I booked some tickets through the Orange Monster's web site earlier this year and it was anything but Easy to navigate through to the end of the purchase without buying or getting conned into one of the many unwanted extras....

And if you board at an airport where you're bussed out to the plane, your priority boarding means nothing more than first on the bus - not first on the plane.... Is that a con or not????

Still I suppose you get what you pay for, but if you miss the opening specials when they publish thei new schedules, they're anything but cheap....

Bet they lose my luggage for posting this...

I wish the opt-in spam rules had been an enforceable Regulation, rather than a toothless Directive that UK.gov has no interest in applying, and the Data Protection Commissioner has no intention of enforcing.

I'm not sure how they can say they are complying with the "opt-in" approach! Its surely just an excuse to flog you insurance at every opportunity just like the mobile phone operators used to (and probably still) do!

I've just booked my regular flight with flybe. Insurance (£4.49) is ticked on by default, as is baggage (twice, at £7.99!! each way). It also costs £4 just to pay them by credit card. They do allow free payment by Electron, but I've never found out how to get one of these and flybe won't tell me.

In fact flybe won't tell me anything at all now, since I'm now banned from contacting their customer support for pointing out how they could improve their service so many times.

At least they don't charge £6 just to check in, as bmibaby do.

Posted AC because there's no competition on my route and I have to fly with them.

Remember - if you have to cancel or don't take a flight you can claim the tax back as it is not the property of the airline - they just collect it for the Government and the airport .......you weren't taxed because you didn't fly.

Good if the fair is 99p and the tax £40

Paris cos she is on special offer all the time

I'd actually prefer the days of full-fare flights.

You just paid and then you flew....

No bullshit.

I booked a couple of days ago with bmibaby to Ireland. There site has insurance already ticked as well. Deselecting this option causes a pop-up to appear that is worded to make it sound like the world will end if you don't pick their insurance. They also have the additional 6.99 charge for manual check-in although this falls to 3.99 if pre-booked online or nothing for online check-in. Go figure.

They also charge to pay by credit/debit card but this charge does not apply if you pay by a bmibaby Mastercard. Funny I thought that the credit card companies charged for every transaction and it didn't matter whose card you had. At least its not as bad as the ridiculous Ruinair "handling charge" that adds a booking fee per-person per-ticket (i.e. each way). For all Ruinair's headline figures of £1 or £0 tickets it still always works out £20 cheaper to fly bmibaby to Ireland than to fly on Ruinair and you don't have the rugby scrum to get seats on the aircraft.

In my experience and to my amusement at Bergamo... sorry, Milan... Ryanair send the Priority Boarding passengers on a separate bus to the aircraft ahead of the masses - so you do get to choose your seat even if you are bussed to the airport. Perhaps this doesn't happen at every airport where Ryanair uses remote stands.

Airlines should be required by law to let passengers reserve seats at no extra charge. Ryanair encourages its customers to act like wild animals at the airport, to the detriment of those of us who are still civilised enough to know how to queue.