Flying low-cost to Eastern Europe: Take expert advice seriously

By Stefan Korshak Mar 23, 2010, 16:03 GMT

Kiev/Dortmund - Minimizing discomfort whilst flying low-cost in Europe can be challenging even for experienced travellers, but special care is needed if the flight goes very far east, tourist industry experts say.

'What might go wrong in the West is more likely in Eastern Europe,' said Marina Polotsko, an agent for the Ukrainian travel agency Pilot. 'It's not just buyer beware, it's buyer be ready to deal with whatever happens - on his own.'

No frills-flights to Eastern Europe are, on the face of it, a budget traveller no-brainer, combining a cheap plane ticket with destinations like Chisinau or Skopje, where a cost-conscious tourist can eat, drink, and even go clubbing for days at a time for the price of a single night in a London or Paris hotel.

But reaching Eastern Europe's promised land of reasonable hotel rates and dollar-a-litre draught beer can be tricky, and the air leg most of all, travel professionals warn.

More than 100 budget airlines are registered to operate in Europe and most of them fly at least sometimes to the east, according to the low-cost travel website www.attitudetravel.com.

But if the traveller wants to find the best connection - not always easy since no-frills airlines generally don't offer them - the customer must do his own homework, travel professionals said.

'According to my information, 18 or 19 airlines are flying into Bulgaria right now and it's easy enough for me to see in my computer when they come and go,' said Rozita Mitkova, a Varna, Bulgaria, travel agent.

'Figuring out what connecting flights are available, in 18 or 19 regional European airports, is not so easy; these little airlines don't always co-operate and there is no single database,' she said. 'Often, the client needs to find out about connections himself.'

Regional carrier choice is dizzying. AirBaltic, at one end of the scale, connects fliers via its Riga, Latvia, main hub to 16 cities in Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine. Unlike most lower cost carriers, the airline will check your luggage through to a connecting flight.

But the market also contains companies like Bucharest-based Blue Air which, except for Romanian destinations and a single flight to Warsaw, operates its aircraft exclusively on West European routes, according to the company website.

Travel agents interviewed strongly recommended either buying one's tickets outside Eastern Europe, or if one is in the region, paying a fee to have an agency do it.

'The less you use a credit card online in our country (Ukraine), the better,' Polotsko said. 'Our hackers are very competent and not every internet connection is safe.'

Airport transfer is a widespread hurdle, especially outside the EU, experts said. Practically every city in the former Soviet Union - most notoriously, Moscow - lacks easy transfer to the city centre, leaving the hapless tourist in the hands of a 'taxi mafia,' whose unregulated cab fares can exceed the price of the plane ticket.

Weather is another travel issue peculiar to Eastern Europe, with snow and ice shutting down even central airports for a day or more during the winter, and fog capable of playing havoc with regional airport connections throughout the autumn and spring.

But the real problem, travel agents said, is that killing time is not equal in all airports. The stranded East European air traveller usually has access to just the basics: a relatively clean floor, generic seating, a bit of high-priced food, plenty of duty-free liquor and little else.

A family travelling by low-cost air in Eastern Europe would be well-advised to carry along entertainment materials for the kids, travel experts said, to fill the down time.

'The movie theatres like in Frankfurt (airport), the children's playground at Schipol (Amsterdam airport), you're not going to find those things in our region,' said Liga Rozenberga, a Riga-based travel agent.

The foot race for unreserved seats, common to budget air travel across the continent, is a regular event in the East as well, and in former Communist nations, forcing one's way onto an airplane can become a battle of physical size and elbows.

But even the toughest load of East European budget air travellers will, almost always, shift seats so parents can sit with their children or so a couple can sit together. If a single passenger happens to be reluctant, stewardesses are quite capable of using sharp language to shift him - as was witnessed by a dpa reporter on a recent Wizz Air Kiev-Dortmund flight.

'Frankly, the cheaper airlines around here are harder to fly on than the big ones,' Rozenberga said. 'But if you prepare, you can have an acceptable flight.'