I'm always on the hunt for a good airfare deal. I track deals almost obsessively as soon as the need to hit the road again starts to creep up in the back of my mind. I horde my award points to use them wisely on dream trips, created a custom tracker for all airfare deals on Slack, and a bunch of other tricks that I've written about here before.
There has been a recent influx of budget airlines extending service from their usual European routes to the States. The first one that really caught my eye for being extremely inexpensive was WOW air. The day that they began selling tickets I immediately booked one and went to Copenhagen for a long weekend. I had to book the ticket a year in advance to get the advertised rate of $99 each way ($272 total) and fly out of Boston since they didn't have service to New York yet (they added routes from Newark in mid-2016). Despite having to take a bus to Boston at the time it seemed well worth it to get to go so far with so little money.
The things that they don't tell you about budget airlines like WOW air is that everything costs more. The weight limit for a carry-on is 22lbs (10kg). If your bag weighs even an ounce more then that you have to pay a fee of $70 at the gate. Want to check a bag? That'll be another $60, $99 if you do it at the gate. Want food? That's $15. By the time you're done if you're not careful you can end up spending just as much if not much more then a "regular" or non-budget airline for the same trip.
Weighing the carry-on bag is the trickiest part. On my experience with WOW I was forced to pay a fee of $75 going to Copenhagen. I was so mad, mostly because my travel companion didn't get stopped to pay for his bag which was significantly larger then mine. On the way back I was determined not to pay the fee again so I took out my camera, electronics, toiletries, anything that I had brought with me that wasn't my clothes. Since it was only a weekend everything was packed in my 25-liter LL Bean backpack, which is why I thought that I could get away with it the first time. My pockets were filled with the contents of my bags and I stood there daring the check-in counter to put me on the scale along with my now obviously empty bag. The bag passed though, successfully under the weight limit. I was terrified at the gate that they'd ask me to weigh my bag again but thankfully I was able to walk on board without any problems.
I've seen WOW sales come up quite often in my trip searches but I have yet to fly with them again. I almost pulled the trigger on a flight to Israel, a place that's really high on my "want" list of future trips. For a trip like that though I'd want two carry-ons or a carry-on and a checked back and when you add all those things the $400 ticket is suddenly $700 and for about $50 more then that at the time I could fly with an airline that doesn't weigh my carry-on bag. Not really budget friendly is it?
0 comments:
Post a Comment