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Things to Know about Low Cost Flights

I'm going to Rome on a visiting spree in a few weeks, at the end of June.

Why Rome? The idea was to go somewhere I'd never been before, taking into account the best offer available for low cost flights at the moment.

Booking the tickets turned out to be a great learning experience. For one thing I know ticket prices increase as the departure date approaches. Low cost companies have refined this to an art. The day I booked the tickets prices went up by 62 RON between 8:30 am and 1:00 pm. Since I bought six tickets that meant I paid 100 eur more because I booked at noon instead of booking in the morning. Anyone need a better example of opportunity cost?

Now let's talk about extra charges. You might know food on the plane is not included (a sandwich is about 5 EUR, which you pay to the flight attendant). You might also know you have to pay to bring along luggage, other than the usual 7 kg hand-luggage (another 60 RON / bag). You might even know that you have to pay the taxes for electronic payment yourself (another 30 RON / person in our case to handle the Visa transfer). But did you know that on the invoices even plane fuel is outlined separately? Security is also a separate item as are several other things. Since they do show up separately I guess they'd really be willing to cut back on some pretty essential things to reduce costs. I don't know about you but I like my planes fully fueled... and with wings... and pilots!

Now, to complicate things a bit, we had a cancellation in our group. Formally, low cost companies have a no refund policy, but if you ask they will tell you they can refund your ticket if you pay a small cancellation fee. The fee is 60 eur / person / flight. So, in our case 120 eur to cancel a reservation on a 2-way trip to Rome, which (seen how this is a low cost flight) is more than the refundable base price of the ticket. So, just in case I used to many words and I wasn't clear: NO REFUND.

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