Wednesday 8 August 2012

What do your cheap air tickets include?


When you buy a flight ticket, you pay a price for some set of services which the airlines will provide you. What are these services for which the airline issues you the tickets? Well, taking you to the destination is definitely the main purpose and since you would be using its seats for seating and fuel for flying, the ticket would definitely include the charges of these services. In the earlier days, the price of one ticket would also buy you complimentary meals, allow for some free hand-held and check-in baggage to be taken on board and even provide you free in-flight entertainment. Of course, there were certain charges which were levied as extras but these formed a minor part of the overall airline revenue.

The present day airlines, and chiefly the low-cost carriers, which work on the premise of providing cheap air tickets to the customers, reduce the prices of their flight tickets but charge you for all small things which are offered free on other airlines. So, you might end up paying more for some special location seats, buying more leg space, buying meals, carrying even a single kilogram of luggage and for most of other things. Add to it the surcharges and taxes and the total cost of flight becomes too higher than your expectation. You might wonder that if you have to end up paying for all these things, then what do the prices of cheap air tickets include?

The trend of providing low cost air ticket booking and charging for everything else which has been initiated by the low cost carriers but is slowly being adopted by other airlines as well. But, airlines do not describe what are these prices meant for? If the extras are required by people in-flight and these are being charged for separately, then cheap air tickets is actually a myth since the cost of total travel will increase. 

No comments: