A Canadian in Sweden

Buyer beware

I just spent a few hours on the web tracking down cheap flights to go visit my aunt and grandparents in Switzerland. This process gets very complicated very quickly when you need to deal with up to four different airlines, two of which (easyjet and Ryanair) are budget airlines. Living in Umeå, you have no choice but to start your journey with either SAS or FlyNordic because they are the only two airlines with routes up here. From Stockholm, RyanAir operates flights to about 10 different cities. However, they fly out of a small airport 1 hour south of Stockholm which is at least a 1h30 voyage from Arlanda airport where the SAS and RyanAir flights arrive. Of course, none of the cities RyanAir flys to from Stockholm are anywhere near Switzerland. In fact, RyanAir does not fly to Switzerland at all from any destination. EasyJet does, though. Unfortunately, the only airport that both EasyJet and RyanAir fly into together is Stanstead in London. The early RyanAir flight from Stockholm arrives in time for the EasyJet flight to Basle, but the return trip doesn't work. So I would need to get a hotel in London overnight and catch the RyanAir...

You get the idea. Although the RyanAir and Easyjet tickets were ridiculously cheap as usual, when you factor in the cost of at least two overnight layovers Stockholm and London), plus ground transport between airports, the total cost was more than just taking a full fare SAS flight which would get me from Umeå to Zurich in about 5 hours with little to no aggravation created by having to shlepp my way between airports in cities I have never been to before.

Rule of thumb: if a trip requires more than 1 low cost airline and involves more than 4 legs (return), it is probably cheaper to just go with the regular carrier.

Or walk.

posted by Jeff @ 12:54 PM