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[size=85:g09kenni]novinite 27 May 2010

Ryanair Takes Off to Bulgaria's Plovdiv City in September

Irish low-cost air carrier Ryanair will launch flights to Bulgaria's Plovdiv airport in September this year, a deputy minister has announced.

“The company has certain requirements that airports should meet, including low fees,” Economy and Energy Minister Ivo Marinov announced on Thursday.

Ryanair representatives visited Bulgaria last month, conferred with Transport Minister Alexander Tsvetkov and visited Plovdiv airport to finalize an agreement.

According to Plovdiv airport executive director Doychin Anguelov the attraction of low-fare air companies is part of the airport strategy to increase its passengers and revenues.

Ryanair has been planning to launch flights to Plovdiv airport for several years.

Plovdiv became even more attractive for air companies as of April 1, when its fees were sharply reduced and stand three times lower that the fees at the airport in the capital Sofia. The low fees will be in forced for two years.

[size=55:2u87lzuk]novinite

Ryanair Eager to Fly from Spain to Bulgaria's Plovdiv

Irish low-cost company Ryanair plans to open flights from Spain to Plovdiv in Bulgaria in the autumn of this year at the latest.

"
Even though the company recently dropped plans for a line from the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv to Barcelona, Spain, a service between the two countries will be launched as early as this year,"
Doychin Anguelov, executive director of Plovdiv Airport, told business news provider Investor.bg.

"
Tickets for the flights were on sale since December 2010 and demand was brisk,"
he said, attributing the great interest to the big community of Bulgarian immigrants in Spain, which totals 300,000.

The reason for the preliminary annulments of the new line was the termination of the five-year contract between Ryanair and the Barcelona Girona Airport.

The new Catalonian government did not approve the agreement between the carrier and the airport, which was announced at the end of 2010.

As a result, Ryanair annulled its flights from the Girona Airport to 18 destinations, including Plovdiv, London, Dusseldorf, Hamburg, Ibiza, Madrid, Oslo.

Currently, Ryanair performs flights from Plovdiv Airport to Stansted Airport in London twice a week - on Tuesday and on Saturday. One-way fares start from GBP 32.99 including taxes. The flights provide easy access for Britons to the ski slopes of Bansko and Pamporovo.

The company will open a new twice-weekly service from Milan Bergano to Plovdiv, which will commence on May 7.

Plovdiv became even more attractive for air companies as of April 1, 2010, when its fees were sharply reduced and now stand three times lower that the fees at the airport in the capital Sofia. The low fees will be in force for two years.

Bulgaria, which attracted a number of low-cost carriers thanks to its accession to the European Union and fast economic growth in the years right after its entry, is expected to continue to see the expansion of their market share.

[size=50:3tpkixo8]Daily Telegraph

[size=150:3tpkixo8]Ryanair to earn £1.25bn from extra charges

Airline’s latest fee, a £2 delay or cancellation levy, could bring in up to £150m in a year. Clouding the issue: it is more than a year since volcanic ash disrupted flights from the UK, but Ryanair wants passengers to foot the bill for compensation claims.

Ryanair’s latest additional charge – a £2 fee that it says will go towards compensation it has paid for flight delays and cancellations – could earn it up to £150 million in a year. That is nearly twice what the airline says it has paid out – almost £88 million – as a result of claims made following disruption caused by the volcanic ash cloud, heavy snow and a series of French and Spanish strikes. Under European Union law, passengers whose flights have been cancelled or delayed are entitled to financial assistance from their airline, including compensation for accommodation. Ryanair says that claims have been so high that it must make provision for them. An estimated 75 million journeys will be made with the airline in the next year. Although up to 20 per cent of tickets will be sold using “promotional” fares – which will not include the £2 fee, payable on the outbound flight and return – the charge is likely to bring in far more than the bill Ryanair says it was left with after last year’s disruption. Ryanair already earns up to £450 million a year through online check-in fees, at least £350 million through credit and debit card charges, and at least £320 million through baggage charges.

A spokesman for the airline said this week that the £2 charge would be reduced next year if the number of claims fell. He added, however, that, in the unlikely event of more disruption this year, it could rise. Last month, Ryanair began charging £10 each way for reserving specific seats on routes from Dublin to Gatwick and Malaga. James Fremantle, spokesman for the Aviation Consumer Advocacy Panel, a passenger watchdog, said that Ryanair’s latest fee would add to the confusion passengers faced when booking a flight. “Ultimately, this extra charge is just part of the fare,” he said. “It’s a way of marketing the fare to make it more attractive to customers.”

