Sick of headline cheap fares?

Filed in archive Air Travel , consumer issues on April 3, 2008

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I received an email from Jet2.com this morning with details of their cheap fares on their" April offers from £4.99". I had a look at their site and there only saw 4 flights at £4.99, Leeds Bradford to Amsterdam, Belfast and Paris and Blackpool to Belfast.

I decided to investigate what the actual return fare would be and selected Leeds Bradford to Paris. I looked at the flexible date search for April. There were several dates predominately Monday to Wednesdays in the 2nd half of the month displaying £0.99 fares. However the cheapest return fares were £9.99. I choose an outward flight on Monday 28 April but the 99p fare was only available on the flight departing at 18.30, the 07.50 fight cost £14.99. so either effectively lose a day of pay another £14. The return flight on Wednesday 30 April departing at 21.40 cost £9.99.

Total price displayed at this stage was £37.98, £10.98 for the fare and £27 taxes with a warning underneath that this excluded card fees and fuel supplement. So how can they get away with calling it total price? I went for hand baggage only but it's £6 per hold bag. The next page revealed that it the fuel supplement was another £6.44 and debit card fee £2 and credit card fee £4.

Therefore the lowest possible fare comes in at £46.62, still pretty good value but being realistic for short break you'd really need to take the earlier outward flight to maximise your time in Paris and that would push the price up to £60.62.

I don't know about you but I'd much rather that the adverts displayed the actual total lowest possible return fare. Do you agree?