cheap no frills flights

The 'budget' or 'no frills' airlines operating in the UK are based on a successful US budget airline called Southwest - the only US airline to be profitable every year for the last 30 years.

With the mergers of easyJet and Go and Ryanair and Buzz, the choice of operator has and level of competition has fallen. But if bmi, mytravel, thomsonfly and the smaller no frills airlines continue to expand their services and traditional airlines continue to compete you will still be able to get a cheap no frills flight.

Anyone flying on a budget airline for the first time is in for a bit of a culture shock. Budget airlines are able to offer discount flights because they have cut costs to the bone. There are no tickets, no in-flight meals, you may have to walk across the tarmac to get to your plane, often they don't fly to a city's main airport, they have a variable reputation on timeliness and some even don't even allocate seats.

But they are CHEAP. Or they can be, if you can be flexible on flight times and especially if you can fly midweek or early and late in the day.

How to get a cheap no frills flight:

1. You will always get a better price with a no frills airline if you book online.
2. The £9.99 flight deals advertised in the press are always for a limited number of seats on a limited number of flights. Also, they may not include airport taxes. Book early to avoid disappointment - seats on these deals go in hours.
3. No frills airlines price their seats according to demand, so the more popular flights become progressively more expensive as demand increases. Occasionally you will get a last minute discount flight, but usually the flight fills up as it gets nearer to departure date, and the prices rise accordingly.
4. The cheapest flights tend to be the earliest and latest on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. If you can, avoid bank holidays, weekends, Christmas and Easter.
5. Whether you're flying 'peak' or 'off peak', the cheapest tickets are usually booked up well in advance. Try to book at least a month before departure.
6. Try to be flexible - check fares a day or so either side of your preferred travelling dates.
7. Book online to save up to £2.50 per flight leg. The websites of easyJet and Ryanair show the lowest possible fares or give details of special offers, giving you a target to aim at.
8. The no frills companies online booking engines do not add airport taxes until quite late in the process, so add £10 - 20 to initial quotes and look at the bottom line before you give your credit card details.
9. Know exactly where you're flying to and factor any hidden costs in to your buying decision. The budget airlines often reduce their costs (and therefore your fare) by flying to smaller airports. For example, both Ryanair and easyJet fly to Bologna in Italy. But Ryanair fly to Forli, which is 37 miles from the city centre, whereas EasyJet fly to the main Bologna airport, just 4 miles from the city centre.
10. Always check with consolidators, charter airlines and with the more traditional 'with frills' airlines too. They are being forced to compete with the no frill airlines, so they have bargains too (see our cheap flights page).
11. Be aware that no frills airlines don't offer discounts for children - they pay the same fares as adults.
12. Tickets can be less flexible than on traditional airlines. If you need to change your booking, easyJet levy a £10 fee plus the difference in the ticket price between when you booked and when you make the change. Ryanair have different pricing bands for their tickets - ranging from fully refundable to completely inflexible.
13. If you are taking a short break - even just a couple of days - don't forget to take out travel insurance. It won't cost very much, but travelling without it could cost a lot more (see our travel insurance page).
14. It's worth registering for the airlines' e-mail alerts of special offers. Special offers hit the e-mail trail before they hit the press.
15. Check baggage allowances carefully. Ryanair has a backgage allowance of just 15kg and an excess baggage charge of £3.75 per kilo.
16. If you can, look at budget airlines operating from smaller airports - air berlin, air scotland, bmibaby, thomsonfly, flybmi, flybe, germanwings, jet2, monarch, mytravel, planet air, thomsonfly and virgin express are amongst a growing army of smaller budget airlines offering cheap flights to a limited number of destinations from regional airports.