Talk:Low-cost airlines in Europe

Removed Globespan

The airline just went out of business

Ryanair <-> Iceland

Does Ryanair really fly to Iceland? Isn't this perhaps being mixed up with the latest news that Germanwings is starting flights to Iceland? —The preceding comment was added by (WT-en) 77.190.27.195 (talk • contribs)

Article status

I think you need to read What is an article?. We don't normally do articles about airlines, although that might be a good idea. -- (WT-en) Evan 09:47, 7 Nov 2003 (PST)

Feel free to delete or modify excessively. It seemed to me that discount airlines are not well publicised and hence it would be worth while covering them. (WT-en) DD

I know that comment was made 5 months ago, but... Discount airlines not well publicized? Where do you live? It was THE tourism topic of 2003... -- (WT-en) Nils 08:50, 19 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Moved page

I went ahead and moved this to "European Discount Airlines." Despite the "no-relationship" disclaimer, I think we really need to avoid company-specific pages. They really don't fall under any of our article types but I think it's good info to have (and a nice article btw). I'm sure this issue will come up again in many different ways(WT-en) Majnoona

Consolidation

Ok Consolidated the Ryanair page into this one and added links to as many other European low cost airlines as I can think of (WT-en) DD

EXCELLENT job! What a good idea. We've gone from a couple of consumer-reports-style articles to a nice travel topic. If we clean up the prose on this a bit, I think it's a front-page article. -- (WT-en) Evan 13:43, 7 Nov 2003 (PST)

Moved page

I moved this article to a new name that's more inline, at least with respect to capitalization, with the article naming conventions. I also figured that "Discount airlines in Europe" kinda sounded like "Driving in Australia"; it might be a good pattern to continue. -- (WT-en) Evan 13:46, 7 Nov 2003 (PST)

Currency sign

To whoever wrote this article (sorry, bit new here so I don't know how to trace it back yet)...what is the currency of the cost figures mentioned? They are all just showing up as those funny "blank square" characters. I'm guessing as this is an article about airlines in Europe they're Euros, but I don't want to change it on an assumption just in case it's wrong (don't want to mislead anyone). NB. The Euro sign can be obtained (on my computer, at least) by typing CTRL+ALT+4. --(WT-en) sjc196 14:36, 7 Apr 2005, (GMT)

How you type the Euro sign is completely dependant on your keyboard layout. -- (WT-en) Nils 07:48, 8 Apr 2004 (EDT)

And how the Euro sign looks depends on your fonts. I think I need to update my Verdana. -(WT-en) phma 11:19, 8 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Euro sign (€) can be also inserted by typing &euro;. -- (WT-en) JanSlupski 10:28, 16 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Alt0128

Which currency and how to write it? Thanks for the (&euro) tip and for noting that Brussels spent a whole afternoon deciding that euro was to be written with a small "e" and that one euro was divided into "100 cent" without an "s". At least we understand it either way which is more than we can say for the "Global thinking" of the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand who persist in writing the $ (dollar sign) without stating which darned dollar they mean. An air-fare Toronto to Houston was quoted to me in dollars - Guess which type of dollars! Wrong it was in USD (or U$) as the quoter was American. Oz and NZ are just as bad and also have differing values. It is so easy to write U$, C$, A$ or N$ to clarify - that is unless you mean M$N which might just be the Argentine Peso!! -- User:(WT-en) Gari 18 Feb 2006, 16:15 GMT

The "Southwest model"

What is "the Southwest model", as in "both follow the Southwest model"? I live in the UK, have flown both EasyJet & RyanAir and this term is not familiar to me. 82.32.7.114 15:43, 12 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Southwest airlines in the United States, which originally operated mostly in the southwest of the US. They fly exactly one type of plane, and there is no reserved seating. It's more like a bus. They're cheap and they make a profit. Web page probably needs to explain that a bit. -- (WT-en) Colin 18:27, 12 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Why Southwest? What is Southwest model? Whatever it is, why should it mentioned? What relation does domestic US airline (Southwest or whatever) have to international low cost carriers within Europe. Why should it or anything else for that matter from the US be used as benchmark for different operations in another part of the world (Europe), and in fact in a different civilization?

First, the phrase "Southwest Model" is meaningful to a significant number of English-speaking travellers. As above, I think this needs elaboration for numbers of English speakers who are not familiar with the phrase. But generally, as a shorthand it is a reasonable thing to do -- it's not about whether the particular company in question is American. For example, "Efficient Amtrak Model" would be nonsensical; whereas "Efficient European Rail Model" is quite meaningful.

Secondly, while you may not have been aware of Southwest's existence, it does affect you. The new European and Asian low-cost carriers are deliberately emulating Southwest -- and this is good for travellers who want to fly cheaply. Southwest is essentially the only profitable and sucessful airline in the US. Which is to say Southwest is the only American carrier worth emulating.

