Torture :confused:?

because you had to pay for your food - or are there darker secrets to U2 operations??

There is an interesting article on travelweekly.com today, explaining why FR wasn't allowed to fly to the UK - basically the UK tour operators put their foot down, and said they'd withdraw from Cyprus if FR was allowed the cheap deal to the UK. I'm not a lawyer - how that works with free competition I don't know, but basically the tour operators seem to have prevented FR from entering their market.

I think that's "entering their market on the back of a subsidy", about which established non-subsidised operators could legitimately complain.

I wouldn't call it "free competition" when there are subsidies

Its a real problem, the likes of Thomson and Thomascook are having to shift their strategy to medium haul because the LCCs have stolen the SH market. Cyprus is probably on the start of medium haul and a major destination for the above, as well as Turkey and Egypt. Keeping the LCCs by threatening to pull out and put all of the hotels out of business is a smart threat in my book, they are only playing the same game that Ryanair do whenever anyone tries to run a route that they are on as well, eg drop prices and run it at a loss until the other carrier gives up.