Expect to pay more from next Tuesday when you book a Ryanair flight. There is a new levy/surcharge/fee to cover what it calls “the EU’s new eco-looney ETS tax.”

Last week we told you how airlines et al had been ticked off for the silly surcharges that they imposed on people paying by credit card.

No, not on clothes or beds or sofas. I’m talking about the holiday sales. At the moment airlines, hotels, travel agents and tour operators have them in abundance. But will they make us book?

By the end of next year the government intends banning excessive/hidden fees charged by airlines (indeed by any company) where payment is made by credit or debit cards. On the face of it this is good news. Look deeper and it might be so great.
Why my scepticism?

Passengers planning to fly with budget airline Ryanair in summer 2012 will need to travel light. Michael O’Leary’s no frills airline has revealed that it will be increasing its online baggage fees by 25 percent

CD-Traveller tells you what’s hot and what’s not in the travel world. This month, we’ll be booking the bus to Scotland while crossing our fingers that the situation improves quickly in Cairo

So Pan Am – BBC 2’s new American airline drama that has been billed as ‘Mad Men with wings’ – is back on the box tonight.

I thought I was dreaming a minute ago. On BBC’s Breakfast, Michael O’Leary from Ryanair and Willie Walsh of the holding company that owns British Airways and Iberia were standing side-by-side having a go at the government about APD.

The low budget airline that everyone loves to loathe is to get rid of a number of loos in each and every one of their aircrafts. Going forward, Ryanair planes will have only one loo on board, in a bid to make room for six extra seats.

CD-Traveller tells you what’s hot and what’s not in the travel world. This month, it’s good news for Glasgow and Gothenburg and gourmands in London, but we’ve lost trust in TripAdvisor…

Meeting in London this week were representatives from low cost airlines across the world. They converged for the 8th Annual World Low Cost Airlines Congress. Low cost airlines like Ryanair, easyJet, Air Berlin, Norwegian, Wizz, Germanwings have enabled fares to drop and, more importantly, allowed holidaymakers to travel to places they wouldn’t have considered.

Is Ryanair the most repulsive airline around? Not content with charging passengers to check in bags, in addition to asking them to cough up for food and drink plus pay to use onboad toilets, Michael O’Leary’s airline has this week launched its own prepay card.

No-frills airlines have opened up opportunities for us to visit countries we might not have otherwise thought about. Take Estonia for example. Before the no-frills airlines went there, not that many people travelled from Ireland or the UK to the country. Now they have just announced that there has been a 90% increase in visitors going there.

Air Passenger Duty was introduced in 1994. On every airline ticket purchased it is payable and it is the duty of the airline to pass this tax onto the government when the passenger flies. But what happens if the passenger doesn’t fly?

A couple of days ago, Ryanair announced their profit for the first three months of the year. The bit of their announcement that I thought was interesting was the fact that they thought that their fares would rise by 12%. Am I being perverse in sensing that this may be good news?

Are the costs the same between airlines? CD-Traveller picks one route to Tenerife to find out.

My apologies. This story is two-weeks old but I missed it. Mea culpa. A reader spotted a press release on the Ryanair website and it really is just too good not to share with you.

Sometimes you might be forgiven for thinking that the basic price of an airline ticket is peanuts. The add-ons are those little bits here and there that suddenly glare out at you on the final page and cause you to take a deep breath and say, “but the fare was only a tenner!” when I started. Now one of the biggest airline ticketing systems providers, Amadeus, has completed some research which shows that last year these add-ons were worth €15.11 billion.

Despite the volcanic ash problems, the winter weather that caused closure at some airports and the economic downturn, Ryanair still managed to increase profits by 26% to £348 million.
How?

t seemed quite simple when I got up this morning. Flights into Scottish airports would be disrupted due to the ash cloud emanating from the Icelandic volcano we can pronounce, Grimsvotn, and spread southwards.
Except that isn’t what’s happening. Some airlines are flying and some have been advised (“ordered” seems to be the real meaning of the word for Ryanair by the Irish Aviation Authority) not to.

No this isn’t a volcanic ash story. There are enough of those around today with the media generally adopting the view that “here we go again.” Flights being cancelled to and from Scotland and the north east of England but at least we can pronounce the name of this Icelandic volcano.
No, this is about a remark in Ryanair’s annual report that it will be more profitable to ground a third of its planes next winter than fly them? Can this be true

CD Traveller tells you what’s hot in the travel world. This month the Turks and Caicos, camping and the Spanish Costas are all having a moment while sleeping pilots and towel thieves get the red arrow

When is an airline fare increase not an increase? When it is an administrative charge because, theoretically, you needn’t pay it.
Have you ever heard such a load of old horsefeathers? It’s a blatant increase. The perpetrator of this slight-of-hand this time is easyJet which has nearly trebled the cost of using a debit card from £3.50 last September to £8 today. For credit cards it charges £12.95. Why such a charge?

I am surprised. For the second time in a year I find myself in agreement with Michael O’Leary the chief executive of Ryamair in welcoming the cut in airline passenger tax in Ireland. From St David’s Day, March 1st (why not St Patrick’s Day?) the Irish government is reducing what they call the Air Travel Tax (The British equivalent is APD, Air Passenger Duty) from €10 to €3. However there is a catch. It may be only temporary as they have announced that it is only temporary until the end of 2011. Ryanair said that tourism will continue to be strangled by the tax and called on the UK government to reduce its APD.

This is the name of a website rather than my personal view. Set up 3 years ago by, yes you’ve guessed it, a disgruntled passenger, you will be surprised to hear that the airline objected to it. And yesterday, Ryanair succeeded in persuading the arbitrator of web domains, Nominet, that www.ihateryanair.com should cease because the passenger was making money from the airline’s trademarked name. Money! He earned £332 from sponsored links on the web pages.
Is this fair?

We all remember the closure for a week of our airspace caused by the ash spewing from the Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajoekull. I was stuck twice as a result of the fun and games so had to resort to the train to return. Luckily I was only in Glasgow on each occasion unlike people trapped around the world who were well and truly stuck. Under EU law, airlines are responsible for compensation due to delay and cancellation. And as we know, Ryanair strongly objected but eventually gave way, KLM is rumoured still to be refusing to pay and many airlines are unhappy. Lobbying is going on behind the scenes to get the EU law changed.

So how to get to Indonesia reasonably cheaply at a time when fuel costs have rocketed, passenger demand depressed with global recessions and airlines racking up multi million dollar losses? Fares have risen by close to 50% in many cases from 2006/07 especially on longer haul routes with low competition.

No not the planes, but rather the PR department of an airline whose ability to create stories and repackage news is not even surpassed by politicians.
You will remember that for the summer season, Ryanair raised the cost of hold baggage to €20 for most bags and €30 for heavy ones. This was to last for July and August and return to the €15 level in September. Just after the school holidays and the busy summer travel season meant there was less opportunity for removing cash from passengers, but that is probably just coincidence.