He added that it was often difficult to ascertain whether a charge imposed by an airline represented the actual cost of providing a service. For example, Ryanair charges £6 per passenger per flight to process credit or debit card transactions (not including payments made using prepaid MasterCards), so a return trip for a family of four can incur a £48 “administration fee” for a single debit card transaction. EasyJet this week increased its transaction fee to £8 for debit cards, or £12.95 for credit cards. The cost of processing a debit card payment is estimated at 20p per transaction. “There is nothing to stop airlines doing this,” Mr Fremantle said. “But it makes it more confusing and time-consuming for anyone trying to find the cheapest price.” Research conducted by Telegraph Travel this week showed how the cost of a flight with a low-cost airline can escalate during the booking process. We searched for the cheapest return flights from London to Madrid for a family of four travelling on the same dates in August with two checked bags, a set of golf clubs and a travel cot, and paying using a debit card.

Ryanair and easyJet offered similar fares: £271.92 and £275.92, respectively, while British Airways’ best offer was £476.20. However, once Ryanair’s online check-in fees (£48), luggage fees (£80, plus £80 for golf clubs and £20 for the travel cot), administration fees (£48), and the new delay/cancellation levy (£16) were added, its flights cost £563.92, nearly £100 more than BA’s. easyJet’s extras added £111.25 (See table below for full details).
Should a family want to ensure they sit together, priority boarding costs £32 with Ryanair, or £80 with easyJet. BA allows passengers to choose their seats free of charge.

BA’s luggage allowance is also 8kg greater than Ryanair’s, and 3kg more generous than easyJet’s, and BA offers free snacks and drinks, while its low-cost rivals charge nearly £5 for a sandwich and more than £2 for a cup of tea. Ryanair is set to announce annual profits of £350 million in the coming weeks, up from £281 million. Meanwhile, the low-cost airline Flybe has introduced a fuel surcharge of £3 per passenger on all bookings made for flight departing after August 31. It said the surcharge would be scrapped if the price of Brent crude oil - currently $121 a barrel - drops below $75 a barrel for four consecutive weeks.

After reading all that it makes you wonder if these cheap airline are what they say they are with all these hidden extras it will pay in future to read all the small print and perhaps look around even more.

The latest from the airline from Novinite

Ryaniar Carries Out First Milano-Plovdiv Flight

As Ryaniar's first flight from Milano to the Bulgarian city of Plovdiv arrived on Saturday, its 140 passengers were welcomed with bread and salt, according to an old Bulgarian tradition.

The company will carry out regular twice-weekly flights from Milan Bergano to Plovdiv, from now on.

Until now, Ryanair performed flights from Plovdiv Airport to Stansted Airport in London twice a week - on Tuesday and on Saturday. One-way fares start from GBP 32.99 including taxes. The flights provide easy access for Britons to the ski slopes of Bansko and Pamporovo.

Ryanair also plans to open flights from Spain to Plovdiv in the fall of 2011 at the latest.

Plovdiv became even more attractive for air companies as of April 1, 2010, when its fees were sharply reduced and now stand three times lower that the fees at the airport in the capital Sofia. The low fees will be in force for two years.

Bulgaria, which attracted a number of low-cost carriers thanks to its accession to the European Union and fast economic growth in the years right after its entry, is expected to continue to see the expansion of their market share.

I was listening to 'Watchdog' on TV recently and the were discussing airlines. It appears there will be another cost to our cheap flights, it is a cost of £2 for every passenger to go through to the departure lounge Everyone has to go through departure, so looks like they got us there too.

Oddy

oddball wrote:

I was listening to 'Watchdog' on TV recently and the were discussing airlines. It appears there will be another cost to our cheap flights, it is a cost of £2 for every passenger to go through to the departure lounge Everyone has to go through departure, so looks like they got us there too.

Oddy

Don't sound surprised these low cost airlines will sneak in with anything they can and you won't know about it till you come to fly.

[size=150:2qay8emd]Would you wear it on a flight?
Inventor unveils outsize jacket to beat budget airline luggage charges

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 12:09 PM on 11th July 2011

Comments (0) Add to My Stories Share It's hardly the most stylish of in-flight outfits. But this strange-looking jacket could save its wearer thousands of pounds, money that would otherwise have gone to budget airlines such as Ryanair or EasyJet.

Businessman Andrew Gaule invented this coat with huge pockets in frustration at seeing fellow budget passengers charged over the odds for their luggage.

