The first thing to notice is that skis don’t travel free; meaning you’ll have to add 80 GBP/EUR to your total – this may more than double the cost of your flight.

The second thing is that these tickets are even more expensive than last year – indeed, the Stansted-Grenoble route has jumped by nearly 50%. But still, times are different now and airline prices are very dynamic dependent on supply, demand and competition. So take any claims of ‘sale’ with a pinch of salt.

Here are the ski routes:

London Stansted – Cuneo
Price: from 27.99 GBP each way (flight and taxes)
Ryanair flights/wk: 1
Closest Alternative: Genoa – served by Ryanair with 3 flights a week, and British Airways, with returns from 98 GBP in January including free ski carriage (if it fits the standard size).

London Stansted – Grenoble
Price: from 38.99 GBP each way (flight and taxes)
Ryanair flights/wk: 3
Closest Alternative: Lyon – served by Easyjet from Stansted and Gatwick (fares from 44 GBP) and British Airways from Heathrow (fares from 138 GBP).

London Stansted – Lourdes
Price: from 27.99 GBP each way (flight and taxes)
Ryanair flights/wk: 1
Closest Alternative: Tolouse – Easyjet fly from Gatwick for 48 GBP return, whilst British Airways fly from Heathrow for 135 GBP return.

London Stansted – Salzburg
Price: from 32.99 GBP each way (flight and taxes)
Ryanair flights/wk: 10
Closest Alternative: Worth noting that British Airways and Air Berlin also fly direct to Salzburg.

London Stansted – Turin
Price: from 24.99 GBP each way (flight and taxes)
Ryanair flights/wk: 9
Closest Alternative: British Airways also fly direct to Turin (fares from GBP 106 return).

It’s worth noting that although airports are listed as alternatives, depending on where you are staying transfer costs may be higher or take longer – it’s best to factor this in your calculations when choosing flights.

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.

The downsides is that the flights are all for next year – so you’ll have to book now to avoid disappointment.

Here are some of the great fares available: (ex, London, Manchester, Edinburgh or Birmingham)

Hong Kong from GBP 409
Nanjing from GBP 319
Seoul from GBP 409
Tokyo from GBP 409
Beijing  from GBP 359

Click here to see all available fares and dates. Be quick!

That’s where the good news ends however, as the fares have one of the thinnest spread of routes available – with just 500,000 seats, and a good chunk of these would be available on UK-Dublin routes. But, if you’re flying one of these routes, you may get lucky. Travel in September:

Leeds Bradford to: Dublin, Knock, Nantes

Bristol to: Belfast, Knock, Limoges

Birmingham to: Derry, Dusseldorf (Weeze)

East Midlands to: Belfast, Knock, Dublin, Nantes, Dinard

Liverpool to: Belfast, Bremen, Cork, Dublin, Knock, Oslo Torp, Shannon

London Stansted to: Aarhus, Belfast, Billund, Bremen, Ciudad Real, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt Hahn, Glasgow Prestwick, Haugesund, Oslo Rygge, Oslo Torp, Stockholm Vasteras, Tours

Bournemouth to: Dublin

Edinburgh to: Brussels Charleroi, Hamburg Lubeck, Oslo Torp, Paris Beauvais, Poitiers

London Luton to: Brest, Kerry

Newcastle to: Oslo Rygge

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.

Will this happen? Actually I think it’s just a bit of posturing and possibly a way of turning up the pressure. There is no doubt that the ‘Easy’ brand is particularly valuable and well known throughout Europe – but it’s not irreplaceable. I’d consider that the budget airline brands are all towards the lower end of the spectrum when it comes to brand equity and therefore even starting out as a generic brand would not be too detrimental as customers would still know who the former company was. This would be a different case altogther if a brand giant such as Coke had to start again.

Re-branding also gives the company further opportunities. They also own the ‘Go’ brand from the British Airways days but also could look into a merger with an existing airline and use their brand instead. Wizz look particularly interesting for many low-cost airlines. Not only are their business models similar (and hence easy to integrate), but for the most part the airlines have some synergies. Wizz has a big Eastern European bias, where most of the others do not, giving a combined potential larger route map with few overlaps. The ability to put more bases also broadens the options for future flights.

