MV.

I am lucky because I can usually plan well ahead and match decent fares and dates (we are both retired). I have yet to find BACx cheaper than easyJet on the routes they both cover from BRS (EDI and GLA), given the flexibility that I have.

We flew BRS-CPH-BRS in March with easy for £46 each, including all taxes. We are flying BRS-SXF-BRS next month for £42 each, including taxes.

Last week we flew with a non LCC (Aurigny) BRS-GCI-BRS and were charged £85, including taxes.

In the past year or so I have flown returns from BRS to GLA and EDI with easy on a total of four occasions and have paid no more than £26 including taxes for each return trip. I also flew BRS-NCL-BRS for £15 all in but that was a special price where easy paid the taxes because the route was being introduced.

As someone who pays for all my flights myself I find the LCCs themselves and the effect they have had on the fares of other airlines out of my regional airport to be a tremendous benefit. Even BA will fly you to Scotland and back for £60 or £70. It wasn't so long ago that you were lucky to get anything under £200 and often more.

I take the view that I will take advantage of them whilst they are there. Who knows what the shape of the aviation industry will be next year or in five, ten or fifteen years time?

[Avman]

I rest my case about LCC flyers and brains (but I'm only joking guys). You have all fallen into the trap. Just read the original post again. LGS is making an LCC versus TRADITIONAL CHARTER WITH FRILLS comparisson. He is not making an LCC versus MAJORS comparisson. Now, pay attention there at the back of the class!

[Lite]

The biggest problem that you'll always find with the charter airlines, is that they cannot match the frequency & flexibility that the no-frills airlines are able to provide, and which makes them much more popular for the fairly new trend of long weekends away, or to work around awkward work dates for your days off to spend at the second home on the Costas.

The charters are beginning to claw back with some better frequencies, an easier fare structure, better websites & accessibility, but they're still usually quite a bit more expensive than the low-costs if you're flying from a regional airport (BHX/EMA in my cases of looking for cheap flights, am unaware of the London situation!) and now most carriers charge for drinks & snacks just like a loco, plus charge £15 per leg for one of the infamous awful airline food.

With some tweakings I'm sure that the charters will do well again, but they have to do more to become appealing again to the many that now swear by the work done by O'Leary & Stelios.

[AJ]

Yes, but the reason LCC still come tops is because they give you the flexibility of flying out & back again on dates that suit you, not the airline. No need to stay overseas for a set period, i.e. 7 or 14 days.

Apart from this, the same LCCs offer a range of destinations which many charter airlines will not - these include the major European capitals as well as the holiday sunspots.

Currently there appears to be a growing trend in the number of people wanting to tailor-make their holidays - i.e. by booking their flights, hotels and car rental separately.

However, I will concede that the difference in fares is sometimes quite small.

As for papers and coffee - well, that's all very nice but I'd rather just get a cheaper seat and bring my own!

[egnxema]

Also from the carriers point of view, the number of Seat Only fares sold on charters is very small. The whole reason the flights operate is because one or more tour operators are selling the seats with holidays. To be able to sell the extra 10 seats you have on a certain flight to TFS really is no big deal. When most of the MyTravel Holidays customers will have been sold their inflight meals for anything between £10-15 EACH (many of them not fully realising this until they receive their Final Confirmation Invoice) the Charter carriers are not exactly LoCo in their cost base. If they are so good at it why are they reinventing themselves at HLX.com, Condor, Thomsonfly and MyTravellite?

[Daysleeper]

Currently there appears to be a growing trend in the number of people wanting to tailor-make their holidays - i.e. by booking their flights, hotels and car rental separately.

Dont forget that if you do that you have NO ATOL protection. Which in of itself costs money thus pushing up the costs for charter carriers who are bonded.
They (charter carriers) have however traditionally gained by having rock bottom (or no) sales and marketing costs, this all being taken care of by the charterer (although often a parent company) However the internet has reduced sales costs massively. In effect no frills operators would find it very hard to compete without the internet due to fees from travel agents, GDS positioning etc.

