Low cost airlines in Europe

I'm looking for low cost flight options for a trip from Munich to Budapest
to Berlin. Has anyone used particular websites to book these kinds of
flights from the USA? I would like to hear from individuals who have had
good or bad experiences.
Thanks

emjtds wrote:
> I'm looking for low cost flight options for a trip from Munich to Budapest
> to Berlin. Has anyone used particular websites to book these kinds of
> flights from the USA? I would like to hear from individuals who have had
> good or bad experiences.

I've flown a lot of low-cost airlines - Ryanair, Easy Jet, Basiq Air,
Virgin Express, Air Berlin... I booked them from Europe, but there's
no reason why you couldn't book them from the US if you knew the exact
dates you were flying. They are no-frills, but that doesn't really
matter since the flights are so short.

Some important things to keep in mind:

1. Low-cost airlines can be very cheap when booked well in advance, but
at the last minute they can cost even more than regular airlines.

2. In some cases (this isn't always true), they use airports that are
very far outside of cities, and that will take lots of time and money
to get to and get in from, while many trains connect one downtown to
another. When you take getting to and from airports into
consideration, for shorter trips the train is often faster and cheaper
overall than low-cost airlines.

3. Ryanair has lousy policies on cancelled flights, and AFAIK they will
not arrange for you to fly another airline if your flight is cancelled
- if you absolutely have to be somewhere on time then don't fly
Ryanair. I don't know if this applies to other low-cost airlines also.

"Iceman" <oneofcoldm> kirjoitti
viestissä:1158240421.815873.232720@d34g2000cwd.goo glegro...
> emjtds wrote:
>
> 3. Ryanair has lousy policies on cancelled flights, and AFAIK they will
> not arrange for you to fly another airline if your flight is cancelled
> - if you absolutely have to be somewhere on time then don't fly
> Ryanair. I don't know if this applies to other low-cost airlines also.
>
More or less it does. Somehow they have to keep the expenses down. Moreover,
they do not secure any connecting flights they operate themselves. They sell
tickets to both legs from A to B and from B to C but it has been left to
travellers' responsibility to catch the latter flight in time.

B Vaughan wrote:

> On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 22:09:19 +0200, Dave Frightens Me
> <deepfreudmoors@eITmISaACTUALLYiREAL!l.nu> wrote:
>
>>On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:55:56 +0100, "Trish" <your_mofo@m>
>>wrote:
>
>>>I have never been on a Ryanair flight that was not delayed. This may be a
>>>special treat they keep for their Dublin customers.
>>
>>Damn, I've only used them once, and it was fine. Gatwick to Dublin and
>>back, and nothing went wrong.
>>
>>Judging from the feedback in this place, I was really lucky!
>
> I've used them several times, and they were on time. However, you and
> I don't make a decent sample size.

I used Ryanair in 2003 for a round-trip Stansted-Berlin (SXF) flight.
On-time both outbound and return.

There, I just increased the sample size by 50%. :-)
--
dgs

emjtds wrote:

> I'm looking for low cost flight options for a trip from Munich to Budapest
> to Berlin. Has anyone used particular websites to book these kinds of
> flights from the USA? I would like to hear from individuals who have had
> good or bad experiences.

On a vacation in Europe in 2005, myself and Herself flew the following
segments:

Dortmund-Krakow on EasyJet
Krakow-Berlin on EasyJet
Berlin-Vienna on Air Berlin
Vienna-Düsseldorf on Air Berlin

Tickets were booked on the web from my home in the USA. All flights
were on time. Experiences were all good. Tickets were also booked
sufficiently far in advance to make it all quite worthwhile.
--
dgs

dgs wrote:
> B Vaughan wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 22:09:19 +0200, Dave Frightens Me
> > <deepfreudmoors@eITmISaACTUALLYiREAL!l.nu> wrote:
> >
> >>On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:55:56 +0100, "Trish" <your_mofo@m>
> >>wrote:
> >
> >>>I have never been on a Ryanair flight that was not delayed. This may be a
> >>>special treat they keep for their Dublin customers.
> >>
> >>Damn, I've only used them once, and it was fine. Gatwick to Dublin and
> >>back, and nothing went wrong.
> >>
> >>Judging from the feedback in this place, I was really lucky!
> >
> > I've used them several times, and they were on time. However, you and
> > I don't make a decent sample size.
>
> I used Ryanair in 2003 for a round-trip Stansted-Berlin (SXF) flight.
> On-time both outbound and return.
>
> There, I just increased the sample size by 50%. :-)


We've used Ryanair for for about 26 flights in the last two years ,
many have arrived early, four have been a little late and only one
late by 1hour due to earlier bad weather , stopping flights at stansted
, Ryanair builds in about 20mins extra to the flight time which helps,
many a time we have left a little late and arrived early. Fortunatly
none were cancelled although we came close to that happening as the
airport closed at 2200 because of German noise restictions and we took
offf late at 2159.
Easy jet - bit more expensive, used twice both a lilttle late .