And then there is the ramifications for Sir Stelios. By a considerable margin, Easyjet is the most prominent and valuable of all the brands in the group and it’s loss would probably see Stelios known as ‘formerly of Easyjet’. The loss of the brand and subsequent royalties coming in would be significant.

What to do for the airline? It’s not as if they want to run flights late, but it looks as if though via poor management, they have had no choice. Either they should employ more crews or re-jiggle the schedules to a more realistic target (punctuality is judged by take-off time). Some of the turnarounds are not realistic and then there is a domino effect; one bad delay on the opening sector of the day would result in the rest of the day’s flights being late.

For passengers: if your flight is late, do not be afraid to ask for compensation. For flights involving the EU if your flight is delayed more than 3 hours, you are entitled to compensation of EUR 250 or EUR 400 (depending on distance) plus food, calls and accomodation (where appropriate). You should almost certainly write to them via recorded delivery; they will plead extraordinary circumstances – but it’s been heavily publicised that there is nothing ‘extraordinary’ about their delays. If you do have a legitimate case you should proceed all the way to court action; there is very little chance that Easyjet will want to come under more scrutiny and will settle beforehand.

But in real terms, standing on flights will never happen. Although people like to say that we should take planes like we do buses, we don’t. You can wait for 10 minutes for a bus, you have to arrive at the airport at least an hour before for a plane. It’s inconceivable that anyone should stand for a journey of more than an hour, let alone two or three.

Let’s have a look at the practical side of why this won’t happen:

- Laws: There is no approval for a standing seat at present, and Ryanair aircraft are already at maximum capacity. There is little reason to think why this would change; would it benefit the consumer? No. Promo flights have always been around this price. There are several medical factors which may not allow fat people, very tall people or disabled people onto the seats; potential discrimination laws may apply here.

- Manufacturers: Ultimately the makers would comply – after all, they’re being paid by the airlines, but you would have to say they would be against this type of thing. Fitting more passengers may mean less aircraft are required, which equates to lower future orders.

- Airports: Some of the airports just are not going to be big enough to handle an extra 20% of passengers. Some gates cannot even take 100 people in comfort, let alone 200.  Baggage queues may well stay the same, but passport queues would be longer.

- Turnaround: It would be impossible to turnaround an aircraft in 15 minutes with an extra 20% of passengers; more bags, more seating, more heads for cabin crew to count, more admin work. If turnaround increased to 25 minutes, over the course of a day that adds up to 1 hour 20m (assuming 8 sectors). That is almost one whole lost flight. Passenger numbers overall may not actually increase in proportion due to this lost capacity.

- Economics: The big one. The sums simply don’t stack up. Ryanair is all about reducing it’s costs. But a measure such as this, may actually be increasing them. Not only does the company have to retrofit it’s aircraft (not a large expense relatively), but costs will go up. On cheap airfares, most of the costs are in airport duties and fees. Therefore, carrying more passengers means extra fees. For a flight departing the UK, the fees are already £12+ and that’s before considering the fees whereever it lands. It would be impossible to sell even standing seats at £5 without incurring massive losses.

Yes, you may argue that flights were free in the past, but the reality of the situation is that other fees and other higher fare paying passengers more than balanced this out. Therefore to offer the standing seats at a cheap price, either one of two things must happen: there must be some way of levying a hell of a lot of extra charges out of these passengers or the fares in the rest of the plane must go up to subsidise this. The first option is unlikely – anyone purchasing this type of seat is likely to be extremely cost sensitive (cost being the sole reason to choose a seat like this) and the second is just as unlikely, as raising prices would mean the airline would be open to competition offering lowest prices.

I’m pretty sure that there is probably a market for standing only flights, but it won’t be with Ryanair. It would more likely suit a domestic flight: short duration commuting style with little admin on the end; but in the days of heightened security at airports this seems unlikely.

The real answer is not in the short-term – current CAA regulations stipulate the maximum number of seats an aircraft can have and for the 737-800 (Ryanair’s only type of aircraft) – this is already at the maximum (189). It would be highly unlikely that they would extend this, particularly if the extra capacity was to be generated by extra standing, and not seating room.