[Ace Rimmer]

I suppose you could always just compare prices...
...a few weeks back I had to go to TLS for a work thing there and back same day type of caper.
The choice (from LGW) convienently located about halway between Castle Rimmer and the Rimmer News offices is either BA or easy the schdules/frequency were very similar so how to choose? Easy, (no pun intended) go on the two airline's sites and compare prices - BA came out at £98 and easy £127...even before you add on the frills (which will doubtless progressively disappear but that's another story).

It's a no brainer. Seems to me the challenge the legacy (or network or whatever you want to call them) airlines have is perception - getting people to look at their prices in the first place (well that and massively reducing wastage but again another story yadda yadda).

[Young Paul]

I set up www.spotfare.com because I was interested in such comparisons. When I have more time, I'll do more research, and show more information ......

[Globaliser]

Daysleeper: Dont forget that if you do that you have NO ATOL protection.

But if you book flights, car and hotel separately, you're unlikely to need ATOL protection for the car and hotel (paid when used). You're usually protected by credit card issuer liability for the flights too, and the same goes for any pre-paid car or hotel.

[Ben Evans]

Ace Rimmer - the reason the easy TLS flight was more expensive than the BA flight is that it is nearly sold out. You were looking at one of the last 25 seats on the aircraft.

I can't comment on how full the BA aircraft was at that point but it does illustrate that spot comparisons between airlines is rather fraught. Yeild management fluctates quoted prices wildly and (seemingly) randomly over time.

The fact that easyJet at Gatwick are booming is a far better indicator that the punters like the product.

[Ace Rimmer]

Ben - Actually pretty full but my point was that although it is possible to get better deals on Legacy carriers the wider public will tend not to bother to look at there offer (locked into the LCC message of low fares all the time) and that they the leagacies need to counter that perception.

Not disputing the performance of Easy at LGW, recall interviewing Ray a while back and he said he'd take every Gatters slot he could get.

[uy707]

Like it or not
Low Fares Carriers often betray their nature. Paris-based "Capital" a monthly economic magazine endeavoured to publish a focused article by comparing the most famous with AF.
Their yardsticks
3 different cases
-one peak return
-one week-ender
-one basic single
-advance purshase
-last minute purshase
the airlines, all versus Air France and country of destination flag carrier
-EasyJet, over the route Paris-Nice
-Ryanair, over the route Paris-Barcelona
-German Wings over the route Paris-Cologne Bonn
-SkyEurope, over the route Paris-Vienna
-Volare over the route Paris-Milan
Common bias shared by all contenders,
-the attractively priced seats are no more avialable at D-60 ! So from D-59 to 0, better plan a visit to AF and its "established" competitor !
-there is a service charge when buying on line and paying by plastic.
SkyEurope and Ryanair get you respectively to Bratislava and Skavsta, where you are up to pay for an additional road transfer,
while AF duly drops you at Schwechat and Arlanda.
SOUTHWEST yeah this one is a real FULL-time low fare airline.
Alain

[Wee Weasley Welshman]

So why is nearly every seat on every flight on EZY Paris - Nice occupied?

Air France - 82% of the domestic air market and their directors are on the DGAC and the Slot Allocation Committee.

Cheers

WWW

[Scottie]

UY707,

Believe it or not if you book a Southwest flight close to departure date it can be very expensive.

What you've identified is called "Yield Management". A principle of the low cost ethos and one which British Airways has now adopted.

More popular an individual flight is the more expensive it becomes.

So although eJ wasn't the cheapest on this occasion it's probably because the flight is getting full.

In reply to your last statement, Southwest they certainly are!

[TartinTon]

"A principle of the low cost ethos and one which British Airways has now adopted"

Scottie,

BA has been practising Yield Management for a long, long time. You think the LCC invented it? Bob Crandall at AA invented it with a guy called Bob Cross a long time ago. What the LCC have done is basically make it less complicated and make yield management completely demand based i.e. the quicker the flight sells the higher the fare gets. Airlines like AA/BA used to use fare restrictions to segment the market and make businessmen pay very high fares by only allowing lower fares if you stayed over a Saturday night at your destination. They still do this with some fares but a heck of a lot less than they used to thanks to the LCC