He said: 'I have lost count of the number of times I saw passengers having to either repack their hand luggage at check in or pay sky-high fees to put it all in the hold.
Practical? Andrew Gaule modelling his Rufus Roo jacket, which he hopes will help budget passengers avoid luggage charges
'The airlines have very strict rules governing how much luggage you are allowed to check in and carry on board. It is not only expensive, but often the rules are themselves rather difficult to understand.
More...'Ryanair drinking water is 12 times more expensive than supermarket': The huge mark-ups of budget airlines
Millions give up on sunshine holidays as hard times and exchange rate makes Europe too expensive

'This jacket allows you to carry on board everything that you would otherwise have to pack in the hold. The pockets are big and strong enough to take 10kg of luggage, including even laptop computers or bottles of wine.'
Though their advertised ticket prices are often low, most budget airlines charge extra for hold luggage, and enforce weight limits strictly.
Stress: holidaymakers must be careful not to take too much luggage

These rules have prompted passenger fury, particularly directed at Ryanair. The Irish airline currently charges up to £25 per piece of checked luggage - though if luggage is not pre-booked each piece can cost up to £55. Go over the 20kg weight limit, and the prices increase further.


The strict rules can dramatically increase the cost of flying. A recent study by Co-operative Travel found that the average family could spend up to £440 checking bags onto their Ryanair holiday flights, while the average checked-baggage cost is £233.12.


Currently, however, all budget carriers allow passengers to take one piece of reasonably sized hand luggage on board for free. They also let you wear a jacket or coat: this is what gave Mr Gaule, from Princes Risborough in Buckinghamshire, his idea to bypass the checked-luggage charges altogether.

The Rufus Roo polyester jacket can carry up to 10kg in its six pockets. Volume-wise, Mr Gaule says it can store as much as one is normally able to carry in a hand luggage bag, including a laptop, wine bottles, clothes and shoes.

So how much does it cost?
Ryanair:
£25-35 for one bag up to 20kg if pre-booked;
£45-55 at the airport
£20 per excess kilo
Easyjet:
£9-14 for one bag up to 20kg if pre-booked;
£25 at the airport
£10 per excess kilo
Flybe:
£13 for one bag up to 20kg if pre-booked;
£30 at the airport
£43 for a bag up to 40kg
BMI Baby:
£14-16 for one bag up to 22kg if pre-booked;
£20 at the airport
£12 per excess kilo

Taken together with one item of hand luggage, the wearer of this jacket is potentially able to double the amount of material they can take on board for free.

The 48-year-old businessman said: 'My wife is Irish, and together with our two children we travel to and from there around ten times a year. We fly to Knock on the West Coast from either Luton, Birmingham or Stansted.

'I don't want to criticise the budget airlines too much because their ticket prices are often very cheap and they have opened up a whole new market.

'But I got fed up of seeing people having to pay a lot of money to check their bags, or completely repack all their luggage at the check-in just because they inadvertently fell foul of the rules. So I teamed up with two friends and employed a young designer to develop the Rufus Roo big pocket jacket.

'The jacket is very strong and two of the pockets in particular are really very large. What's more, it can be compacted so that it itself can be stuffed into one of those small plastic bags airports give you to carry on your liquids.'

Ryanair has been criticised for its 'very strict rules' and high luggage charges
A recent study showed that the budget airline's extra luggage charges have resulted in a dramatic change in the way people pack for holidays. The Co-operative Travel study found that a quarter of all leisure budget air passengers now either take only hand luggage or share a hold bag.

Trevor Davis, the company's director of retail distribution, said: 'Budget airlines have been around for quite some time now and people are getting smarter and minimising the cost of their flights.'

The Rufus Roo jacket is intended to undercut budget airlines like Easyjet
He criticised the budget airlines' habit of not including baggage costs in their advertised rates, saying: 'This, combined with the broad range and complexity of charges, makes it hard for holidaymakers to compare prices accurately at face value.'

The Rufus Roo jacket costs [size=150:2qay8emd]£29.95 and comes in a variety of colours and sizes. It is available online at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] and will soon be available in High Street stores.

willowsend writes:- I hope it is not 30 plus degrees when getting on and off the plane, otherwise what a fantastic idea

Just booked with Ryanair for the summer trip, when I booked Tanya,s flights with them for the winter trip the charges for luggage were £25 each way for a 20kg case, now its £35 for the same case.
This has pushed the price up to the same as British Airways, which I have always used in the past, and would have prefered again, if it was not for the convenience of Stansted (near me) and Plovdiv (nearer the village).
We keep our car in the village and we are always picked up by Tanya,s nephew in our car. We will spend a couple of days in the village with Tanya,s parents before driving to our apartment for the swimming and relaxation, and hopefully a bit more adventurous sight seeing. Then back to the village for the last week or so.

Mike say's
Just booked with Ryanair for the summer trip, when I booked Tanya,s flights with them for the winter trip the charges for luggage were £25 each way for a 20kg case, now its £35 for the same case.

Willowsend say's
If prices keep going up like that it won't be long before the baggage in the hold will cost more than bum's on seats
The only way to get our own back is to turn up for our flight in the nude with no baggage

Now there is a surprise guess it won't be long before the others follow the same track.

