Cheap Airlines throughout Europe

As I wanted to go visit a friend of mine in Finland since a long time, I decided to make use of those cheap airlines proliferating in the euorpean skies.

Ryanair is probably the best known; I believe it is one of the first, and its still being in existence tells you something about the fact that they probably found out first how to do it right. Also, for me more importantly, they have included a very handy flight route: Karlsruhe/Baden Baden-Rome Ciampino. Really nice, since I am currently living in Karlsruhe and my parents are in Rome (where I grew up).

To give a hint, I knew that if I wanted to save money, I needed to do some research and still use the train. You see, Karlsruhe is not a big place. Having an airport at all is a luxury, so in doesn't serve too many destinations.

Ryanair has a flight from Frankfurt Hahn to Tampere in Finland. I thought I would have to take the train to Frankfurt and then take another train from Tampere to Helsinki. Then I told myself first to do some research.

My research brought me to the conclusion that there is a better way. I looked around the internet and came up with over 20(!!!) cheap airlines. Some of them going directly to Helsinki. I ended up taking GermanWings from Cologne Bonn to Helsinki, so that I needed only one train travel. I paid about 130€ for the flight, 50€ more for the train. Not bad, considered that both ways together I travelled more than 3000km!

Anyway, during my research I stumbled upon the most various carriers: charters, airlines, taxis, shuttles, and even more. I made a list of the most significant hits (since I could not find such a list myself) along the way. Here is the result. Note that linked are (alphabetically) the homepages; your first stop should be the "Destination" page. It is always some place else, sometimes a static picture, sometimes a flash animation, and sometimes even only a list of cities. I noticed that links change often, as do destinations. Also, some carriers go bankrupt, others are bought by bigger ones. At the beginning I tried to save the destination lists/pics/maps, but I soon realized they would change too quickly to be useful. Also linking directly to them would be senseless. That is why I decided simply to link to their homepages.

One final word of advice, before you finally find the list: probably most carriers are of no interest whatsoever to you. I found an airline connecting every second city in England with each other, another only taking people to Sofia. If you live in a small but rich town, expect most of the flight to go to Mallorca or the Canary Islands. It is quite some work finding the right connection, and probably even that one will be a compromise. But most prabably a cheap one!

To the list…

• Air Berlin:
• Basiq Air:
• Bexx Air:
• Blue1:
• BMIBaby:
• Cirrus Airlines:
• City Air Line:
• Deutsche BA:
• EasyJet / GO Fly / Buzz:
• Eurowings:
• Fly be:
• Germania Express:
• GermanWings:
• Hapag-Lloyd Express:
• Helvetic:
• Intersky:
• Jet2:
• LTU:
• MyTravelLite:
• Ryanair:
• Sky Europe:
• Snowflake:
• V Bird:
• Virgin Express:
• VLM Airlines:
• Volare:
• Wind Jet:

New additions (as of Feb/07):

• Wizzair
• Transavia
• Blue Air
• Centralwings
• Myair
• FlyMe
• Meridiana
• Atlantic Airways
• AirOne
• Voliamo
• Air Malta
• Iceland Express
• Sterling
• Vola quasi gratis
• Wegolo
• Carpatair

A cople of airlines from the first batch doesn't seem to exist anymore; either they stopped working altogether or were assimilated by other airlines. In the new batch there are a lot of east-west connecting airlines: Airlines, which connect eastern and western Europe. As the european union grows, so does the cheap airlines business I guess.

A nice effort is done by Openjet: it lists all routes for the following airlines (already mentioned above:
Basiq Air (HV),
BMIbaby (WW),
EasyJet (U2),
GermanWings (4U),
Hapag-Lloyd Express (X3),
MyTravelLite (VZ),
Volareweb (VA).
Stopping here first is probably a good idea to have an overview. But don't forget to check RyanAir, which probably has the most (interesting) routes, as well!

Last modified: 18:54 15/Feb/07 |•| What does all this mean?