Budget Airlines

It’s nice to travel to foreign countries and a plane is obviously the quickest way to get there.
I don’t want to pay £200 each way for the privilege of hurtling through the sky in a precarious tube full of compressed air though, what about the budget airlines?

£10 to fly to a major European city of your choosing is cheap. Very cheap. The kind of cheap you really should have concerns about. Oh, hang on, it’s not really £10, is it?

There’s a booking fee. Fine, that’s standard when you buy a ticket for anything. A printing-my-ticket-out fee? I thought paying to print something out ended when I shelled out £100 on a printer and paper, but I’ll pay it anyway.

The costs just keep adding up. Do I want to board the plane? Do I want a seat? £10 more for each of those. Do I want to check in an item of luggage? I’ll not bother thanks, everything will be in my carry-on bag. Oh, they’ve limited that to bags no bigger than 10cm x 10cm, weighing no more than 50 grams. Got me again. £10 and then £5 per kilo for anything over 2 kilos.

Perhaps they’ll charge me for the oxygen while I’m on there, or make me pay to urinate a room that’s frankly a very skinny cupboard? That’s probably included in the initial £10. Airport tax isn’t though, whatever that is.

How much is my ticket now really costing me? It’s at about £199, which is still cheaper than a major airline, just.

The flight experience is enhanced by surly cabin crew who will try and flog you all manner of tat the second the wheels leave the tarmac. Don’t bother trying to sleep as they’ll wake you up to ask if you want to buy something. Don’t bother trying to get up and down the aisle either, unless you want to be on the end of a vicious assault of eye-rolling and tutting.

A nice, gentle landing is what you need when arriving at your destination. The pilot pancakes it into the runway though and it’s a miracle the plane doesn’t snap in half upon impact. During landing don’t be surprised if you see Hispanic passengers clutching rosary beads and crossing themselves.

Still, I’m there now. Actually I’m not. The airport billed as being near the major European city of my choosing is handily only 250 miles from the major European city of my choosing and was advertised as such on the website in text I would need a powerful telescope to read.

What absolute bastards.