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When budget airlines get expensive

As an Austrian MEP investigates Ryanair, ED HOWKER exposes the hidden costs of cheap flights

There's no disputing the success of budget airlines. At the peak of summer, Ryanair carries more people than British Airways. Many flights are less than the price of a tube ticket: Frankfurt for 79p, Paris for 99p and Alicante for £9.99. But as anyone who has sat on one of their wipe-clean plastic seats will tell you, there are always hidden costs.

Taxes, surcharges and insurance are levied on every seat booked, adding around £15 to each journey. You want to stow luggage in the hold? That's an extra £5.

Ryanair also imposes a "wheelchair levy" on every passenger, spreading the costs associated with disabled flyers. Though criticised by the Disability Rights Commission, Michael O'Leary, Ryanair's chief executive, has defended the policy, explaining in May: "The DRC wouldn't fucking know how much it costs
Ryanair asked 51 passengers who were diverted to wait 10 days for a flight

if it jumped up and bit them".

But the only people who really get bitten are the passengers - at least as far as Eva Lichtenberger, an Austrian MEP, is concerned, and so this week she began an investigation into O'Leary's operation.

She alleges that Ryanair have falsely charged passengers for a government departure tax when flying from Dublin, Rome, Brussels and Venice - though no such taxes exist at these airports - and that the aviation insurance surcharge is too high, having risen since 9/11 while premiums have fallen.

In September, 51 Ryanair passengers bound for Belgium were diverted to Perpignan in southern France during a storm. Ryanair told them that they had missed any connecting flights and that the next one available would be in 10 days time.

Led by a Belgian window-cleaner, the stranded travellers clubbed together and hired a coach to drive them 600 miles home. Ryanair may be cheap, but with costs like these, is it really worth it?

FIRST POSTED JULY 12, 2006

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