The Real Cost of Flying Cheap

In Europe, I found countless discount airlines offering to fly me around for pocket change. It was only after booking my ticket that reality struck.

Nearly every college student about to embark on the infamous study abroad experience has, before leaving US soil, already devised and – somewhat haphazardly – planned out how they intend on bopping from London to Paris, over to Munich, around Switzerland and Northern Italy, and down the Mediterranean Coast, eventually ending up in Mykonos… or Barcelona… or somewhere around there.  And no, they do not expect such travel to wreak irreconcilable havoc on their bank accounts.  So – apart from a shameless student’s readiness to sleep on airport floors or sneak onto a 4-hour train from Milan to Rome and hide for the duration of the trip in the bathroom – how exactly do they plan on doing it all so cheaply?

“RyanAir!”

I kid you not, virtually every American under the age of 25 readying themselves for a jaunt around Europe has heard of RyanAir – a supposedly cheap discount airline that all but gives away tickets from one exotic destination to the next.

Before heading to Paris this past year, I myself envisioned low-cost weekend trips to Dublin, Zurich, Amsterdam, Prague, Lisbon … you name it, I intended to go there, all courtesy of RyanAir.  Upon arriving in Paris, I discovered – to my amazement and delight – that there were countless other discount airlines offering to pilot me around Western Europe for pocket change! Hooray!

Within a few days, the first trip was planned.  I was to fly from Paris to Milan, where I would satisfy my low-cost endeavors by – of course – taking an obscenely cheap airline and staying with an Italian friend in the area for four days.  It was only after booking the €70 roundtrip ticket that my joyful delusion subsided…

I noticed that I wasn’t departing out of the metro-accessible, familiar Charles de Gaulle airport, but rather, Paris Beauvais.  After consulting a French friend, I discovered that Beauvais is not a major aiport and is thus neither metro accessible nor conveniently located.  My friend suggested that I avoid taking an expensive cab in favor of the €15 bus.

“Where do I get this bus?”

“Not sure. Somewhere by the metro in Neuilly-sur-Seine.”

Neuilly-sur-Siene is outside of Paris, at the very end of Metro line 1, thereby necessitating that I take a 40-minute metro ride from my apartment, switching lines three times.  It wasn’t really all that bad (sure beat taking an €80 cab) until I exited the metro and found myself in the middle of a busy roundabout, with no indication of where I was supposed to get this bus.

After a few minutes of dodging traffic and frantically looking for an indication of le bus, I found it … behind the big cement building on the other side of the intersection.  Thankfully, I had the rare foresight to leave 3 hours in advance, because the bus was 15 minutes late and the ride was another 45 minutes.

Needless to say, Paris Beauvais resembled more of an aircraft hangar than an actual airport, and was still somehow no less simple to navigate.

Despite there being 20 check-in counters and a crowded lobby, only one was functioning.  After another 20 minutes of waiting, I finally reached the counter, where I was informed that because I was not an EU citizen, I needed to go wait in “that line around the corner” with my boarding pass.  However, because I didn’t have prior access to a printer, I didn’t have my boarding pass and just assumed I would be able to get it at check-in… like every other airline in the world.

“You will need to pay €30 for your boarding pass. Then you must go wait in that line to get your passport and boarding pass stamped.” … What?!?

Livid, I reluctantly handed over my debit card, got my boarding pass, and made my way over to the other line with the rest of the disenchanted Americans.

While waiting in line, a man in a funny hat came up to me and insisted that my bag was too grand to carry on.

“But it’s regulation size!” I insisted, to which he responded, “We have different regulations.” Of course you do.

“So what do I do now???”

“You will need to pay €40 to check your bag at this window.”

So basically, after spending the majority of my day in lines or in transit, and after literally spending double what I had intended (in February, before the euro fell, €70 was roughly $92 – hardly pocket change to be spent unexpectedly), I got on the plane… where things still somehow managed to get worse.

Because I was at the tail end of the boarding cue, and because there are no assigned seats on these discount airlines, I had to all but wrestle an aggressive Spanish woman for a seat.  For the duration of the flight, the stewardess droned over the loudspeaker, advertising things like perfume, head massagers and smokeless cigarettes – which, incidentally, the passengers are allowed to smoke in flight... So of course, the Frenchman next to me ordered a €10 pack to enjoy during the one-hour and forty-five minute flight.

After landing and having to take a bus, a train, and the metro to the center of Milan, I finally met up with my friend, who then decided to inform me that “it’s worth it to pay a little extra and fly with a legitimate airline… these discount airlines are impossible!”