Fly on Budget

Looking at the oil prices lately a vacation out of country seems to be impossible because you might think flight tickets will cost you a fortune. But what is your say about flying for free from London to Barcelona or from US to Germany for just 130$? Is it too good to be true? Absolutely not, this will be a perfect deal if you know how to find it.

It took more than a few years, almost a decade, after the European Open-Sky Treaty of 1992 permitted airlines to fly wherever they wished within the EU without government consent to see the business booming. But this phenomenon did not change Europe alone - low-cost airlines are available all over the world.

The low-cost airline is commonly called as budget, low-price, discount or no-frills airline. In order to keep the prices low and affordable they provide ticket-less travel, online ticket sales and have no offices internationally. Most of the packages don't offer free food or beverages as well as in-flight magazines. Also they don't participate in frequent flyer programs and don't have club lounges. Two of the main characteristics of the low-cost airlines are, first, that they have limited coverage and, second, the use of secondary airports, which are less convenient for commuting.

Although the low-cost airlines prices look really attractive there are also some catches that you need to be careful in dealing with. One catch is that there is no possibility to reschedule the ticket and you will lose all the money if you wish to cancel it; the baggage limit is usually, but not all the time, lower than on the traditional carriers. In all the cases you need to compute the cost for transportation to the secondary airport and plan for the extra time you will need to get there.

One of the enormous oversea carriers that offer cheap flights is the Germany-based Condor. The airline company offers discount flights from Frankfurt to many destinations around the world. To name some, you can fly with them to Las Vegas, Orlando or LA for only around 130$ (99 €). One more company, the ThomasCook, still offers cheap flights oversee while most of the low-cost airlines like Rynair and Air Berlin offer only intra-continental flights.

The key for cheap travel is to plan you trip early and monitor the prices from time to time before you buy. By visiting the online sites of airline companies, if you go to Rynair's web site for example, you can even find tickets for free depending on when you want to fly. Planning your vacation early, you may find really good deals with traditional carriers too. Look for flights at least couple of months before your scheduled vacation. Aside from inquiring through online sites, you may subscribe for the airlines or travel sites newsletters because then you will receive timely information for deals and offers.

Also keep in mind that the travel search engines do not comprehensively search the Web and retrieve the lowest prices. Some airlines do not permit third parties to book their seats and others are launching a lobbying effort intent on overturning the regulations to advertise the actual price they would charge the customer.

Buying ticket trips from two different carriers may make sense sometimes if the overall price is lower than the combined price for both of them. Often times for example you can fly very cheap in one direction but need to pay expensive ticket on the way back. To further save, look for prices from other carrier and just combine the whole trip to get the whole expense of your airline trips. On my trip from Frankfurt/Main to Seattle, I personally combined trips from Condor and Continental and the overall fair was less than 300$. If I compare it with other traditional carriers like BA, Air France or KLM, my total expense would have been 4 times more.

Don't take the conservative approach by relying only on one source of information. The use of the Internet allows you to do the research you need to find the best offer and take the most of your vacation.