The MacCorquodale Castle

We’ve all heard of the European discount airlines such as RyanAir and EasyJet. These business models have always been somewhat of a mystery to me. How do you sell plane tickets for as low as €1 a person and stick around to tell the story? It’s always been clear that there’s some overselling going on (I’ve heard numbers upwards of 30%), but that’s still a far cry from covering the operating costs of the aircraft, let alone general overhead.

As I’ve been planning the details for our spring vacation to Greece, I’ve been introduced to the world of baggage fees. For the purposes of this post, I’ve converted all of the weights from KG to LBS and Euros to Canadian Dollars (CAD).

Let’s start with RyanAir, arguably the cheapest European operator:

• Included in your ticket is an allowance for one bag, weighing up to 33 LBS
• For $50, you can check a second bag, weighing up to 33 LBS
• If either bag exceeds 33 LBS, an overage charge of $15 per LBS is applied

The message? Don’t show up at the airport with your 50 LBS bag, or you’ll pay over $250 in overage charges.

For comparison purposes, let’s take a look at EasyJet, another discount European operator:

• No bag allowance is included in the purchase of your ticket
• Up to two bags, weighing 44 LBS each, may be purchased for $16 each
• If either bag exceeds 44 LBS, an overage charge of $8 per LBS is applied
• Regardless of what you pay, no single bag can exceed 70 LBS

If you’re travelling lightly, these limitations won’t cause a problem, but the key is to carefully plan and manage the weight of your bags or you could be stuck paying hundreds of dollars to catch that €1 flight.

That said, the fact that these airlines operate top notch aircraft (so I’ve been told), plus the higher cost of fuel in Europe, makes it difficult for me to believe that these operators are profitable simply off of the expectation that enough passengers will poorly plan their baggage requirements.

If there is anyone out there with additional knowledge of the European discount airline operating model, I would love to hear from you.

I’ve uploaded a couple pictures taken while attempting to snowboard in Fernie.

All in all it was a very good trip. I sure am glad we didn’t go for any longer! After just one day I could hardly move… talk about being out of shape! I do feel the mountains forced me to improve quite a bit.

We stayed about an hour outside of Fernie at Rob’s parents mountain house. It’s a nice bungalo at the end of a road in the middle of nowhere nestled at the foot of the mountains. It was a great place to come back to, relax, build a winter mountain fire, and watch episodes of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm on the projector!

Hopefully we’ll get out there again sometime soon. That’s all for now.