Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Movie Popcorn

I've just booked a flight for Monday night from Birmingham to Glasgow with BMI Baby. BMI baby are the 'low cost airline with tiny fares'.

(For the record, I've got justification for not taking the train. It's just too tedious for here.)

The propaganda was correct, the fares themselves were pretty good - £45.99 to go out, £25.99 to come back. It was what followed that became close to criminal.

The taxes: £18.95 from Birmingham, £20.00 from Glasgow. I can let these slide as BMI doesn't charge these
To choose your seats: To choose your own seat costs £6.50. For the extra legroom seats, well these cost another £12.50
To check luggage in: £9.98 per bag. (Five bags = £50)
To use their insurance (ticked by default): £6.50
To use their lounge in Birmingham: £15.00. I'm drinking this dry.
To use a Visa debit card to pay for the fare: £1.99. If you were foolish enough to use American Express, you'd be paying £4.99.

I'm sure they're right, the fares are tiny. But those extras are the size of Andre the Giant.


2 comments:

Rhjs Lewjs said...

All of those are things that I don't want to pay for (including the tax). I can wear all my clothes on top of each other and put my toothbrush in my pocket (I have heaps of pockets when I'm wearing all my clothes). So if I can have a reduced fare by offloading costs for services I don't use to the customers who do I think that's a great thing. I also think that passengers should be weighed and there should be a charge per KG, because it is a proven fact that aircraft fuel consumption is directly proportional to payload weight.


I also think there should be a 20% fee for people that want air miles, rising to 50% if the recipient wants to rave on and on to people about where they went on their air miles, or how hard it is to book a flight with them.

Is there a charge for a visa credit card?

I suspect that you are under a cloud of environmental approvalism if you fear having to give a justification for your transport method choices :-).

richard said...

The only way to pay 'for free' is to use a visa electron card. I believe that they decided that since having one of those was so pitiful they've cut their owners a little slack.

I (well, work) bought the lounge pass. It's gonna be dinner for me.

Environmental approvalism, huh? Perhaps I could have just said that I took the train from Glasgow to Oxford last Sunday and it took bloody ages, was crowded and was late. Or I could have just said, I'm flying, and don't judge me!

I'm betting I end up sitting beside the fat man and his screaming baby.