Winter wonderland? Not if you happen to run an airline

“Air fares rose by 20 per cent between April and May 2023, with some of the highest rises for European flights.”

So said the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in June. But what goes up seems to be coming down fast.

For a snapshot of fares I looked at next Tuesday, 10 October, and picked the 10 most appealing ultra-cheap fares I could find.

For less than the actual Air Passenger Duty which an airline must pay when you step aboard a plane, you could next week fly to Nimes in southern France or Poznan in Poland. These, like half of the examples I found, are from London Stansted. But if you would like to swap the south coast of England to the Costa del Sol, you could get from Bournemouth to Malaga for £15. The same amount buys an Edinburgh to Shannon ticket, with Manchester to Billund – home of Legoland – only £17.

Even Ouarzazate in southern Morocco is well under £20 from Essex. A few spot checks suggest that flying each route in the reverse direction provides equally silly fares.

The full list is here, in ascending order of price:

The last of these is flown by Wizz Air. But as you have probably guessed, all the rest are with Ryanair.

The carrier has long specialised in selling at absurdly low fares; the lowest I have paid is £0.50 from Frankfurt Hahn to Stansted during a particularly bleak midwinter in the early 2000s.

The business premise is this: sell the average person a ticket at below cost, and there is fair chance that “ancillary revenue” – from extra cabin baggage to seat selection to onboard lottery tickets – will nudge the purchase up until it exceeds the marginal cost of putting a person in a seat.

Once you board, the passenger in the next seat may well have paid more for their basic fare: either because they committed early in order to guarantee they were on the plane, or (more likely) because they booked very late on. That is not a given: looking to tomorrow, all three Ryanair flights from Stansted to Pisa are selling at under £18.

Still, after an exceptionally profitable summer the airline’s bosses are not unduly alarmed – not least because other carriers are…