Monday, September 14, 2009

Cheap Flight - Too Good to be True?

I am trying to plan out my vacation to Italy.  One of the hard parts about the trip is that we want to go from Southern Italy to Northern Italy.  Taking a train could take several hours and sitting in a train is not my idea of a fun vacation.  So we decided to look online to see if there were any cheap flights from Naples to Italy.  I figured there might be some sort of deal like Southwest Airlines which offers really cheap flights within California.

So I went to Expedia to search for a deal.  I was not really expecting anything really cheap but figured it was at least worth a search.  What I found I still can't quite believe.  I bought two tickets from Naples to Italy for $67.  That is not $67 each.  That is $67 TOTAL.  What seems even odder is that the taxes and fees for the flight are $65.  That means the tickets were $1 each!  The tickets are from what seem to be a reputable airline, Meridiana, so I'm at a loss to understand how a flight can be so cheap.  To compare, every other flight listed on Expedia with other carriers were for $330 each.

So what do you think?  Am I going to show up at the airport only to fly I'm going to fly in the luggage compartment?

1 comment:

  1. You will be fine. If you check out Ryanair, you'll see that they have tons of routes for 1 Euro or 1 Pound.

    I'm not sure how it works, but when I was backpacking in Europe somebody mentioned that these planes take a bunch of cargo but if it's a passenger plane, there is some sort of tax/cost loophole. Completely unverified explanation....

    Depending on where you are going, it can sometimes be more efficient to take a train. If I remember correctly, the Rome - Naples train is something like 5 hours. This is downtown to downtown service. These $1 flights tend to fly into the airports that are in the outskirts of town or 1 town over. Buses/Taxi, security, waiting at the gate etc. adds up.

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