Now here is something useful from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (The CAA). A list of how airlines will get you. But more importantly, they will be keeping the list up to date.
The list covered covers many of the major UK based airlines in a comparison table.
It covers the cost of taking hold luggage on board, having an in-flight meal and reserving specific seats is all included, as well as a range of other optional charges that airlines may apply.
You can view the list at http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?pageid=12677, with a PDF to it with the most recent month (time of publishing.. February)
The Transport Secretary Justine Greening said:
“I hope this new information from the CAA will help, which is why we are legislating to give the CAA even more powers to ensure transparency for consumers. Ultimately, however, it’s time that airlines were far clearer cut with passengers about these add-on charges in the first place.”
And whilst airlines seem to be incompetent at doing this themselves and making it easy, someone else seems to be able to doing this. And it’s not just the low cost carriers at fault here – some of the bigger carriers such as British Airways, as well as some of the Long Haul Carriers who’s prices are less than easy to find.
And this has been LONG COMING in my opinion. VERY LONG COMING. And very useful. Whilst it doesn’t cover such things as elite benefits, it’s a very good start.
Certainly if I was a UK based frequent traveller, I’d be bookmarking this. I’ll be reviewing this as well when new editions come out.
I hope this doesn’t give ideas to some of the more reasonable airlines.
I concur. But it is darn good to see some transparency at last…