March 14th - Budget Airlines
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 14 March 2022
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Budget airlines are hoping to recover from the huge impact of the coronavirus pandemic by offering some incredible deals on flights. In fact, I've discovered that is even possible to travel around the world on a budget. Here is my itinerary for a round-the-world trip that takes advantage of the best flight deals being offered by the world's low-cost airlines.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape or actively making plans for one. |
| 0:14.0 | I've been looking at the new plans from Whiz Air. Yes, that's the third biggest low-cost airline in Europe and it has expanded |
| 0:26.5 | eastwards recently to Abu Dhabi and it's going beyond there in June with a link to Sri Lanka, |
| 0:36.2 | not to the capital, Colombo, but to an airport known as Matala. |
| 0:40.6 | I've not been visited it yet, but I look forward to doing so. |
| 0:44.8 | It made me think, how does this change the options for going around the world on budget airlines? |
| 0:53.3 | Now, that's been possible for some years but this clearly gives |
| 0:58.1 | an extra twist not least because the fairs at least as far as Sri Lanka look extremely good |
| 1:05.5 | and so I've been putting together an itinerary to tie in with the new flights. |
| 1:11.8 | This is for leaving on the 31st of May on a journey of about a couple of weeks, |
| 1:18.2 | using five different airlines. |
| 1:20.6 | I thought it would be many more than that, but that's all I needed. |
| 1:24.1 | And taking you some really lovely parts of the world. |
| 1:28.3 | So you start off with a £20 hop from London Stansted to Budapest. |
| 1:33.3 | That's on Ryanair and it turns out, by the way, that that is the second cheapest of the flights per mile. |
| 1:42.3 | The absolute cheapest is the next one, which is from Budapest to Abu Dhabi. |
| 1:49.0 | That's just 50 pounds as far as I can see for departing on the 1st of June. |
| 1:57.1 | That means clearly you can get from Essex to the UAE for just 70 pounds. |
| 2:02.8 | It's absolutely ridiculous. |
| 2:05.1 | But there's more to come. |
| 2:07.1 | For about the same again, about 70 pounds, you fly from Abu Dhabi to Matala in Sri Lanka. |
| 2:13.7 | You've then got to make your way across to Colombo. |
... |
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