Airline ticket: $10; pillow: $15

05/29/2007

By Peter Pae,
LA Times Staff Writer
May 29, 2007


Try $10 for a one-way ticket from Burbank to Columbus, Ohio. Or $9 from Los Angeles International Airport to Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Better yet, there is a 1-cent fare for flights from LAX to Guatemala.

Yes, those are actual fares offered by a new generation of carriers that are redefining budget travel by taking "low-cost, no-frills" service to new heights.

Such as $15 for a pillow. Or two bucks for water. Don't want a middle seat? You can pay $10 and you can jump ahead of the line to board a Skybus Airlines plane.

And the flight attendants are paid partly on commission based on in-flight sales.

"It's the extreme example of a la carte flying," said Michael Boyd, an airline industry consultant.

Even so, flights on these cheapie airlines, now officially dubbed ultra-low-cost carriers, can be a bargain and quite a trip even if you missed out on grabbing one of the limited number of $10 teaser fares.

"The seats were comfortable and the flight went pretty well," said Allyx Kronenberg, a Santa Monica resident who paid $105 for her round-trip ticket on an inaugural Skybus flight from Burbank to Columbus last week. "But you do have to pay for everything."

These flights have been around Europe for several years, but they are now making a splash in the U.S.

Skybus offers 10 seats on every flight for $10, with the vast majority of the fares ranging from $50 to $175 one way. That's about half the cost — or less — of other airlines flying to Columbus.

READ MORE: Click HERE