Criticism
Some elements of the low-cost model have been subject to criticism by governments and regulators, and in the UK in particular the issue of "Unbundling" of ancillary charges by both low-cost carriers and other airlines (showing airport fees, taxes as separate charges rather than as part of the advertised fare) to make the "headline fare" appear lower has resulted in enforcement action. Believing that this amounts to a misleading approach to pricing, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in February 2007 gave all carriers and travel companies three months to include all fixed non-optional costs in their basic advertised prices. Although the full service carriers had complied within the specified timescales, the low-cost carriers have been less successful in this respect, leading to the prospect of legal action by the OFT.
Many low-cost carriers show a zero cost for some flights. Most charge additional fees for airport check-in, baggage check-in, 'handling charges', seat allocation and credit card processing. These charges are non-refundable even in the case of cancellation by the airline. Ryanair requires that passengers' airport purchases fit within their carry-on bag. "Hidden" charging has been satirised by the vocal trio Fascinating Aïda in a song called "Cheap Flights", describing a fictional flight from London Stansted Airport to Tralee in Ireland, that was especially popular at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2011.
Read more about this topic: Low-cost Carrier
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“As far as criticism is concerned, we don’t resent that unless it is absolutely biased, as it is in most cases.”
—John Vorster (1915–1983)
“To be just, that is to say, to justify its existence, criticism should be partial, passionate and political, that is to say, written from an exclusive point of view, but a point of view that opens up the widest horizons.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)