I would guess the reasons for so are such:
- High year-round demand. Places such as these are good holiday destinations and enjoy year around footfall.
- Local monopoly – lack of competition, especially from the more provincial airports
- High airport taxes – meaning subsidising flights isn’t possible.
Anyway, the upshot of this is that flights to these ‘premium’ places tend to be more expensive. Let’s take the Luton-Marrakesh route. Even at a base fare of £24.99, this is still over £50 one way, or £100 return. No doubt, this is still a good bit cheaper than other airlines, but there are ways to save an incredible amount of cash via the split ticketing.
How does split-ticketing work?
Split ticketing involves seperating your journey into more than one segment, to take advantage of country-specific price promotions. It’s pretty understandable that different countries have different promotions available to meet local demand. Taking advanatage of them all may be difficult though, because of the distance between you. Let’s say there was a free fares promotion in Germany. You would still have to fly out to Germany. If there were no UK-based promotions out there, it isn’t really worth your while to do it. So the problem is, getting all the promotions at one go.
Sure, you can manually check the prices every day, but a far quicker way (especially if you want to go to the premium destinations) is to sign up for the Newsletter here: http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/about.php?page=About&sec=register . This gives you not only the latest news on sales, but also, it allows you the chance to book £5 (or 5 euro) flights. You’ll also notice that it is valid from many European destinations. This gives us a great chance to book some good flights.
So, let’s take the example of an Alicante route. You could route yourself an alternative way:
Stansted- Milan
Milan – Alicante
Alicante – Milan
Milan – Stansted
This would cost you under £20 – as the European flights are priced in Euros. A steal, compared to the original price, I’m sure you’ll agree. This works for many of the premium places – admittedly not all of them but it’s likely that if you use this way, you will save a lot of money. Note that you can be even more flexible with the routing. You can book one way, so there is nothing to stop you going back via Milan – Rome – Barcelona – Paris – Glasgow – London, all for 5 Euro each sector. Of course, this is a lot of flying time, and you’ll have to check the airport guides for the viability of making a stop in each place (as it can be expensive to transfer to the city and get a night in a hotel). But for the budget traveller, it also could be ideal.
An added advantage I’ve seen is that you have a greater choice of discounted flights. On something like a London-Dublin route with high frequency, only some flights are cheap on the normal promotions. So far on the mailing list, every flight is the same price, allowing for even greater savings.
Things to bear in mind:- The promotional bookings are often quite far ahead compared to the regular promotions. For example, the current £6 promotions allows travel from July, the mailing list promotion allows travel from September. So, you’ll have to plan ahead with good precision to get it right. Additionally, some routes have very limited availability; I’m sure that only a certain of number of promotional tickets are available per flight. Be flexible and consider every possible combination of routes.
- Note that the offer is open to change. For example, they could drop to free, or the main site could offer a free promotion, and if you’ve booked the tickets, there is nothing you can do about it. Therefore, I would only book the split-ticket if you’re going to use it, as it will be at least 4 tickets. Hardly a disposable ticket, unlike the £1 fares.
- Allow yourself good time between flights. Although it’s quite rare, sometimes flights are delayed. Booking things too close together may cause you to miss a connecting flight; you don’t have any recourse in this matter should this happen, and you risk being stranded half-way, having to purchase the next flight at an extortionate rate. Hence, the shorter the transit time, the riskier. I like to play it safe and allow an absolute minimum of two hours between flights, which is pretty large. If landing in a larger airport that requires a lot of walking/queueing (say, London-Stansted) you may want to consider adding more time. I would say that for Stansted, you could easily take an hour from landing to get back into the departures area; on the quieter European airports, it’s a matter of seconds.
Note: You may get some funny looks or be asked why you are flying in, then out, although this is unlikely in the busy airports. It’s just best to declare the truth, that it saves money to split your route.
A way around this may be to investigate a travel insurance policy; there are yearly ones that do cover missed connections but you will have to read the small print pretty finely before doing this. Prevention is better than cure.
- Some airports are better than others. Basically, this means that some airports have a greater number of routes available, meaning that you have greater options when considering how to further your trip. Flying into Memmingen in Germany for example, only gives you the option to fly to Pisa, however, changing your destination to Dusseldorf or Bremen gives you considerably more choice.
As a rule of thumb, the bigger European Ryanair airports will offer you the greatest latitude; check Stansted, Dublin, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Marseille, Brussels, Girona, Madrid, Pisa, Milan for good options. A considerable number of other airports are also ok, offering you a choice of at least five places to go.
That’s it. Sign up for the newsletter and good luck! Comments are most welcome.
Need a pre-paid card to dodge Ryanair fees? We’ve teamed up with FairFX to offer you their anywhere card – get one for FREE (usually £9.95 for loading under £500). Any currency – anywhere – it’s ideal for everyone.
No related posts.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }