How to avoid paying hidden charges for Budget Airlines
Tuesday, June 11, 2013 @ 1:23 AM


I dont know whether is it a good or bad thing, but many of my friends would often ask me how to buy air tickets with budget carriers so as to avoid all the sneaky hidden charges. hahas. This shows how big a cheapo-nana i am in their eyes. well.. i shall look at it from a positive point of view that at least i can help them on saving quite a substantial amount of money!

The thing about budget airlines is that they charge for ALMOST EVERYTHING extra. People need to understand that budget airlines can only provide you with such low fares because they cut costs by not providing any extra services other than your air plane seat. So people should stop expecting too much. Of course certain standard of service can be still expected but dont go about expecting a SIA kind of service when you are only paying a fraction of the price. Lets be realistic, you have to pay for what you get.

I once read an article online that on some budget carrier, even when you would like to borrow a pen from the stewards/stewardess, they were trained in such that they should not at anytime lend a pen to any passenger. Instead, they should let the passenger know that they can purchase a pen from them at $2 from them. I think is kind of extreme for that airline to do so but oh well, business is business. They do exploit any opportunity for them to earn a few more dollars from the budget travelers.

A few things that you can save on when booking tickets with budget airlines:

Rule #1) Do not use any of their seat selection
Jetstar charges $5 per person per trip if you would like to select your preferred seat. So if you are booking a return ticket, it would costs you $10 in total just for you to choose your desired seat (excludes their priority seating areas)

I would simply press, "SKIP SEAT SELECTION"

Most of the time (for me, 100%) the airline would allocate side-by-side seats for you and your travel partner even when you don't purchase their seat selection. The only disadvantage that you may suffer is that the row that you will be allocated to when you check-in might be at like the last few rows of the air plane. I am willing to settle for this trade off because sitting at the last few rows is not a huge problem for me. This would help to save $20 for 2 person (return trip). So yup!

Rule #2) Travel insurance
I don't purchase travel insurance that the airlines tie up with, but will purchase it separately with AIG or DBS. They sometimes have promotion for their travel insurance. For example, during some period of time, DBS was having 40% off their travel insurance. So its really cheaper to purchase directly from DBS.

In addition, for short trips such as BKK (anything less than 5 days and 3 hours away), I would forgo travel insurance all together. I take on some risks when I do this but so far... I am 100% safe! Thank God for that. So its really up to your risk appetite. But of course, travel insurance is really useful if the airline is known for long hours of delay! So it can be said to be better to be safe than sorry.

Just a side note: Your plane must be delayed for more than i think 4 or 6 hours before any travel insurance would reimburse you anything. So dont foolishly think that if your plane is delayed for 1 hour, you can get any form of compensation. Do read the fine prints before purchasing any travel insurance.

Rule #3: Airline meals 
Need me to say, by default, no meals are provided for. So if you would any food while you are on board the plane, choosing to add on food items BEFORE departure can help you to save too!

Rule #4: Baggage Weight 
One smart way of avoiding payment for checked-in baggage is to decide how many kilos do you really need for that holiday with you and your friends.

For me, if I know i am travelling to a shopping paradise like Bangkok, I would bring only a few pieces of my essential clothing to last me through 1-2days. So, I know my luggage weight while taking the flight to Bangkok would be way lesser than the minimum 10kg. So gather your friends and ask how many kilos do all of you need in total. If lets say you would need at most 15kg, than simply select 15kg baggage checked-in option for 1 for the passenger and leave the other passenger as zero. You can simply combine all your luggage weight under that 1 passenger name. Do the same for the returning flight. This would help to save alot! Because you would not need to purhcase 10kg individually (thats the minimum) and each of you have only used up 6kg of the maximum checked-in baggage limit.

**Rule #5) Credit Card Administration charges 
This is one charge that many fell for. Budget carrier charges a hefty $12 per passenger name if you would like to use a credit card to pay for your tickets. Yes, per passenger name. So even if you booked 10 passengers in a single transaction, you would need to pay $120 in total. Its really crazy. In order to avoid this, please select the option of "Payment via 7-eleven/AXS/SAM Machine" or in general OFFLINE PAYMENT. Paying your air tickets through any of these offline method allows you to pay for your tickets for FREE. means, ZERO admin charges. Which allows you to save ALOT. Just simply follow the instructions given by the website on how to go about paying for them will do! its really simple!

For the case of Jetstar, they would direct you to the next page where you would see the full summary of flight information together with a booking reference number. Note down the booking reference number and the total amount payable. Proceed to any AXS or 7-eleven within 24 hours, quote the booking reference number and total amount payable. Make payment like how you do so for any other biils. Viola! You are done! Jetstar would send you your booking confirmation within 24hours usually to the email address provided.

So hope all these tips are helpful for budget travelers or people looking at saving on such "useless" charges! This would help save ALOT on your air ticket and those savings can be better spent at your travel destination instead! :)

Labels: budget travel, tips, travel