Thirdly, while Europe may be a different civilization.. by the same logic Asian would be moreso. Both Asian and European low-cost carriers are all imitating Southwest. -- (WT-en) Colin 16:22, 9 Jan 2006 (EST)

External Links

I removed the link to http://www.cheap0.com as the change made by their webmaster sounded an awful lot like an advertisement. We do have a policy of linking to only primary sources, so the question is: Would that website be important enough to be listed in our extlinks? My gut reaction is "no", but I can't see much harm in it either. Opinions? -- (WT-en) Nils 07:03, 13 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Sigh. We link to various such sites on the page. So the question becomes even more important. Afterall, if we list one, we'll likely have to list them all. It's a "hot" market right now.. (this was nils, guess I am not too cool to preview either. (WT-en) Nils 09:50, 16 Apr 2004 (EDT))

the sites linked to, applefares, openjet etc. seem to be valuable resources. presumeably they are included because, in the same way you wouldn't expect wikivoyage to provide the same content that a listings guide for a city does, there is frequently changing data, and complex algorithms being used to extract and maniupulate that data which currently is outside the scope of wikivoyage. cheap0.com is the same, while wikivoyage could maintain a complete list of budget airlines, it would be much harder to maintain a list of all european routes, because they change incredibly frequently. so nils' gut reaction might be not to include the resource, but why neglect users the existance of a potentially useful resource?

Why didn't you remove the advertisement talk and keep the link? I just tried, and cheap0 isn't really the summum of usability, but it's probably more up-to-date than Wikivoyage...
Oh, and thou unknown one, signing can be done with ~~~~. (WT-en) Guaka 09:04, 16 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Welllll actually such usage is against our styleguide/policies. It's not a primary source; and we're also not a directory of links. We don't link to travel agencies either, do we? So the gist of my question is: Shouldn't we remove all such similar links from the article? -- (WT-en) Nils 09:50, 16 Apr 2004 (EDT)~

I can see both sides of this debate. The most desirable option would be to have all the information contained on these websites on wikivoyage, as it is very useful information to the traveller. However, putting the information in the 'Get in' or 'Get out' section would tend to clutter up pages, as well as taking a long time to write.

Here is my proposal. Keep the links to Netcoverdirect and applefares. The former is an insurance company that is the sole provider of insurance against missing low-cost airline connections. The latter is a very useful tool for comparing the cost of different flights. Wikivoyage couldn't possibly have the information that it can supply.

Get rid of cheap0.com, and lowcostairlines.org. These contain information that is widely available and should be on wikivoyage. I propose either creating separate articles under each city such as Examplecity/Airline_Routes_and_fares, putting the information under the 'Get in' section on each city page, or articles under Discount_airlines_in_Europe/Routes/Examplecity, with cross links to the 'Get in' section on each page. These would be updated whenever new routes and airlines start up. A comprehensive list of European discount airlines should be on Discount_airlines_in_Europe, the Asian ones under Discount_airlines_in_Asia, etc. What does everyone think? --(WT-en) Professorbiscuit 11:22, 16 Apr 2004 (EDT)

I don't think it's feasible or even desireable that we start maintaining an index of each and every airline connection in Europe, or even the world. There's just no point in this. The flight plans of airlines change all the time, and we'd constantly be catching up. And if we list discount airlines, why not list regular airlines too? No, we'd be creating a hige amount of text with very, very little actual value to the site or our readers. I am becoming more and more convinced that we should not list any of these sites. We should mention the insurance company, because it's comparable to listing the airline companies themselves and I'd say it passes the "primary source" hurdle. But we don't link to hotel indices, yellow pages, or travel agencies; so I do not see why we should link to a site doing price comparisons or routing information aggregation for discount airlines. -- (WT-en) Nils 12:14, 16 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Linking to Yellow Pages can be very handy. Especially if they are called differently in the local language and a link to an English version is provided.
Good sites that compare prices and give information about travelling, hotels or other travel related issues should be mentioned somewhere. Of course, a site that compares budget airlines shouldn't be mentioned in a city or country article. But in this article it is very useful. (WT-en) Guaka 18:53, 16 Apr 2004 (EDT)

We are not a web directory. If you want a city's yellow pages, look them up in google. Seriously. -- (WT-en) Nils 08:50, 19 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Nils, I think you are too dedicated to following the letter of the law. The information is useful, we should either have it here or link to it. Bollocks to the "primary source hurdle", or any hurdle. The rules are subject to change, the only rule that matters is that of the traveller coming first. Travellers should have information about how to get around cheaply. Having made several trips around Europe by low-cost airline, Applefares and the like have been unbelievably helpful, and without them I would not have been able to plan my trip. As the Project:Goals_and_non-goals say;

Wikivoyage articles can and should have links to external resources about destinations, itineraries, travel-oriented companies, and other travel-related Web sites.

So please, lighten up. Your ceaselessly negative tone gets me down, this is supposed to be about making a free and useful resource, not an exercise in bureaucratic rule-following. Applefares is useful, it should stay, and if the rules disagree then let's change the rules. --(WT-en) Professorbiscuit 12:55, 16 Apr 2004 (EDT)

So, a couple of thoughts: first, rules are particularly precious to a project like ours, since they keep us from having the same arguments over and over and over. But at the same time, rules are made to be broken.

Another thing I'm worried about is that any listing of commercial Web sites is going to be a magnet for discontent, conflict, and dismay. The world of commercial travel Web sites is a pretty overcrowded one, and I'm afraid that we're opening a serious can of worms if we no longer consider them out-of-scope.