At least it won't be a surprise when you get to the airport like some of them

oddball wrote:

Now there is a surprise guess it won't be long before the others follow the same track.

other way round oddy ...wizz put theirs up in Feb ...!

Once one of them do it they all follow like sheep making sure we all have little or no choice I do think that sometimes this is set in secret with all of them agreeing.

[size=50:3ns1hcw5]Daily Telegraph

[size=150:3ns1hcw5]Woman forced to pay £200 to print out Ryanair tickets

A holidaymaker says she was forced by Ryanair to pay more than £200 for a "
piece of paper"
after she arrived at an airport without printing her boarding passes in advance.

Suzy McLeod with her children Harry and Mary. She has received the support of more than 350,000 people on Facebook. Suzy McLeod's complaint about "
unfair"
charges appears to have touched a raw nerve with frustrated fellow customers of the no-frills airline, after it was backed by more than 350,000 people on Facebook.

Passengers using the carrier are expected to check in on the internet and print their boarding card before travel. If they fail to do so they will be charged a £60-per-person boarding card reissue fee if flying from the UK - or €60 if departing from the continent or Ireland. Ms McLeod, from Newbury, Berkshire, complained that on August 15 she was charged €300 (£236) to print out five boarding passes on a flight home from Spain. A day later she wrote on a Facebook page devoted to Ryanair: “When flying from Alicante to Bristol yesterday, I had previously checked in on-line but because I hadn't printed out the Boarding Passes, Ryanair charged me €60 per person!!! “Meaning I had to pay €300 for them to print out a piece of paper! Please ‘like’ if you think that's unfair.” By Tuesday, just five days after the post, it had been "
liked"
by more than 358,000 people, while more than 18,000 users had commented on it. Many of the remarks backed Ms McLeod, describing the charges as “outrageous” and “ridiculous”, and some describing their own negative experiences of the airline.

However others pointed out that the carrier made clear in booking emails that boarding passes had to be printed out. One wrote: “Annoying? Too right it is. Expensive? Outrageously so. But did they warn you beforehand? Yes. Answer? Either read the small print and comply with the conditions, or stop flying budget airlines.” Mrs McLeod, a housewife, said: “We could have gone first class BA for cheaper.” She said the flights had been advertised at £166 per person but once priority seat allocation, baggage fees and the boarding passes had been paid for, the family had forked out £1,650. Mrs McLeod, 35, travelled to Spain with her parents, who are in their 60s, together with son Harrison, ten, and daughter Mary, three, and were joined half-way through the break by her husband Mark, 43, an IT consultant. But the five members of the initial group were not able to print out their return boarding passes in time to have them before they left Britain. Mrs McLeod said: “We went on holiday for 15 days and so I couldn't print the return boarding passes because you can only do that two weeks before the flight. “I had the passes on my phone as pdf documents and thought this would be sufficient. What was originally meant to be a cheap holiday ended up costing a lot.
"
We had to scrap every penny we had in cash on us to pay it. It was stressful and unnecessary. “I don't think we'll use them again. We wouldn't even consider them.”

Mrs McLeod added that she was amazed with the response she has had on her Facebook post. She said: "
It's been absolutely crazy. What it has shown me is that there are a huge amount of people who have had bad experiences with Ryanair. I didn't expect so many people to react to it. It must have struck a cord with some people.”

Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara said: "
As is clearly outlined in the terms and conditions for every Ryanair passenger, Mrs McLeod agreed at the time of booking that she and her fellow passengers would check-in online and print their boarding cards before arriving at their departure airport, and she also accepted and agreed that if she failed to do so then she would pay our boarding card re-issue penalty of £60 per passenger."
Ryanair’s boarding card reissue rose from £40 to £60 in December. Other charges include a £6 per person per flight “admin fee” and a £6 “web check-in fee”. It also recently introduced an “EU261 levy” to offset the cost of paying compensation for flight delays and cancellations, and since January it has also charged an “ETS levy” to cover the cost of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme, under which airlines are fined for exceeding carbon emissions limits.

Ryanair passengers wishing to check in a single bag, meanwhile, are charged between £15 and £40 per person per flight, depending on the time of year, their destination, and the weight of their luggage. Carriage of sports or musical equipment costs £50.

Many people are saying: yes, this is perfectly legal, but from a moral point of view "
totally out of order, especially with older people travelling who have no idea about booking and some unable to use a computer."

I've never used Ryanair and to be totally honest would not even consider them due to the number of complaints I've heard about hidden fee's etc, if I had to get back to the UK quickly then I'd either fly Air France or Drive as it would still be cheaper than Ryanair, if none of the budget airlines were available.