By Adele R
You’ve seen the ads: “Fly for the price of a taxi” says HLX (Hapag-Lloyd Express), suggestively done up in New York taxicab yellow with a black and white checked border and a EUR 19,90 price tag, albeit from Hamburg to Cologne. These days, there are a number of budget airlines offering flights to many glorious European destinations for less than a couple of movie tickets - HLX, Easy Jet, Ryanair, German Wings to name a few. It is a wonder everyone is not constantly taking off for Paris, Rome or Madrid. Here is a reality check from one who has just flown seven times on three different “budget” airlines: HLX “round trip” to Naples (actually three separate flights and an unplanned train ride); HLX from Hannover to Venice (EUR 69,99 one way, plus EUR 40 train ticket to get to Hannover); Ryanair “Venice to Brussels” (actually Charleroi - 100 km from Brussels - one of Ryanair’s somewhat misleading destinations); German Wings from Paris to Cologne/Bonn, and HLX from there back to Hamburg. The only budget airline flying from Hamburg’s airport is HLX and the only destination it flies to from here is Cologne/Bonn. You go on from there to the more exotic locales. Ryanair, which advertises that it flies to and from Hamburg, actually flies to and from Lübeck, but it has four destinations from there: Milan, Stockholm, London and Pisa. Check the map before you book though, to see where the destination airport really is located. On all of these airlines each leg is a one-way journey in itself. That is, you pay for each leg separately and at widely varying prices. (I paid EUR 19,90 for one leg and EUR 79,90 for another, both on HLX). You pick up your bags each time and check in all over again for the next leg, and flights are not coordinated, so none of these airlines guarantee that you’ll make your next leg even on their own airline. Sometimes there isn’t even a flight scheduled on that same airline for your destination of choice so that you can make it the same day. (Our return HLX flight from Naples via Cologne recently landed in Cologne on schedule, 10 minutes AFTER the last flight for Hamburg departed. I had booked it to connect and then HLX changed the schedules but refused to reschedule us to an earlier flight from Naples without a penalty and they had no seats available anyway. We had to take a four-hour train ride from Cologne at EUR 45 each instead of the original EUR 19,90 on HLX). Day trips from Hamburg are only possible to Cologne (well worth a visit, especially for the cathedral and two wonderful museums next door) but would not be possible on Saturdays because of the scheduling. Don’t let your head be turned by the sexy advertising for these budgets. Those seats are gone quickly. And be sure you know exactly where your plane is taking off and landing. The airport could be a hundred kilometers or more from your real destination. Before you book a budget: count up all the legs and prices, including that train to Hannover or Lübeck, or maybe the time you have to spend hanging around airports while waiting for the next leg where a coffee can cost EUR 4,50. And remember that on board a budget airline you will have to pay for food and drinks. Our trip to Naples - three legs and a train from Cologne - cost each of us EUR 146,19 (not including what we spent in the Cologne airport during the four hour layover). It was less than scheduled airlines were offering at the time but certainly more than the “cost of a taxi”. I can however give you some very good news about budget flying: the flights I took were all great. Comfortable Boeing 737’s, young, friendly flight crews, enviable on-time records, and so far, all the budget airlines have perfect safety records. For more information
on the budget airlines mentioned in this article, see:
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