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Tags: Ryanair / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / Michael O'Leary / Airline News / Airlines / → All Tags

Hand Rails In Planes? Pee Fees Donated To The Incontinent? Ryanair's Crazy CEO Speaks

Listen here, Michael O'Leary, CEO of Ryanair, when you recently talked with the Wall Street Journal about your vision and your ideas for the future of low-cost airlines, you sounded both crazy and wise. And you know who typically sounds crazywise? Prophets. We're definitely not about to bow down to you, but you might have something there when you talk about in-flight paying-to-pee and standing room-only; you did after all begin the charging for checked bags thing before most others, and now it's almost standard, and on legacy carriers.

Still, you are one crazy businessman. Especially when you say things like this:

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Tags: Ryanair / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / Budget Travel / Brussels Travel / Edinburgh Travel / → All Tags

It Can Be Done! We Booked A Ryanair Flight For Under $25

If there's any single airline we'd rather not fly (other than Aeroflot, that is), it's got to be the Irish low cost carrier Ryanair. Boy oh boy, have we called them some names in the past, all the while unearthing their nickel-and-diming schemes to possibly charge passengers to use the bathroom and allow smoking on flights. But, with a European trip on our horizon, we're willing to let bygones be bygones and fly the fee-riddled skies of Ryanair.

In fact, we have a somewhat fond memory of our last Ryanair flight— a roundtrip from Rome-Ciampino to Barcelona-Girona that cost us a total of $45, not counting bus fare. But those were the days before Ryanair removed check-in desks and expanded their routes to irresistible locations. So, this past weekend while needing some time away from the Thanksgiving table, we visited the Ryanair website and yes—we bought tickets on a flight. The grand total for two passengers on a one-way flight from Brussels-Charleroi to Edinburgh? 14 Euro.

The shockingly low fare explained, after the jump.

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Tags: Ryanair / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / Airline News / Airlines / → All Tags

Survey Identifies Ryanair As The Worst Family Brand

You can scoff at us as we take our recurring and regular potshots at Ryanair, but you can't scoff at science. 1,500 people were surveyed using some vague methodology by some random outfit interested in "family brands." Thus surveyed, they collectively indicated that the Irish low cost carrier—which has been known to make a point of informing customers that they'll take abuse because they're cheap—ranked at the very bottom.

Key concepts like socially responsibly, good listening, caring, and family values were all tested. We have very little idea what any of those mean in a social scientific context, and we're skeptical they could be applied to airlines. But we do know that they're Good Things and that Ryanair ranked dead last when evaluated on them. So whatever else we know about this survey, we do know that it was more or less accurate. We remind you again to put aside whatever skepticism you might have since this is science:

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Spirit Airlines Apologizes Two Years Too Late

We guess it’s better late than never when it comes to customer service, but two years is certainly a long time. That’s the deal with one unhappy customer from Florida who complained out loud—thanks to the Internet—about an awful experience with Spirit Airlines. We’ve heard about their less than stellar service before, so we weren’t totally surprised to learn about this latest issue.

Alex Rudloff didn’t like his trip on Spirit, and titled a post on his blog “Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines.” Well soon enough, if you typed in Spirit Airlines into everyone’s favorite search engine, the post appeared as first page material—ahead of even some of the company’s official pages and the Wikipedia article. Obviously this got his site a lot of attention and probably made a lot of potential travelers question whipping out the credit card to start booking. Since then things have quieted down, but something a little strange happened the other day.

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Tags: Iberia / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / New Airlines / Airline News / Airlines / → All Tags

Iberia Airlines Wants To Liven Up Its Brand With a New LCC

Like most airlines, Iberia Airlines hasn’t been doing that well. They’ve been in talks to shack up with British Airways for a bigger and brighter future, but for now they’re doing their best to shuttle travelers to and from Spain as best as they can. To make more cash the airline plans to focus on more long-haul routes, and will change up the way they deal with shorter flights: they plan to launch their own low cost carrier.

The cheap carrier Vueling already is owned in part by Iberia, but apparently this isn’t good enough for the suits in Madrid. According to officials within the airline a new carrier focused on domestic and European routes will allow them to change the operating model for these types of flights.

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Tags: Ryanair / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / Airline News / Airline Fees / Checked Baggage Fees / Travel Deals / → All Tags

Ryanair Throws Huge Hissy Fit In Response To BBC Expose

Ryanair is in a very public, very heated, very crazy delicious feud with the BBC. The low cost carrier has taken exception to a BBC Panorama expose unpacking the airline's complex nickle and dime strategy for extracting airline fees. In response, Ryanair's the-customer-is-always-wrong CEO Michael O'Leary has blasted the program and unveiled a 1.1 million seat giveaway.

We were surprised Ryanair reacted so negatively to a discussion of their opaque fees. Usually they're so much more confident. Just a few weeks ago they were blustering about how their customers were free to explore other options if they had problems with the airline.

This is a company that's made a business model of brazenly abusing passengers, the implicit justification being that any alienated customers could always be replaced by other bargain seekers. "You'll take our abuse because you value your wallet more than your self-esteem" is practically the company's sneering motto.