But, as PB points out, the traveller comes first (although the project comes a close second B-)). It may be worthwhile to have some listings and comparisons for some fare-finder sites, even if it causes us some grief and discomfort.

Let's try to handle this problem by enlarging space a little bit. How about we move the fare-finder links to a separate travel topic page, like Fare-finder Web sites. We can kind of keep that "quarantined" from the rest of the site, and see how it develops. If it becomes a problem, we can jettison it.

Frankly, I think if we get too bogged down in Web-directory yellow pages hoohaw, we've failed in our mission. This may be useful to travelers, but I don't think it's a central part of creating a travel guide.

In other words, let's explore, but carefully. Comments? --(WT-en) Evan 20:09, 16 Apr 2004 (EDT)

We have a quite clear guideline of only linking to primary sources. Project:External links explicitly says to avoid "on-line travel guides, restaurant or nightlife guides". Maybe there is a conflict with what Project:Goals_and_non-goals states. If nothing else, we need to define the scope of what we link to. However, I do not read "itinaries" as "flight finder sites". An itinary would be, say, a company offering a cruise or a similar specialized trip. Correct me if I am wrong. This would be in line with the Manual of Style, as it is a primary source.

I think we should -at all cost- avoid becoming a web directory. Yahoo does that. We should concentrate our effort on creating actual content. If we list applefares, why not cheap0? Because you disagree with their usability? What if they upgrade their site? And who are we to endorse their service over any other? Just do a quick search on google for keywords like "hotel paris", for example. You'll get a million hotel listings in Paris. Not primary sources, the hotel sites themselves, mind you, but a hundred different online brokers, some obviously operating under dozens of names to confuse google. Which service should we link to? Any? All? None? Who's to say?

Clearly, information about flights or hotels is useful to travellers. And also quite clearly, we can not hope to include this information in wikivoyage, even if we wanted to. It changes too fast, and the wiki interface does not work well for "interactive" content.

Evan's suggestion of a "Flight finder" article is a compromise, although it sets a dangerous precedent. If we have that, we'll also need "hotel finders", for example... it's a slippery slope worse than Outer Space. Where does listing end and endorsement begin? What constitutes spam links? Really, I do not think we should open this can of worms.

I had a little time to think about the links in this particular article. My suggestion:

- Drop the fares/flight finder links. All of them.

- Keep the airlines

- Keep the insurance company IF their service is unique AND their service is available at least Europe-wide (scope of this article)

Rephrase appropriate text that "numerous fares finder sites exist on the web" and, if we drop the insurance company, "some insurance companies provide... etc etc".

As for the accusation that I follow rules "too much", I am all for breaking rules constructively. However, when there is a dispute, you have laws and rules to decide what course of action is "correct". If the majority of people disagree with a rule, that rule should be changed obviously. But what does not work is anarchy, which, contrary to what some clueless people may claim, is not ever a desireable form of organization (well, lack thereof. whatever.).

Evan, should we move this to travellers' pub -- or at least start a new thread there? It's a topic that goes far beyond European Discount Airlines. (No need to weigh down the pub with article specific questions though, link back here if need be.)

-- (WT-en) Nils 08:50, 19 Apr 2004 (EDT)

Bump*. It's been about a year, and the link-to-info ratio on this page is going critical. The key knowledge on this page is about RyanAir and EasyJet; all the rest are link listings. Despite protestations to the contrary above, we don't seem to have put any effort into culling the farefinder listings for the best and the brightest. Barring objections, I'm going to move the fare-finders off this page. And I'd love to see some of the links under the airlines sections expanded into actual reviews, with real information. Any takers?

*Thanks to (WT-en) Jpatokal for this useful term.--(WT-en) Evan 10:01, 30 Jun 2005 (EDT)

It's been more than a year since this previous message, and barring any objections I'm removing the aggregator extlinks. --(WT-en) Evan 12:17, 6 December 2006 (EST)

Hi, I've added an external link under Jet2 because they won a consumer award, which I thought would be useful if someone is using this to find out about choices of airlines. Is this ok? It seemed useful but not necessarily in keeping with the exact specifications for external links. If it's not ok, sorry. I'm still getting a feel for what is and isn't considered correct. 81.132.150.100 04:57, 3 November 2006 (EST)

It is called "the southwest model" because southwest was the first, and for a long time the only, airline to run in the new "discount" fashion. The iundustry said they woudl fail, they didn´t. Easyjet, Ryanair and the like are all in existence because southwest showed that such an airline could make money. That´s why the point of reference is American. Don´t get in a snit about it. Do I bitch because my philosophy dept. refers to "the Vienna School". I donºt care about anti-americanism, just try not to be so obviously mindless about it.

easyJet's transfer policy

The article says:

Other airlines, such as easyJet, will transfer you for free onto another flight if the first one is late if you have left a gap of two hours between flights and they are both easyJet flights.

Is anyone able to substantiate this? easyJet's carrier regulations wrt to onward flights simply say:

If you have booked an onward flight with easyJet, this represents a separate contract. Please note that easyJet does not operate a connecting flight service, and therefore you will need to check-in with your luggage for each sector of your journey in accordance with the check-in requirements below. Consequently we advise that when booking an onward flight with easyJet, you allow at least two hours between the scheduled time of arrival of the incoming flight, and the scheduled time of departure of the onward flight.