What are the pros? Extra passengers for a start – with the standing seat you could fit 4 passengers instead of 3 into the seat width and perhaps reduce the seat pitch by a quarter; instead of the last 10 rows carrying 60 pax, it could accomodate perhaps 120. Although it wouldn’t be comfortable particularly on longer flights. Safety isn’t a major issue: as long as the standup seat had some way of securing the passenger to it, then it’s really the same as a standard seat. In the event of a major accident, it really makes little chance to survival chances whether you are standing or sitting.

What are the cons? There are several obvious ones. The first being pricing. With Ryanair offering many promotional discounts, the price of standing would never been seen as attractive unless the booking periods were substantially different. For example, paying 5 for a standing room flight tommorow to Madrid is a good deal, paying the same amount for a flight in 3 months when the seat costs 19 is not so good.

Logistically, there are also problems. Hand luggage, for instance – on a full flight the overhead cabins are already overloaded due to most people taking hand luggage. With an extra amount of people on board, there would be no extra place – either forcing people not to take them or to check them in – which defeats the point  of it all. It is laughable to think someone could get a cheap ticket for standing and then have to pay for the extra checked bag. There also could be issues with toilets and cabin crew – where there are guidelines for the minimum number per passenger. Looking at some mock ups: it’s gonna be quite difficult to see how much cabin storage could exist for those next to the window without some sort of height limit.

In our own opinions, it’s very unlikely that this would occur. Although it could be argued that people accept even worse conditions on trains and underground systems throughout Europe, the journeys are much shorter and you have the flexibility to get off or take a seat as they become vacant, neither of which is true for a flight. And then there is the danger of potential damage of the flight experience to regular passengers – a concentrated amount of passengers in the back is not only ungainly to look at, but also could produce a large amount of noise and require a disproportionate amount of service.

With Ryanair seemingly not offering the very cheap basement fares any more, it seems that there may be room in the medium term for a little competition. If it goes ahead, a seat on a all-seated airline suddenly gains a little more in value.

At these prices, it’s begrudgingly ok to do it if Central London is your destination with Paddington already being situated quite close – and the Tube can take up to an hour with it being hot and crowded. The normal price is GBP 32 return, which is outrageous for the length of journey involved.

To get the deal just visit the Heathrow Express website and use the Promo code MCPA2P. It says there is a requirement to book two tickets but this is waived for now, but be quick as it might be reinstated at any time

In general if you are booking train tickets for the UK rail network it is almost always better to book online or in advance as there are often promotions which greatly reduce the price of tickets, often by over 50%.

Check it out here – there are some great destinations – Amsterdam, Prague, Palma among others. Despite the restrictions, we’d expect it to be fully suscribed.

Is this the future for sales? At a wild guess, those loads midweek from Manchester must be pretty poor, so this is a cheap way of increasing them (assuming that some passengers book coming back, they will not lose too much money).
With most sales requiring a longer booking period, this could be a new interesting tactic for boosting load factors. Basically the airline could say: get a free flight out, as long as you buy the return.

It could add up. Let’s take someone flying to Amsterdam. The return will cost £80, outward is free. Average cost per sector is £40, which is pretty much an average price. The downside of course, is that the airline wouldn’t know who would be flying until the day before.

Lucky enough to get on one of these deals? Let us know.

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.

Again, there is a pretty narrow range of destinations although a few exceptions to be had; Stansted – Milan Bergamo is there. Very few ‘premium’ destinations but from East Midlands you can get to Valencia, Budapest, Ibiza and Faro.

Click here for all prices

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 London flights though.

After the Lufthansa takeover of BMIBaby, Heathrow flights are no more, which is quite a shame but also understandable. In fact, for those regular flyers of Baby, you might be disappointed as there has been a large cull in the number of (probable loss making destinations).

The sale has quite a long reach – it’s until 30 October and also has some good loss-leaders. Flights start from £2.99 but also there are a tranche at £9.99 too.

Good luck finding them, though. The seats will probably be spread pretty thinly given the long time this offer is running for. And, judging by the destinations, if you’re wanting to go to Belfast, this seems like the best chance. Doubly so if you are going midweek -the off-peak times.

Top picks:

Birmingham – Belfast – £2.99

East Midlands – Belfast – £2.99

Manchester – Belfast – £2.99

Cardiff – Jersey – £9.99

East Midlands – Newquay – £9.99

Manchester – Geneva – £9.99

Bournemouth – Jersey – £9.99

Check out the full sale here.

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.