Low Cost Airline Comparison

Below are the airlines I have taken, the routes and costs, and my opinion of my experience with each of them. I’ll be on many more flights this year and will update this post as I experience more.  — Happy Flying.

NORWEGIAN

Route: JFK-Amsterdam

Cost: 1 way $350

Norwegian is my favorite low cost airline — by far.  I am not sure why the other guys can’t mold themselves based on this airlines example. They offer low cost flights, with great service on state of the art airplanes. The process of checking in is seamless. Boarding the plane is organized – they announce which rows will be boarding. They allow you to use an app and electronic ticket at the gate.

On the flight everything's a la cart, which is fine with me. If I want a drink I can buy it, if I want to watch a movie I can buy it. If not, I can rely on myself for snacks and entertainment.

The only downside of this airline is where they fly into/out of. For instance they fly out of JFK — the hardest airport in NY to get to. But in the end the savings is is so great, you get yourself there.

No one could only fly one airline, if cost is a consideration. But when they are flying where I am going, you can be sure I am choosing them.

TRANSAVIA

Route: Rotterdam-Budapest

Cost: 45 Euro

Transavia flies out of Rotterdam, so we hopped a train from Amsterdam, it was really easy and not too expensive. My experience on Transavia was very good. Our checked bags were overweight, which we were aware of and the charge was 30 Euro – they give you 20 kg each bag – we were both at 26kg. I found the fee to be very fair. We were informed that we could have paid on line and the charge would have been less, so good to know for the future. The flight was good no issues. Good customer service. I will definitely travel with them again. You can bring one carry on item, they don’t allow a personal item. One bag, so you’ve gotta pack wisely but it is doable.

EASYJET

Route: Budapest to Berlin

Cost: 45 Euro

Oh EasyJet I had such high hopes for you. Overall the airline is fine. The flight was smooth. Bare bones but that’s what you expect from a low cost airline.

The major problem with these guys is the cost for overweight baggage. Our bags were overweight, and I was expecting to pay extra, like with Transavia. We got to the check in, and had to go to a different counter to pay for the overage in weight. The issue here was it wasn’t 30 Euro, it was the equivalent of $145 dollars for the 12 Kilos over. We could have bought 3 more flights for this cost. It is absolutely unreasonable and terrible customer service.

We could have also just paid for another bag which would have been $50- the issue is we can’t carry that many bags from the cities to the airport. One bag each makes the commute so much easier. We were very unhappy with the cost on this. We are flying them again out of Berlin – we’ll buy a duffel bag and fill it, and pay for the extra checked bag, then when we arrive in Croatia we’ll put the contents back into our primary bags – it’s an easy work around, and we would have done it before but there is no way we could have imagined how much the extra weight would cost us.

They’ll be getting an angry email from me for sure.

WIZZ AIR

Route: London Luton – Budapest

Cost: It was part of a round trip ticket the first half serviced by Norwegian. The whole ticket cost $316. I don’t have exact cost because of this.

We bought this ticket about 2 weeks out from our travel date so flights were a bit expensive, this flight cost well less than any other option.

We went to London on Norwegian (my fav) but the return to Budapest was on Wizz, out of Luton.

First bit of knowledge, don’t fly out of Luton. The cheaper flights leave out of this airport but you have to buy a 15 Pound train ticket, even if you have an Oyster card, and it’s over an hour outside of the City of London. You must take a train, to a bus to get to the airport.

We arrived in plenty of time, an hour and a half early. I had downloaded our tickets to my phone. We did not have any checked bags, so we went right to the line to enter the gates. We were informed there that Wizz wouldn’t take the electronic ticket and we had to have a print out.

The attendant said it would be 70 Pounds at the check in counter which is INSANE – in addition to that the line was over an 45 minutes long, so it wasn’t an option anyway. She said that if we went to the excess baggage counter we could pay 5 pounds there each to have them print our boarding pass. We headed there. They were willing to print the ticket but would only accept an emailed copy to their address, and unfortunately the wifi in the airport was not working. By this time I started to panic…we were 1/2 hour till the gate closed for our flight.  -We finally established internet connection, and the email sent – but they couldn’t received it for unknown reasons. It was then that the woman at the counter said she could just look it up manually — are you kidding me. She could have done that from the start!

We got the printouts, and headed for the gates. The security line said approximately 12 minutes to get through the checkpoint. 30 minutes later we finally got to the front of the line, and technically the doors to our flight would be closing and it was too late to get our plane. We tried anyway. My bag was flagged because my liquids weren’t in a clear bag.

I ran ahead to try to get them to hold our flight — 10 minutes later Dave arrived with the bags — he had to wait that long to have someone examine the bag. By the good grace of the flight crew, they allowed us on the plane – that was the one redeeming quality of Wizz air. Though the reason we were late had everything to do with their insane policy of printed tickets.

If an airline demands a printed ticket, the website should not allow you to download an electronic version, and they need to make that very obvious not in the tiny print at the bottom of the page. This is just a horrible way to run a business, and a horrible example of customer service. We will NOT be flying Wizz again.

Once we got on the plane. Someone else was in our seat – there were plenty of seats so they sat us in two open spots. The man we sat next to, was very unhappy with this because he had paid for 2 seats- and the hostess had given one to us. We were in row 13.

He very much wanted a beer, he went to the front and asked if he could buy one, and was told he had to wait till they go to our row. By the time they arrived with the cart.. they were out of beer – this poor man, what a bad flight he had.

Over all this airline is terrible and I would advise you not to use them.

More info coming. Stay tuned.