This, of course, is not the same thing as what the article says, and if this is the extent of easyjet's policy, then the article is misleading. Anyone got a link to back it up? If not I'll most likely remove the snippet above in a week or so. -- (WT-en) Hypatia 12:19, 5 Oct 2004 (EDT)

When writing that article, I was citing this page on guardian.co.uk which featured a question & answer as follows;

If I am travelling, say, from Scotland to London, and have booked an onward flight with your airline but I miss the connecting flight because your first aircraft is delayed, will I incur any extra cost if getting on a later flight?

EasyJet: Free transfer to next available flight.

When travelling on a delayed flight from Belfast to Stansted last year, there were customer service agents booking people who had missed connections from Stansted onto flights later in the day. I would guess that what they are doing is transferring people onto later flights as a goodwill gesture if flights are flying empty, but they reserve the right not to. They are being a bit vague. (WT-en) Professorbiscuit 17:27, 7 Oct 2004 (EDT)

Thanks for the source. I suppose it might be best to put it as follows:

easyJet will sometimes transfer you for free onto another flight when the first one is late if you have left a gap of two hours between flights and they are both easyJet flights. However their [http://www.easyjet.com/EN/book/regulations.html#onwardflights carrier

regulations] do not guarentee this.

-- (WT-en) Hypatia 17:41, 7 Oct 2004 (EDT)

Updating page as per my draft above. -- (WT-en) Hypatia 05:20, 9 Oct 2004 (EDT)

Thius page should definitely be kept. As should the links to the particular airlines- as an American I am less than familiar with discount airlines in Europe, and googling "discount airlines in europe" basically leads to a fog of rip-off sites. I came to wikivoyage because I knew I would get the straight dope about it. And I did. I like trolling here for info- but so far this page has been the most useful for me.

Definition of "low cost"

What is the definition of a low-cost airline for this article? I'd like to add a few small airlines, such as OLT, which could be considered low-cost on certain routes where they fly cheaper than any other airline. This also applies to mainstream airlines like BMI, and Alitalia, as a couple of examples where they are sometimes cheaper than the lowcost competition for the same route. I would like to expand this but don't want to start an article on 'non-lowcost' airlines! -(WT-en) Wikibob | Talk 17:16, 2004 Nov 16 (EST)

FlyMatrix

Was trying to make searching connections more easy. Especially when searching for route that have no direct connection.
Made script that imports data to huge HTML table, and added some simple javascipt tools for navigation.

Connection matrix can be found on my web page only, because HTML (styles, javascript) used there is not embedable in Wiki.

• more information: (WT-en) FlyMatrix
• connection matrix: http://www.juljas.net/flymatrix/

--(WT-en) JanSlupski 16:13, 18 Feb 2005 (EST)

vfd discussion

• Please keep. I have found this article very useful.
• Since Bus travel in Israel is forbidden, this article is also not allowed. --(WT-en) Daniel575 30 May 2006
• Childish retaliatory VFD by someone unwilling to work within consensus. Keep. - (WT-en) Todd VerBeek 21:06, 29 May 2006 (EDT)
• Keep. This is a well developed article. Wait out the 14 day process before removing VFD though. - (WT-en) Andrew Haggard (Sapphire) 21:07, 29 May 2006 (EDT)
• Keep. Same as in previous entry. Sigh... -- (WT-en) Bill-on-the-Hill 21:14, 29 May 2006 (EDT)
• Keep. This article was listed here as a retaliation for the vfd of the Egged Travels article, which is definitely not a reason for deletion. -- (WT-en) Ryan 22:52, 29 May 2006 (EDT)

Keep. Useful information.

• Keep. As they say on Wikipedia, "don't disrupt wikipedia to make a point". -- (WT-en) Colin 23:13, 29 May 2006 (EDT)
• Keep. Not a valid reason for deletion. (WT-en) Ricardo (Rmx) 09:27, 30 May 2006 (EDT)
• Keep. I found this extremely helpful. (WT-en) Robby 1:18, 30 May 2006 (MST)
• Keep. I also found this extremely helpful. I don't see what the problem with it might be.
• please keep - very useful list of the cheapo airlines andogo advie abut useing them - impossible to find unbiased opiniona elsewhere
• please keep this - it is a very useful set of links not found on standard search engines - indeed I wonder if the move to delete was not initiated by one of them!
• Keep. it's awesome
• Keep. Very useful and accurate. A great help to those of us in the Southern Lands.220.236.34.177 00:24, 1 June 2006 (EDT)

This article is unbelievably helpful. It would be a shame to see it deleted.

• Keep. This is very useful information and has helped tremendously. Has all European discount airlines on one page so you know what your options are.

• Keep. I found this page both interesting and helpful.
• Keep. Very useful!