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Spirit Airlines Gets Busted For Bullying Its Customers

The latest news from Spirit Airlines doesn’t involve a risqué ad campaign or other semi-clever marketing gimmick. This time the news is pretty serious, and they are going to have to break out the checkbook to make it go away because we don’t think the US government takes plastic.

The low cost carrier was fined $375,000 late last week for allegedly violating consumer protection rules. Specifically, they didn’t do such a good job about following guidelines regarding bumping passengers from their flights.

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Tags: Air Asia X / OAK / Oakland Raiders / Low Cost Carriers / Airline News / → All Tags

Air Asia X To Debut Raiders Plane In California Today

Despite the return of professional football, we did not have a good weekend. Our favorite team blew it, and apparently fantasy football is not our forte. There’s always next weekend, so we’ll get over it, and for now we’ll focus our football attention towards Air Asia X and their snazzy Oakland Raiders plane. Seeing a big airplane in NFL livery is pretty cool, especially since we’re still secretly hoping that the low cost carrier will announce a plan to serve the US.

We saw the new plane sticking its tail out from the hangar over the summer, but today it’s flying into Oakland to celebrate the start of the season. After all, the Raiders are playing tonight, so the timing is perfect. However, if you head to the team’s website, you’ll see that tonight’s game is being promoted side by side with ads for Hawaiian Airlines. Maybe team officials didn’t get the memo that another airline has honored them with a custom plane.

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Tags: Kingfisher Airlines / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / New Routes / Airline News / → All Tags

Kingfisher Goes International, And Not Just Around Asia

Last year Kingfisher Airlines out of Bangalore, India wasn’t doing too swell with their international routes, so they scaled things back and focused again on service in India. Well things must be on the up and up, because they are back to work announcing new routes:

There are eight new international routes planned for later this year, and Mumbai to Singapore and Mumbai to Hong Kong are scheduled to start up in September. Most of their other new plans include flights from New Delhi, which will be the first international routes out of that city. London, Bangkok, and Dubai are now all options for those looking to get out of India for a bit.

Despite all the good news, the airline did axe two routes. Bangalore lost its flights to London and Colombo, Sri Lanka. For now, their ambitious plans to expand to the US market are still on hold. If Vijay Mallya starts mouthing off about any plans to serve our west coast, we’ll let you know.

Related Stories:
· Kingfisher Launches Flights on 8 International Routes [Times of India]
· Flying Getting Way Cheaper. In India. [Jaunted]
· Low Cost Carriers coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: BangaloreAviation]

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Flybe Launches New Route, Except It Appears To Be Totally Useless

There’s nothing like a time when we’re all trying to watch our carbon footprints and up our train travel to launch a completely unnecessary flight route. But that’s exactly what Flybe has done this week. Yesterday, it launched its London to Leeds route with "red carpet celebrations" and a special appearance by a soap star (Matthew Bose from Emmerdale – no, we don’t know either, but we’re guessing he’s the fox in the middle of the photo here).

The only thing that we’re wondering is – why the hell have they done this? London to Leeds takes about two hours 20 minutes tops on the train. According to Flybe, the flight takes an hour and 10 minutes (actually it takes about 30 minutes, because we had the misfortune to be diverted to Leeds on a connecting flight to Manchester last year, and we’d barely cracked open the gin before we were landing). And it flies from Gatwick (30 minutes from central London, and that's if you take the expensive fast train) and into Leeds Bradford, 10 miles out of town.

Once you add on check-in time, wouldn’t it have been way better just to take the train? We’re confused. Obviously it’s nice to see one airline that’s doing well enough to launch a new route, but this route is just baffling. And the eco aspect means it’s just not cool.

Related Stories:
· Flybe Coverage [Jaunted]
· New Leeds-Bradford service to London starts [Telegraph & Argus]
· Flybe [Official Site]

Tags: Wizz Air / LCCs / Low Cost Carriers / Europe Travel / Publicity Stunts / → All Tags

Wizz Air's Balloons Pop Prematurely

Poor Wizz Air. What started out as a sweet little marketing idea to celebrate the Eastern European low-cost carrier's fifth anniversary turned nasty this week, and we feel bad for them.

The airline set up a press conference and speaking event in Budapest, and the final act of the day was going to be the release of 1,000 balloons, each with a 10,000 forint ($50) coupon attached which the lucky finder could redeem on a Wizz Air flight.

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Tags: Airfare Sales / Allegiant Air / Low Cost Carriers / Airfare Deals / Florida Travel / → All Tags

Allegiant Makes A Good Case For Florida In The Summer

Florida gets pretty hot and humid during the summer, but the state has great beaches, the best theme parks, and the snowbirds won’t be back for many months. If you can stand the heat, make a plan to visit the Sunshine State and take advantage of The Florida Perfect Excuse Sale. Starting at just $29 each way, Allegiant Air will be happy to whisk you away for some fun in the sun.

Columbia, South Carolina is the only location offering the dirt-cheap rate, but there are many other cities with decent deals. Toledo residents can snag $49 rates if they missed out on the Jet America deals. The same price is available from Roanoke, Virginia and Knoxville, Tennessee.

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