Travel&Vacation

Although most U.S. travelers are pretty well up on our own domestic low-fare airlines, we’re often in the dark about the many similar lines that have suddenly emerged in Europe. I often receive questions about, say, how to find low-fare flights between Barcelona and Zurich. Fortunately, the Internet makes the search easy.

The European low-cost airlines

Europe took a different path to low-cost air service than we did here in the U.S. We deregulated our airlines early, and airlines such as Southwest, JetBlue, AirTran, and others have flourished with low-cost, low-fare business models. By and large, our low-fare lines fly the same routes that were formerly the province of the “legacy” lines.

By contrast, Europe had earlier developed a huge charter-based tour system linking the main population centers in the North with beach destinations on the Mediterranean coasts and nearby islands. The charter airlines involved in this system coexisted with high-fare legacy lines because they catered almost entirely to vacationers and sold most of their seats as parts of tour packages; the legacies remained dominant on popular business routes.

In Europe, the growth of scheduled low-fare lines serving both business and vacation markets has been fairly recent. So far, the region has grown two “800-pound gorillas,” easyJet and Ryanair, plus dozens of smaller wannabes. More than a dozen upstart lines have already folded, and the future of many others is uncertain. EasyJet is based in England, and Ryanair in Ireland, although both lines have established additional hubs in other countries. And you find smaller startup lines based in just about any European country you can name.

As in the U.S., competition from low-fare lines has squeezed the legacy lines to the extent that the latter have matched many of the newly reduced fares, at least for some seats. However, the low-fare lines still serve some routes that the legacies ignore.

Remote or underused airports

One of the main differences between low-fare lines in Europe and the U.S. is that some European lines serve major cities through secondary—and often extremely remote—airports:

• Ryanair is the main proponent of this approach, serving Brussels through Charleroi (about 30 miles), Frankfurt through Hahn (about 75 miles), Milan through Orio al Serio (about 30 miles), Paris through Beauvais (about 55 miles), Rome through Ciampino (Rome’s old close-in airport), and such. Some other low-fare lines also use these fields. In general, transportation between these fields and the major cities is poor, requiring a combination of bus and rail. By contrast, easyJet generally uses the same airports as the legacy lines.
• London. EasyJet serves London mainly through Luton, although it has some flights from Gatwick; Ryanair uses mainly Stansted but with a few flights from Luton and Gatwick. All three airports are considerably farther from the city center than Heathrow, usually requiring a rail trip, but rail service is pretty good.

Minimal service

If you thought coach service in the U.S. was as bad as it gets, wait until you try easyJet or Ryanair. Legroom on Ryanair is one to two inches less than even the usual sardine-can seating you find in the U.S., and easyJet is an inch less than that. On Ryanair, especially, you pay extra for just about anything. I know of no short-haul European low-fare line that offers a premium economy option, although that’s available on a few of the charter or charter-style lines that fly long-haul services to beach destinations around the world.

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