Open Skies treaty

The 1992 Open Skies treaty has nothing to do with discount airlines. It's a disarmament agreement which establishes a program of unarmed aerial surveillance flights over the entire territory of its participants. I suppose the real legal framework enabling the development of discount airlines in Europe were some regulations or directives adopted by the (then) European Economic Community, but I'm not aware which ones. Wikipedia article on the 1992 Treaty on Open Skies (WT-en) MaartenVidal 13:35, 4 July 2006 (EDT)

Low cost airline resources

I moved this section from the article; it's getting very heavy and tout-y and veering into Web-directory land, a definite non-goal. If someone has a good reason to put these back and is willing to separate the wheat from the chaff, please do, else let's let them sit for a while. --(WT-en) Evan 12:21, 6 December 2006 (EST)

There are some very useful websites to use when booking connecting low cost airline flights (in alphabetical order):

• Cheapflights.co.uk[1] Price comparison for cheap flights out of the UK.
• dohop.com[2] cleverly composes multileg journeys based on low-cost airlines. Be careful when you plan journeys with connections! Lowcost airlines don't guarantee any time and not even the flight so put at least 3-4 hours between arrival and last check-in time (As the site suggests).
• Eurovoli.com[3] is a search engine for low cost flights from the UK to the rest of Europe.
• flybilligst.com [4] is a must if you're flying to or from Norway. The site lets you choose between the destinations of five low cost airlines. It then shows a graph with the prices for the next months, letting you easily select the cheapest day to fly. It is, however, in Norwegian, and seems not to have heard about Liverpool.
• Flylc.com [5] shows all European cheap flights on one screen and redirects to the low-cost airline operating the flight selected (Information site).
• Flylowcostairlines.org [6] Comprehensive search engine of low-cost airlines' flights, that enables to find direct, one-stop or two-stop connections.
• Low Fare Flights [7], this UK site compares budget airfares on over 300 european routes, originating from the UK only.
• momondo.com[8] helps you find and compare prices across 200 airlines and travel agencies in realtime.
• Openjet [9] will find the cheapest way of getting between the 91 cities served by Easyjet, MytravelLite, BMIbaby, Basiq Air, HLX and Germanwings. Doesn't always work.
• Opodo [10] Joint airline company that sell spare seats and combines low cost with flagcarrier tickets.
• fly.de [11] Cheap flight tickets and combinations of several offers. The site gives an overview about flights from and in germany. Furthermore tickets in the whole world can be booked.
• Resetips [12] is a site in Swedish and English useful for finding low cost flights to and from Sweden.
• Skyscanner[13] will find the cheapest way of getting between cities and has additional tools, such as fare graphs for a given route over a month and cheap weekend flights from any given city.

Also of use are some information sites (in alphabetical order):

• air-scoop.com[14] gathers all the main news published on Low Cost Carriers in Europe.
• attitudetravel.com[15] has information on 80 low cost and low fare airlines across Europe and further info on web-fares available on competing flag-carriers
• BudgetFlightFinder.com[16] lists some of the more obscure budget airlines that are missing elsewhere, particularly in Asia and the Middle East. Weak coverage in the Americas.
• Euroflights.info[17] provides information on low cost flights available to several hundred European destinations.
• flycheapo.com[18] is another excellent resource, and has up-to-date low-cost airline route news.
• lowcostairlines.org[19] lists all 61 European low cost airlines (plus many other low cost airlines all over the world)
• Whichbudget.com[20] Provides a regularly updated list of cheap flights with booking links, organised by airport. Concentrates on Europe, but covers some budget routes around the world. Be aware that an airline offering cheap fares on just a few routes (such as BMI) will be listed here under every airport it flies from, even if some routes are always very expensive.

I agree this page turned into a web directory of sites, but not listing anything is unhelpful too. I've found myself returning to the Talk page several times to lookup some of these sites. Is there some criteria we could use to list only a few sites? I've found the following to be very useful and I think they are popular: www.skyscanner.net www.bravofly.com www.momondo.com (WT-en) Gerdemb 11:21, 22 December 2006 (EST)

The listing is indeed very useful. I propose to reinsert the first part (the first 14 links). (WT-en) Alfio 17:16, 5 March 2007 (EST)

Most of these sites use EXACTLY THE SAME underlying search engine but they have a nice cover. I say you either LET ALL IN or TAKE ALL AWAY otherwise you are just helping some get popular and put others into obscurity (unless of course that is YOUR PLAN, or you are paid to do just that). I Vote to take all LINKS OUT just like wikipedia has done. If someone wants to keep a few for their use JUST make a bookmark for yourself. (WT-en) George Kontopoulos 03:33, 14 November 2008 (EST)

Virgin Express

I rolled back the deletion of Virgin Express, but apparently the airline has merged with another to become Brussels Airlines. So, I've rolled back my rollback. --(WT-en) Evan 14:21, 5 April 2007 (EDT)

Flag Icons

It would be helpful it the airline list had flag icons to show where the companies serve, or are based. For example Air Berlin could have a little German flag next to it. Does Wikivoyage have them too?

No, we don't, and I don't like the idea very much — carriers like Ryanair have bases in half a dozen countries. (WT-en) Jpatokal 14:16, 25 June 2007 (EDT)

List of low cost airline hubs

What specifically is this list intended for? And why magical number "seventy"?

For these purposes, a low cost airline hub is an airport which provides more than seventy routes by the

Isn't it more natural from reader's point of view to find list of discount airlines operating from/to specific city on that city's article page? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 14:14, 22 August 2007 (EDT)

group airlines by their base country?

