You tell em' Girl. Smirns - I do realise that your exageration is to make a point but not all girls from Essex are that badly behaved. Whilst I do believe that it may prove more difficult to find the stretch limo than the girls since one advertises in Yellow Pages and the other works by text, I am here to tell you my Angel that dumping them at Crawley is taking coals to Newcastle. As Sundance will know, Crawley has a reputation that even Essex cannot boast. Having flown from Crawley International for years and done charters in my time I am here to tell you that there is far far worse. I assure you that some of what I might have had to remove from aircraft in an emergency would make Essex girls look like St Theresa.

Now if you are saying that Ryanair's promise is not worth the paper on which it is printed, and if you are saying that their offer is meaningless. I would agree with you. How they were not shut down if half that Despatches programme were true - I do not know. I know people who paid 1p each way + taxes. One such person flying to Newquay paid less for his return ticket to Newquay than to travel one way on the Stanstead Express. Now if ever the ASA should be invoked it should be over that shambles called the Stanstead Express. Slow, late, and very expensive it is as near an express as this thread is tasteful and decorous.

And the kind of emmett that pays 1p for a flight is exactly the kind that should be kept out of Cornwall.

Newquay? Book it on Tuesday to fly on Saturday? In the middle of summer? Wow, now who would have thought that booking a flight to a popular tourist resort on a Friday would be so expensive!! :eek:

Of course, none of us are old enough to remember the days before the LCC carriers when BA used to charge a upwards of £500 for even the shortest one-way flights, are we? ;)

Actually I remember when the cheapest BA fares from LHR-NQY were £79 plus tax with a Saturday night stopover. Now the BA fares are even cheaper, and are sold on a one-way basis.

But coming back to short notice flights, 2 tickets to NQY this Saturday afternoon will cost you (per ticket):

- £44 on BA
- £79 on WOW
- £124 on FR

Now, who's the low fares airline?

True the likes of EZY, FR etc etc have forced BA and others to abandon Sat night stopovers and introduce cheap fares, but the continued claim that only they are low fares airlines is utterly false and misleading.

Umm, so BA offering a cheaper price than Ryan Air on one route on one day makes BA a cheaper airline than Ryan Air? :confused:

I know we all like to slag off the LCCs but I think you've been smoking too much weed on your last visit to NQY, dude.... ;)

Err no. Thursday, Friday, Saturday the same situation. The following weekend the same again.

My point is that FR is not consistently cheaper than BA, and on many occasions is 3 times more expensive. Fact. Sorry if you don't like that fact, but it's true.


What's that supposed to mean?

What's that supposed to mean? :D

A rather clumsy joke, a la airliners.net, I imagine :)

(every other post on the that forum seems to start or end with a variation on 'Dude, what are you smokin..." to express disbelief in another's point of view.)

How amusing: as well as giving something of a verbal profits warning, O'Leary has just said they're compaining to the ASA about Easyjet's low-price guarantee (perhaps as they specific same-airport, not same-city).

Well the FR pants-on-fire guarantee, first of all, gives a link (click here) that doesn't work, secondly only works for return flights (so much for being the champion of cheap one-way flights). :confused:

And you'd have to find the cheaper, return flight, with both flights a maximum of hour apart from the FR departure times, and you'd have to find it within an hour of making your booking. Oh, and not after 4pm on a Friday.

What a load of nonsense. Either they give a guarantee or they don't. Why doesn't BA expose this nonsense for what it is?

And how do you suggest they do that, without getting involved in a slanging match which O'liary would win?

And for completeness, and to assist you in your state of confusion, here is an analysis of the month of July, showing

1) Peak dates, 4 successive Saturday afternoons, commencing 30 June

2) Off peak dates, 4 successive Tuesday afternoons, commencing 3 July

sat BA FR FR cheaper by
30-Jun £44.80 £94.47 -£49.67 -111%
07-Jul £44.80 £34.47 £10.33 23%
14-Jul £44.80 £64.47 -£19.67 -44%
21-Jul £44.80 £44.47 £0.33 1%
-£14.67 -33%


tues BA FR FR cheaper by
03-Jul £34.40 £44.47 -£10.07 -29%
10-Jul £34.40 £24.49 £9.91 29%
17-Jul £34.40 £24.49 £9.91 29%
24-Jul £34.40 £25.47 £8.93 26%
£4.67 14%

AVERAGE £39.60 £44.60 -£5.00 -13%


Therefore, FR is an average 33% more expensive when travelling on a Saturday, and an average 14% cheaper when travelling on a Tuesday.

Overall, BA is 13% cheaper.

This is without taking into account the cost of on board refreshements, the "run for a seat thrill", and what to do when FR leave you stranded.

Agree with Jenbel. It's not in BA's interests to have a public slanging match and has more impetus if the complaint came from a customer such as yourself. If you feel really strongly about this, which you do, I would suggest that you contact the editor of the Sunday Times travel section. They even have a rants section which may be appropriate.

But please chill out, you'll give yourself a cardiac otherwise.
rgds Roxy

The point that the LCCs are not always the cheapest was well set out in the Travel section of the Sunday times at the weekend. It really does pay to shop around, and the Skyscanner site makes a good place to start. What really does annoy is the scandalously misleading way in which the Ryanairs of this worlddisplay their fares, and it's high time someting was done about it. (A short jail sentence alongside Paris Hilton for the responsible CEOs, perhaps?)

However, if it wasn't for the low cost boys, we would still be stuck in a world of inflexible, high cost fares, route revenue sharing and all the other nice little tricks that the heritage airlines got away with in the past. .....And the LCCs tend to syphon away the wrong types, leaving FTers able to travel on the posh airlines with their social equals - wheover they might be ;)

Sort of OT but still on the subject of FR - what is all this bollox the FA's spout about the front and rear 6 rows having to be left free if the flight is not full? :confused::confused:

My daughter, GF and I paid extra for priority boarding and PYOBP for our FR flight from BOH to PSA last week. Sole purpose was to bag the front row - really the DEF seats as my 10 year old cannot sit in the ABC seats. But as we boarded the table trays were down in rows 1-6 (and rear 6 rows) and the FA explained "it is not a full flight therefore you cannot sit in these seats until after take-off" :mad::mad:

When some other pax complained a tannoy announcement was made about it being "illegal" to sit in these seats :confused: ... are they talking about - never, ever seen this on other airlines. So after takeoff and the seatbelts sign was off various pax moved into these seats (we could no longer be bothered) only to be solemnly asked to move back to their originals prior to landing :confused:

... is going on here???????