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The Bloke: The joys of booking a flight on a so-called ‘budget’ airline
“You should get on the website quick,” said my sister, whose generous combined Christmas and birthday cheque to yours truly had ensured we could just about afford to join her and my parents on our family holiday to Portugal later this year. “Flights from Leeds are on there for just over £100.”
Ah yes, I thought. The joys of booking a flight on a so-called ‘budget’ airline.
Not having been abroad for a couple of years I had forgotten the giddy rush of excitement that comes when you punch in your preferred departure date and see that your flight out there will cost the equivalent of a couple of Big Mac meals.
Followed swiftly, of course, by a crushing feeling of horror as you discover the flight back will wipe out your life savings.
Needless to say our flights weren’t hovering just above the hundred quid mark. Not when you factored in luxuries such as taking a suitcase both there and back.
As I navigated my way through the site – knowing full well that the tiniest slip-up would mean a rebooking fee that would quite possibly cost more than our weekly shop – I couldn’t help but notice that with each click of my mouse the price on the right hand side of the page was going up quicker than the running total on Children in Need.
The Missus, bless her, had reasoned that we wouldn’t have to pay anything to take the twins with us because they were too young to need a seat of their own.
To be fair, £80 is a small price to pay for the privilege of embarking on a three-hour flight with a toddler perched on your lap. I mean clearly, that costs the airline a lot of money in ‘administration fees’ or some other euphemism they like to use when they’re robbing you blind.
And naturally, because we were travelling with infants we had to pre-book our seats rather than just join in the usual budget airline free-for-all. Not that this was another way to make more money out of us, obviously.
My mum and dad are travelling on the same flight so kindly said we could put some of our stuff in their baggage, thus shaving half off the £66 totally justified cost of taking a suitcase each.
Then there was the fee for checking in online - which was cheaper than doing it in person at the airport.
Again, this was all to be expected. After all, the airline shouldn’t have to pay for those cheery check-in staff, should they? That’s our job.
I thought the £23 fee for actually paying for the flights on my debit card was also very reasonable. I mean, it’s awfully good of the company to accept my money and I don’t blame them for charging me extra for the privilege.
It was only right at the end that I realised we’d be taking a pram with us and started scanning the website to see how much this would cost.
Helpfully, it pointed me to the airline’s call centre which cost a mere 60p a minute to ring.
A hasty Google search as I listened to the longest pre-recorded message in history revealed you can actually take a pram on for free.
Needless to say, I still double checked with the call centre as I didn’t believe my own eyes.
* Follow The Bloke on Twitter @theblokeyep
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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