What if we group airlines by their base country? I see two reasons for that:

1. primary: it will help to find airline for any specific point-to-point flight. First you check airlines basing in your departure country; if there's no luck, you also check airlines basing in your destination. Right now you have to search the article for the country you need, and hope you used the same writing as article's authors (like searching for French, France and Paris instead of just looking into France section), and the article has an up-to-date list of destinations.
2. secondary: every airline is always based in one country. It means that every airline goes into a single section.
3. another secondary: most of the times we use discount airlines for direct flights, not for complicated multi-country connections.
4. yet secondary: it is not unusual that travelers fly from a country with no local discounters to a country with them. With the current list, even shortlisting discounters is really complicated.

Objections? Alternative ideas on making the list more usable and navigable? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 15:19, 24 September 2007 (EDT)

I plunged forward and implemented my suggestion. Does it look better now? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 17:10, 28 September 2007 (EDT)

Looks fine but what about airlines that operate between countries, neither of which is their base country? For example, FlyZoom (a Canadian company) also operates low cost flights between New York-JFK and Gatwick and San Diego and Gatwick. The base country listing system does not allow for that to be easily presented. With the coming open skies agreement, I expect a lot more of these third country flights. Perhaps the article should list all airlines that fly out of a European country (zoom would then be on the UK listing while RyanAir, MyAir, etc. etc. would be in multiple country listings). That way, if someone is searching for a list of discount airlines out of, say, Italy, they'll see all the choices available - not just the ones that base their operations in Italy. Also, that way, we don't have to have a list for "airlines based outside Europe", they'd just show up wherever they fly. --(WT-en) Wandering 15:36, 14 January 2008 (EST)

Trying to continue your thought, it would be quite logical to have that list of discount airlines flying from/to specific country in that country's article. But that way gives no single place for describing any given airline (and, judging by this article, we find such description somewhat useful for a traveler). BTW, this pops up related discussion: "Should we have articles on airlines?" --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 13:25, 26 October 2008 (EDT)

France-based discount airlines

Are there any discount airlines that are based in France? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 04:17, 26 September 2007 (EDT)

less likely to go bankrupt

> Centralwings ... generally makes use of LOT's fleet, and thus is probably safer (eg. less likely to go bankrupt)

Do we have examples of bankruptcies among discount airlines? How using national carrier's fleet makes the company safer in respect to bankruptcy? --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 04:30, 9 December 2007 (EST)

Countless discount airlines have gone bankrupt. Being owned fully or partly by a major/national airline means that they have access to a steady supply of capital and are thus less likely to go kaboom. (WT-en) Jpatokal 06:29, 9 December 2007 (EST)

So the reason for higher safety is the fact that it is owned and funded by a well-established airline, not that discounter uses major's fleet, right?

If so, is it better for us to mention this observation in general overview rather than in details on a single airline? As far as I remember, many discounters are owned by a major airline. --(WT-en) DenisYurkin 07:07, 9 December 2007 (EST)

No, some LCCs (eg. Thailand's Nok Air, owned by THAI) use their parents' planes repainted and their maintenance facilities. I think it's worth noting for those that do. (WT-en) Jpatokal 07:43, 9 December 2007 (EST)

Does RyanAir let you take on a winter jacket or does it count as baggage?

Does RyanAir let you take on a winter jacket or does it count as baggage? Usually I wear my jacket to keep my luggage lightweight and put a camera in the jacket pocket to keep the carry on luggage light weight. Does Ryanair let you do this?

Oh snap, we still have this?

When we first started dusting off and organizing articles on air travel content, we did delete a number of articles on "Airlines in the United States", "Airlines in Africa" and such for their no apparent value beyond holding a chest of quickly-expiring trivia better suited for specialist sites for geeks. Our destination guides usually provide a better idea of the available connections without focusing too much on the airlines providing them, and the general articles on flight topics seem to cover all possible interactions one might have with an airline sufficiently. Discussing a given line's meal plan on medium-haul flights does not seem to be the kind of thing we should be doing.

I totally forgot about this article still being in existence, and it seems to be quite long - can we see if there is any content that is actually useful information and does not duplicate the content of other articles before I move to VfD it? PrinceGloria (talk) 18:04, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

I am against deleting this, as low cost airlines in Europe are a) a very common phenomenon b) engage in some shenanigans that make flying with them complicated (which as per ttcf would indicate we include this info somewhere). Besides; the info in this article is more than just information on whether the kosher meal of Air France on their flight from Rio De Janeiro to Cape Town is edible. Would you than suggest we delete low-cost airlines period? Or merge all that into the already rather unwieldy flying on a budget article? Legacy carriers are self evident and all more or less the same. Low service airlines on the other hand make you print out a boarding pass to fly with no checked baggage from "London" Stansted to "Frankfurt" Hahn and unless you are aware of that, you are bound to get ripped off. Especially in Europe. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:25, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Low-cost airlines in Europe are not any different from low-cost airlines anywhere else, and we have that all covered in our articles pertaining to flying, no need to single out Europe or a given airline. We do advise regarding what you stated above in the appropriate articles. This one is just one more to take care of and decide whether some content belongs here or there (and thus leads us to provide a disservice to travellers by possibly not including some content in an article where it might belong or telling them to read too many articles - our series on flying is already long).

