Caveat Aviator
How Do 20 Euro Cents Become 68 —even 79— Euros?
Unknown Unknowns in the New Old Europe

Travel within Europe has gotten much easier in the last decade thanks to low-cost airlines. No longer is the once-storied train —great for certain trips, overrated on many others— the only way to go. But with these new choices come new variables, and a host of ways in which the buyer —or flyer— needs to beware. Reading the fine print is only the beginning. Here is one traveler's experience.

On a forthcoming trip to Spain, I'm including a side trip over to Provence to begin as soon as I land in Madrid. Before the low-cost era, this sort of add-on would've been prohibitively expensive, complicated, time-consuming, or all three. Now —particularly with Madrid being a major low-cost hub— the temptation is almost unavoidable.

An initial look on the website of eDreams —a Barcelona-based online travel agency which I've used for low-cost air travel in Europe— reveals a low price of 20 Euros for the Madrid-Marseille round trip. Although this price included fees, it came with the small-print caveat "Service fees not included." All right, where have we not heard this before?

I suppose, as they say, it all depends on what the meaning of "fees" is, but even at today's scary exchange rates, this amounted to only about 30 dollars. How much more could they tack on? The next best fare was 74.59 Euros, with prices climbing to 1670.55 Euros and possibly higher. In all, the site IDed 494 possibilities, and I got tired of clicking through them.

The choice of airlines was huge and the potential routings read like the treatment for the next Bourne Ultimatum. Many flights included stopovers, predictably at hub airports for the carriers in question : I could travel British Airways, Air Europa, Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, Iberia, Czech Airlines, Spanair, Alitalia, KLM, even Royal Air Maroc, changing planes at Gatwick, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Prague, Milan, Barcelona, Orly —even Casablanca. Gee, maybe there'd even be time for couscous.

So I clicked on the 20 Euro option. Direct flight on a no-name airline, noted merely as "Low Cost." No odd airports, no 3 a.m. departure times. Why pay more?


But, of course, it wasn't so simple, and it was amazing what that 20 Euro charge —which , given that 19.98 was taxes and some fees, could even have been posted as the more enticing 2 Euro cents— didn't include. To eDreams' credit, while they didn't post the name of the airline, they did post a break-out of charges. Not included in the 20 Euro fare were the following : an airport check-in fee, fees for checked baggage, and a fee for using a credit card.

They really had me there. While Jason Bourne may manage to travel without checked bags, even he has to check in at the airport, and were there an alternative to credit cards for payment, I'm sure there would've been a fee for that, too. By the time I made it to the final purchase screen, I found I'd racked up a total of 79 Euros. This is still not bad, but it's not what I thought I'd signed on for.

But what lay ahead before that last mouse click? We already know food is "for purchase." Would there also be a charge for a seat? A seat belt? Donald Rumsfeld may have not had it quite right in the eyes of some with his remarks about Old Europe and New Europe, but in low-cost Europe, his notion of "unknown unknowns" seems the order of the day.

So I backed off, and just out of curiosity, researched what airline this might be. It turned out to be Ryanair, one of Europe's low-cost pioneers. I then wondered if this fare was available directly through Ryanair. It was. And while there were still the checked baggage and credit card extras, the total total added up only to 68 Euros, 14% less than with eDreams.

So much for customer loyalty. I clicked and bought direct from Ryanair.


Now the challenge will be getting to Madrid on time. I bought my ticket from Chicago with frequent-flyer miles and thus have to go via Miami, with a mere hour and a half between scheduled arrival in Florida and departure for Spain. With all the flight delays at O'Hare so far this season, an on-time Miami arrival is not exactly a sure thing. And while Ryanair also sells travel insurance, they offer nothing if you don't show up in time for their flight.

Rummy doesn't know the half of it —and word is Jason Bourne avoids O'Hare whenever he can.


Links :

• eDreams : http://www.edreams.com
• Ryanair : http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/