Easyjet Ryanair advert source http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/mar/03/easyjet-ryanair-asa#zoomed-picture

The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint by Ryanair against its rival EasyJet after they made a claim in an advertising campaign that claimed that the Irish competitor did not fly passengers “to the place you actually booked”.

The poster, which appeared on a train, suggested Ryanair flew to airports in the proximity of the cities promoted as destinations; but Ryanair successfully argued that the ad was misleading as it implied people would not fly to the city they booked to whereas the advertising and website made clear where the airline flew to.

Upholding Ryanair’s complaint, the ASA said: “While we noted EasyJet’s argument that the ad was merely a comparison between airport locations, we were concerned that by listing the airports which Ryanair flew to but only referring to the ones EasyJet flew to in much smaller print at the bottom of the ad and by not giving any data which readers might use to make an assessment of the facts, the ad did not achieve that end.

“We considered the challenging tone of the headline ‘Who loves flying you to the place you actually booked?’ combined with the implication that Ryanair misled customers and flew them to airports different to the ones they had booked was denigratory.”

EasyJet UK general manager Paul Simmons said: “It is a well-know fact that EasyJet flies to major airports whereas Ryanair serves out-of-town airfields which can be a two hour bus ride away from your destination.

“While we are disappointed by the ruling which is based on a technicality, we respect the ASA’s decision and will not repeat the advert in the same form.”

It’s rather ironic that Ryanair had to turn to the ASA to use the very same codes of conduct that in previous years they have had disputes over.

Ryanair photo by Flickr User aromano

Ryanairhave plans to expand even further with more new routes fom Stansted and East Midlands. The budget carrier is to serve Fez in Morocco, Figari in Corsica and Fuerteventura in the Canary Islandsfrom Stansted this summer.

Flights for Figari and Fez start on 4th May and to Fuerteventura on 5th May with fares starting at £31.99 one way inclusive of taxes and charges.

East Midlands will gain services to Fuerteventura from 2nd May and Venice Treviso from 5th May with fares leading in at £29.99 one way inclusive of taxes and charges. These rates apply to bookings made until midnight on 11th February.

The airlines expansion also includes flights from Cork starting in June to Alicante, Barcelona (Reus), Bordeaux, Faro, La Rochelle, Lanzarote and Malaga.

Luton will gain flights to Bratislava from April and Knock will have a Barcelona service.

“Ryanair will continue to grow as other airlines pull routes and reduce capacity,” a spokesman said. “With passengers becoming increasingly price sensitive, Ryanair will continue to expand.”

Ryanair has announced two new routes from Bristol to Poland and Lithuania.

West country residents will be able to fly to Bydgoszcz, which is twinned with Swansea, from 1st May and to Kaunas from 3rd May.

Fares on the new routes start at £26.99 one way including taxes and charges.

Ryanair’s new routes will operate twice a week, to Bydgoszcz on Wednesdays and Saturdays and to Kaunas on Mondays and Thursdays.

Easyjet aircraft picture by Flickr User Pex Cornel

EasyJet has warned that economic conditions “remain challenging” and the budget carrier continues to expect a tough trading environment. The forecast came as the airline reported total revenue up by 10.5% to £607.5 million in the three months to 31st December.

EasyJet’s first half performance and consequently the 2010 first half pre-tax result is expected to be a loss in the range of £80 million to £95 million, described as a “significant improvement” compared to the first half of the prior financial year.

“Economic conditions remain challenging and we continue to expect a tough trading environment, however, the underlying performance of the business in the first quarter has been encouraging and EasyJet remains on track to deliver substantial profit improvement during 2010.” the airline said.

Chief executive Andy Harrison said: “EasyJet was the best performing European airline during 2009 because we offer the lowest fares to the most convenient airports. EasyJet has continued to deliver a superior performance into the first quarter of our new financial year. The strength of customer demand has allowed us to grow passengers flown by nearly 10% with virtually no yield deterioration, slightly ahead of our initial expectations.

Flybe Aircraft picture by Flickr User bob the courier

Flights to Hannover from Exeter are to run next summer via Newcastle. Flybe is to operate the route three times a week between 31st March and 29th October.

Tickets from Exeter start at £59.99 including taxes and charges. Flights will depart from Exeter at 07.20, arriving in Hannover at 12.00, then departing Hannover at 12.25, arriving in Exeter at 15.05.

The airline’s chief commercial officer Mike Rutter said: “This announcement further reinforces Flybe’s commitment to bringing convenient, low cost travel to the South West and reaffirms our position as Exeter’s number one airline.”

Exeter Airport managing director Jamie Christon said: “Links to Germany have been on our wish list for many years and this route to Hannover looks set to please many travellers from the South West. There has been a gap in the market.”

EasyJet has now introduced online check-in for passengers with hold baggage at the majority of the airports it flies from. The new service enables passengers to check in online via the airline’s easyJet.com website and then take their cases to the bag drop point at airport along with their online check-in boarding card.

For those who prefer the traditional check-in EasyJet will continue to offer standard desk facilities at the airport and there will be no charge for either online check-in/bag drop or the existing airport check-in process.

Online check-in for hold baggage is available at 94 of the 112 airports the carrier serves. The remaining 18 airports will follow “over time”. These are:Ajaccio, Bodrum, Casablanca, Dalaman, Dubrovnik, Dusselsdorf, Hergarda, Innsbruck, Ljubljana, Marrakech, Salzburg, Split, Sharm el Sheik, Stockholm, Tangiers, Tel Aviv and Vienna.

Chief commercial officer Dana Dunne said: “Most customers with hold bags can now pre-print their boarding passes for both outward and return journeys before leaving home – and get through the airport quicker too.”