This article also has all the potential to collect unnecessary trivia (which is a disservice to travellers looking for useful info), be very subjective and possibly promoting or defaming a given airline and expire quickly - for instance, airberlin has long not been a low-fare carrier given what they charge me, provides free meals, takes my luggage for free (i.e. for the basic airfare) and actually two pieces of it since I have a status (show me another low-fare airline with status recognition, lounges and alliance membership). So today we might be feeling like writing some cool stuff we like or don't like about Ryanair and then it will linger on for three years since there are too many articles here to be updated often enough for the ever-changing world of airlines.

I will skim this article for content that is valuable and not included anywhere and move it to other articles whenever appropriate. Please join me in the effort. PrinceGloria (talk) 18:50, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Maybe you should ask for a vote for deletion than? I see some of your points (though whether air berlin wants to be charter, low fares or legacy is one of the reasons they are closer and closer to bankruptcy each year), but if your argument is to delete the article, I suggest to have a vfd. I personally tend towards keeping it, because some low service airlines are actually not found by flight search aggregators and knowing which exist may be of service to many a traveler. Best wishes Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:40, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Some airlines or particular connections are not found by some search engines at all, regardless of how you'd classify them, so the best we can do is refer the traveller to Wikipedia, which has an excellenty-maintained list of all scheduled destinations operated by all airlines from a given airport in its article there (so we do not have to do it!)

As a sidenote, I believe that AB's issue is not as much what newspapers perceive as their strategy as awful operational management in many ways, which makes any strategy impossible to be executed properly (and, as a side symptom, leaves your bags stranded in strange places).

While filing a VfD, I also invite you to help me brush up Air travel on a budget, which is in equally sorry state. PrinceGloria (talk) 20:00, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Well that's what having Hartmut Mehdorn in any management capacity at your company does... He also oversaw the disaster of the near-privatization of Deutsche Bahn and later took over the disaster that is Berlin's new airport (opening date only available through time travel, I guess...) which meant he had basically sued himself when he still was at air Berlin... Anyway, I have already written some of the stuff on air travel on a budget and see the problem of where this article wants to be going... I for one am under the (maybe mistaken) impression that while you can save some money (especially on short routes) the days of cheap aviation are over and not coming back soon and there is only so much you can do, especially in oligopolies like most US routes or some transatlantic connections... There is however a website where you pay people to find you the cheapest fare... Or so I've heard... Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:09, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

You guys don't have to do a Vfd to merge this with Air travel on a budget, if that's what you want to do. I'm disinclined to take a pro or con view on the wisdom of a merger and would tend to defer to you Europeans on this topic. Ikan Kekek (talk) 04:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

It has nothing to do with being "European". Simply look at the comments I made as the last edit to this article and see whether you agree. Our side discussion about the fate of AB is irrelevant, we're just enjoying our geeky sides :D PrinceGloria (talk) 06:31, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

I'm just saying, do the merge if you like; you don't need to (mis?)use Vfd for that purpose. Just do it. Ikan Kekek (talk) 06:54, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

We also have continental articles about low service airlines for everywhere except low cost airlines in Antarctica (which would be a rather dull article, I suppose). How shall we deal with them?Hobbitschuster (talk) 12:27, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Same. We deleted "Airlines in ..." as I said above, those are not different. BTW, Polar flights would actually be a useful and interesting guide. PrinceGloria (talk) 14:21, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Than please raise the issue in the relevant talk pages. here , here and here Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:39, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

I will, in due course. As per the article at hand, is there anything else to merge into Air travel on a budget, or can we consider those two merged? PrinceGloria (talk) 14:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

A funny thing is that at one point somebody considered this article worthy of "guide" status (low cost airlines on the other hand is "usable") and now it seems to be consensus to unceremoniously dump this article in the trash... Hobbitschuster (talk) 14:19, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

You would be surprised at some of the articles that were once elevated to "guide" in the past years of WV, and some of them still have not been stripped of this "status" - as it has been pointed out in another discussion, not many people care and statuses are rarely updated. In the meantime, our articles on Flying went through a major makeover, after which the entire core series has been deemed appropriate for the Main Page. PrinceGloria (talk) 14:24, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Ok, wakey wakey everybody - anything here still that is not covered @ Air travel on a budget or destination guides where applicable? PrinceGloria (talk) 05:30, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

So... what do we do now?

Should we have a vfd? Let this "guide" that is an embarrassment for the very word rot in limbo? Nothing? Try to maintain and update this article, giving it a shift in direction if necessary? Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:16, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Merge to Air travel on a budget as per the above discussion. PrinceGloria (talk) 06:50, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

The effort to merge seems to have stalled... Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:04, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

If it survives the vfd

What do we do?

