More 1p flights

To be booked by midnight Thursday 12th June, so get your skates on...!
Read the full story on MoneySavingExpert.com In brief, there are flights available to more than 50 European destinations such as Madrid, Toulon, St, Tropez and Pisa from 17 UK airports between June '08 and March '09. These flights are marketed as free though you will pay a (refundable) fee of 1p...
When you think about it, you may as well book some of these flights even if you have no way of knowing if you will use them or not!! These fights are part of the latest Ryanair promotion, don't forget there are a lot of extra charges if you are so silly as to travel with any luggage!!

1p Flights...

Well, I set out to blog about holiday destinations primarily and cheap flights and travel advice as a kind of secondary topic. Today, I bring you... flights for one penny!! Yes you read it right.
The flights are from Ryan Air and advertised as free, the fact is that you will pay one penny each way, and you could reclaim that penny, but it would cost money to do it...so...don't bother!
As you might expect, there are restrictions such as no stowed luggage, payment by Visa Electron and you must book by tomorrow - but you knew it wouldn't be easy, and as an ardent bargain hunter you won't be dissuaded by such trivial hurdles to overcome.
I was pointed in the direction of these bargains, by the money-master Martin Lewis at MoneysavingExpert.com - read the article here...

This is the short form of what is on offer according to Martin and his researchers:

B’rmgham, B’rnemouth, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow (Preswick), Liverpool, Luton & Manchester departures:

• Book before Thurs 29 May. Flights must be at least 14 days ahead.


• Journeys must take place between 07 Jun - 31 Oct '08: For Mon-Thurs & Sat flights, excluding July and Aug when only Tues & Weds flights are applicable. All school breaks and major sporting event periods are excluded too.


• Destinations include: Billund, Bremen, Brest Brittany, Dinard, Dusseldorf (Weeze), Marseille Provence, Milan, Oslo (Torp), Pau (Pyrenees), Poitiers, Stockholm (Skavsta), and Trieste.
  
  

London Stansted departures:

• Book before Thurs 29 May. Flights must be at least 7 days ahead.


• Journeys must take place between 01 June - 30 June '08: Applicable for Mon-Thurs flights, but some selected routes outside of this may be included too. All school breaks and major sporting event periods are excluded too.


• Destinations include: Aarhus, Altenburg (Leipzig), Bremen, Dusseldorf (Weeze), Eindhoven, Frankfurt (Hahn), Hamburg (Lubeck), Karlsruhe-Baden, Oslo (Torp), Rimini, and Valladolid.

Airline Route Maps

I was recently offered the chance to stay in France with friends in a 'Gite' for a week, it just remained for me to find cheap flights for the family... easier said than done... A few years ago, cheap flights were available for all sorts of destinations (I flew to Edinburgh for £1 once), but the cheap flights have got a little more expensive and a little more difficult to find. If you know your destination, then you need to find out which airlines fly to the nearest airport(s), and which airports you can fly from.
You can do this by trawling the internet for flight details from each airport, or recently I have discovered the Budget Airline Route Map. This site has a fantastic European Map with all destination airports marked as red dots, hover over a destination and the airports that fly to this destination show up as yellow... This is a great way of quickly working out the most efficient route to take, you could even work out inter-connecting routes very quickly with this system.
Clicking on an airport takes you to a page dedicated to that specific airport, giving links to the companies that fly there, and a list of the airports you can fly from.
Next time I need to plan a European holiday, I will start with the Low Cost Airline Guide...

BAA breakup

BAA are in the process of losing some of their grip on UK airports as the Competition Commission reported that common ownership of BAA airports is not conducive to a competitive market.
BAA currently own seven airports - Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Southampton, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.
Recent criticisms of developments at Heathrows' Terminal Five has not placed BAA in a positive light, and rival companies Ryanair, bmi and the like are crowding in to offer their opinions...

The main criticism remains that the three main London airports offer no competitive choice as BAA owns them all, and to a lesser degree this also applies to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen. It is widely believed that BAA may be forced to sell at least one London airport and continue to operate there, possibly using their own terminal so that the impact on the traveler remains minimal.