Thinking about travelling on super budget airlines? Think again.
The northern hemisphere snow season is close, so here’s a friendly tip that I HIGHLY recommend you take: Do not travel on super budget airlines.
What counts as super budget airlines?
There are 3 main tiers of airlines.
– Regular priced airlines. These are your standard fare airlines such as Air New Zealand, Air Canada or British Airways
– Budget priced airlines. These are the budget divisions of the bigger airlines and medium to large sized independent budget airlines. They include airlines such as Virgin America
– Super budget priced airlines. These are stand alone tiny airlines that offer insanely cheap flights, well below that of even prices from budget airlines. A good example of this is Tiger Airways.
Why shouldn’t I travel on super budget airlines?
Here’s just a few reasons why you might want to avoid them. I’ll start with the biggest problem.
1) You may end up without a flight
A lot of these super budget airlines operate by taking bookings for flights first, then only running the flight if they get enough bookings. This basically means that if they don’t get enough bookings, they’ll cancel your flight.
The problem here is that they don’t always give you lots of notice. Or even worse, it’s not unheard of to turn up on the day of your flight and find out that your flight was cancelled last night and you weren’t notified. Many a customer has been stranded by super budget airlines who have randomly cancelled their flights without notice.
Not only will you be out of a flight, but you’ll probably be forced to fork over a full priced ticket with another airline if you want to continue your journey.
2) They run ridiculous transfer times
Because they only run their flights when they get enough customers, they usually end up scheduling flights and transfers at ridiculous hours. You may find yourself arriving at 4am in the morning and having to wait until 4am the next day to catch your transfer flight. That’s if your transfer wasn’t cancelled or anything like that.
3) They have horrible, horrible customer service
Part of offering ridiculously cheap flights is that they don’t pay much to provide good customer service. This means they’re usually horribly understaffed and you won’t find much help if you get into any problems with your flights.
So please, do yourself a favour and don’t travel on super budget airlines. There’s nothing wrong with budget airlines, but don’t go lower than that if you want to avoid having a horrible travel experience.