 See my previous blog on the increasing popularity of self-service check-in at airports here.

Irish airline RyanAir frequently have sales where it’s possible to bag a one-way flight from the UK to continental Europe (or sometimes further) for as little as 1p. The catch is that, for most credit and debit cards, they’d slap on a £5 fee for each journey.. meaning that the minimum you’d pay for a return journey would be £10.   And that’s not including any extra fees if you wanted to take extra baggage, check in at the airport… at one point RyanAir considered charging a fee to use the toilet during the journey.

But for savvy travellers, it was always possible to avoid the Ryanair credit card charges, and really get flights for 1p. To do this, you could use a Visa Electron card. Well, that was until yesterday. Now, RyanAir will charge the same £5 per journey, to people who pay with Electron Cards.

But there is a new way to avoid the charges. Ryanair can’t claim to offer “flights from 1p each way” unless there’s a way to pay for them without any hidden fees. They’ve just changed the payment method this applies to. People who pay with a prepay mastercard can get the flights without paying extra for card processing charges.

According to money saving site MoneySavingExpert.co.uk, the best value card is from ICE. There’s a 2% fee and the minimum amount you can load it with is £100. But it could well be worth it for frequent travellers.

I’m off to apply for one now. I’ll let you know how it goes!

New routes from Liverpool, Manchester and Stansted are part of expansion plans outlined by EasyJet.

The budget carrier is to start a daily service between Stansted and Cagliari in Sardinia from 28th March with fares starting at £28.99 one way including taxes. Malta will be served twice a week from Liverpool from June 13 with tickets also starting at £28.99 one way. Four flights a week will run between Manchester and Helsinki from March 28 with a £28.99 lead-in single fare. The airline is also starting four routes from Milan and three from Paris.

These are in addition to Easyjet’s previous addition of routes across their network earlier this autumn discussed here.

EasyJet’s new routes:

ROUTE START DATE FREQUENCY FARE (One way / return inc tax)

Paris – Helsinki, Finland 8 February Daily €37.49 / € 63.48

Paris Catania, Sicily 9 February 3 weekly €37.49 / € 62.48

Paris – Agadir, Morocco 9 February 4 weekly €37.49 / € 67.48

Milan – Casablanca, Morocco 11 February 6 weekly €28.99 / €60.98

Milan – Agadir, Morocco 11 February 3 weekly €28.99 / €60.98

Milan – Oporto, 12 February 5 weekly €26.99 / €53.98

Stansted – Cagliari, Sardinia 28 March Daily £28.99 / £46.65

Manchester – Helsinki, Finland 28 March 4 weekly £28.99 / £53.98

Milan – Malta 30 March 3 weekly €27.99 / €53.98

Liverpool – Malta 13 June 2 weekly £28.99 / £ 56.98

BMI Baby flight from Manchester to Malaga. Photo by Terry Wha

The drastic downsizing of low cost airline bmibaby shows the fierce competition smaller operators are facing from the big two of the no-frills airline world, Ryanair and Easyjet.

The bmibaby fleet will be cut from 17 to 12 planes, leading to the likely loss of around 160 pilots and cabin crew based at Birmingham, Cardiff and Manchester. Management and support staff jobs are also at risk.

Bmibaby has blamed the recession for its problems, but it looks as if new owner Lufthansa has decided bmibaby cannot compete head on with the big two, who have been muscling in on previously profitable holiday routes like Alicante and Málaga. Instead, it will focus on less competitive routes with growth potential.

The move is the latest step in a long process of consolidation amongst budget airlines. Players that have fallen by the wayside include early front runners Go (set up by BA and later sold to Easyjet) and KLM subsidiary Buzz (sold to Ryanair). MyTravelLite stopped independent operations in 2005 and Thomsonfly has effectively given up scheduled flights. The two remaining significant UK-based operators are Flybe and Jet2. Both have tried to develop as regional airlines avoiding direct competition, but that strategy is likely to come under increasing pressure as the big two add ever more routes. Monarch also offers scheduled services on some holiday routes.

Charter airlines are also suffering, as flight-only passengers increasingly prefer the lower costs and greater flexibility of budget airlines. In October, the number of charter airline passengers passing through BAA’s seven UK airports fell by 12.4 per cent compared with a year earlier (scheduled traffic rose by 1.1 per cent), while Manchester airport saw a 12.7 per cent fall in charter passengers.

I was interested to read Elisa’s blog post 10 days ago, about Skyscanner’s massive rate of growth. I’ve been using the site for a few years now, and it really excels as a way to find cheap flights. They’ve been rolling out several improvements recently, including adding localised versions of their site to attract international traffic.

It’s had a few stops and starts — for example, Ryanair blocked Skyscanner from displaying information on Ryanair flights a year or so ago. But this has all seemingly been ironed out. When used in conjunction with Ryanair’s occasional penny flights sales, it really comes into its own.

Ryanair’s own website is pretty depressing to use — and it can be hard to find the cheapest flights .The great thing about Skyscanner is that it can display a graph of a whole month of flights — so if you’re flexible about where and when you go, you can get a pretty good deal.

For example, I flew from Liverpool to Oslo last week for just a penny (including all the taxes). I then flew back from Oslo to Edinburgh (for a fiver) before getting the train back to Manchester.

There are a few catches when planning a trip like this — for example, to get that price you have to pay on electron card, and you can only take hand luggage. Plus, we were flying to Oslo Torp, which is 110km away from Oslo — and the bus there and back costs around £33.

Still, Skyscanner makes those elusive penny flights reachable—and with a bit of creative thinking and flexibility, you can plan a pretty interesting holiday on a shoe string.