For starters, there are over sixty external links still in the old format. (Most of) the information on this page is outdated. And at the end of the article we have and uninspired list of "low cost airline hubs" of questionable accuracy and up-to-dateness... Given that Ryanair is notorious for changing "hubs" on a moment's notice (usually whe local politicians wisen up and cut subsidies, as has happened in Lübeck, in Magdeburg, in Altenburg...) it might be difficult to keep such a list up to date even if it were brought into a better format. The rest of the article might have a little content that might be merged to air travel on a budget, but not much... Hobbitschuster (talk) 00:24, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

VFD discussion

• This one has still been the most live-like of several undead articles on this topic. It may be salvageable, though the lack of edits to it in eight months definitely indicates otherwise Hobbitschuster (talk) 21:43, 12 December 2015 (UTC)

• Keep. There is a lot of info & much of it looks to be useful. Pashley (talk) 08:26, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

• Keep. This article has guide status. AlasdairW (talk) 09:27, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment: the article has been rated guide some time ago - this does not mean it currently satisfies reasonable or current criteria for guide status. Furthermore it is outdated in big parts due to lack of edits Hobbitschuster (talk) 11:23, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

• • • I would rather that it is kept, but otherwise, then Redirect to Air travel on a budget, and this applies to the other similar articles. The article gets enough views to be worth pointing readers at something on the topic. AlasdairW (talk) 03:56, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

• Delete - please look into it in more detail - all of the info is duplicate with our other flying-related articles. I did an analysis in the article's talk page and made comments in the body. PrinceGloria (talk) 08:15, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

• Delete - Seriously would anyone find this useful when traveling to Europe? It is just a mass dump of information for the sake of it, and not with the interests of the traveler in mind. The 'useful' info' contained has been copied to other more worthwhile articles. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 10:09, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

• Do not delete - I see no valid reason for deleting this article rather than redirecting it. If the content is duplicated elsewhere as PrinceGloria states then redirect it to Flying or another appropriate target. -- Ryan • (talk) • 00:54, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

• Comment As far as I can tell no one has cited a valid reason as to why this article should be deleted rather than merged/redirected, so my inclination would be to close this VFD as a "keep" and have this discussion continue at Talk:Low-cost airlines in Europe unless there are further arguments that would justify a deletion. -- Ryan • (talk) • 13:24, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Outcome: Kept. -- Ryan • (talk) • 04:46, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Merge / Redirect / Whatever discussion

So apparently this article cannot be deleted because of... Something. It has been quite clearly established by several users that this article serves no conceivable purpose in its current form and the two (three if mine is included) delete votes speak volumes as to that. So what should we do? Is there any credible and useful merge or redirect target? I don't think the current laundry list with badly outdated information serves any purpose and I doubt a redirect to flying would do much good, but surprise me... Hobbitschuster (talk) 18:10, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Pashley, AlasdairW, PrinceGloria, Andrewssi2, Ryan what do you think about redirecting to air travel on a budget? Oh and the redirect for Ryanair should be deleted as a violation of our "no articles for individual companies" policy. Is there any content in this here article that you think could be merged? Hobbitschuster (talk) 19:00, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

In case anybody would have any doubts in light of what I have written multiple times - you have my full support for "merging" into air travel on a budget (not that I see any content worth merging). PrinceGloria (talk) 22:37, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

How long should I wait before replacing the page content with a redirect to said page? Hobbitschuster (talk) 22:10, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I think that the first half of the article is generally OK as it is. The list of airlines and hubs is unnecessary and will quickly date - destination articles are the place saying who flys where. If you want to merge with air travel on a budget, then fine, but be prepared to spend some time going through para by para to see what is already in the other article. I think that it worth having some specific advice about Ryanair and EasyJet as they are such big operators and non-Europeans may not be aware of the differences in attitudes of the two companies. Connecting flights only needs to mention airlines that do support connections. AlasdairW (talk) 23:22, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Have you had a look at the comments in the source of this article? Hobbitschuster (talk) 23:26, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

I have now seen "Exactly, it's all there!" next to "see also: air travel on a budget". I don't agree that everything in this article is there - I could find no mention of Ryanair or EasyJet, and connections could be expanded with some of the stuff here. AlasdairW (talk) 23:49, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

PrinceGloria do you want to respond to this? AlasdairW I would like you to be a bit more specific. Which non obvious things specifically do you think should be put into our air travel on a budget article? Hobbitschuster (talk) 17:57, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

The stuff to be merged includes the connecting tickets info for EasyJet, Air Berlin, Norwegian, German Wings, Flybe, Smart Wings, Iceland Express, and the sections on EasyJet, Ryanair and Air Berlin (these be condensed). AlasdairW (talk) 23:37, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

The info on "connecting tickets" is redundant - most airlines covered simply do not offer those. For the rest who do, everything is just as with any other airline. Whether an airline offers a connecting ticket or not is to be found when booking, and is of interest only when a particular itinerary is explored and a connecting ticket becomes an option, whereas it will show as such.

Information on airBerlin is woefully outdated, they are not "low cost" in terms of either fares or operational model. Ryanair is a lot of fluff as well, nowadays tickets advertised as EUR 1 actually do cost EUR 1 (checked multiple times myself) and Ryanair is not an oddball airline anymore. No need to discuss it separately from all the rest. Same for EasyJet I guess. No value added for the traveller, just a place to vent for the amateur columnist who did not find a travel website for their ramblings. PrinceGloria (talk) 00:56, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

So to revive this discussion, what should we do? I don't want to just plunge forward, but nobody else seems to be doing much... Hobbitschuster (talk) 20:29, 12 March 2016 (UTC)