Ryanair announced today that their tally of passengers flown in or out of the UK has hit 150,000,000. It took the airline over 20 years to reach this milestone, and to celebrate it, they’re giving away a quarter million fares for “zilch, nada, zip, f**k all.”

To which we say: terrifying and impressive, Ryanair. We’re in awe of the airline’s continued bravado, which befits an upstart boxer more than an entrenched and very successful airline. We wonder what sorts of attack dog qualities prospective pr hires have to demonstrate before being brought on board.

The free fares can be purchased through tomorrow evening (Thursday, July 12). Note: we did a spot check on one route and found no free fares over the next six weeks, which suggests to us that these fares are being snapped up quickly.

Popularity: 1% [?]

…sort of.

In late March, 2008, the Norwegian low-cost carrier will begin flying between Oslo and Longyearbyen, Svalbard’s main settlement. Svalbard, an archipelago roughly half-way between Norway and the North Pole, has emerged as a big, and very expensive, eco-destination over the last few decades.

The cheapest Norwegian Air Shuttle round-trip we found was just NOK1542 (€195; $265), including taxes.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Apologies to Lil’ Chris for the steal. We’re sleepy. It’s the end of a long week, after all.

On our radar screens…

1. Following leads in the German media (like this one we came across in the Rheinische Post) Airscoop tells us that Ryanair might just be interested in buying some Air Berlin shares—just under 11% of the German LCC’s shares, as matter of fact.

2. The Saxony Tourist Board tells us that one-fourth of the domestic “culture” tourism market ends up in the federal state home to Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz.

3. We spied some very good weekly vacation home rates on Dutch travel bargain chain D-Reizen’s site. Look under “vakantiewoningen” (in Dutch).

Over & out, Cheapos.

Popularity: 3% [?]

It’s the start of the month, which can mean only one thing: passenger totals and load factor comparison time! Yeehaw!

In June 2007, Ryanair’s load factor decreased by 2 percent (from 87% to 85%), while the number of passengers carried by the Irish low-cost carrier increased by 18%, both figures in comparison with June 2006 stats. By way of contrast, Slovak budget airline SkyEurope witnessed a 3.1 percent increase in load factor (from 77.7% to 80.1%) though managed a smaller increase in the number of passengers carried (at 16.4%) than did Ryanair.

Load factor, for those unfamiliar with the increasingly bandied about term, refers to the aggregate number of seats purchased—though not necessarily the number of seats occupied.

Will promotional fares nudge any of these numbers up in July? Stay tuned.

Popularity: 2% [?]

We purchased a Belgrade-Ljubljana one-way JAT ticket on Sunday night, for travel in late July. We were, as the Brits say, chuffed.

The ticket came to just RSD5,942 (€74; $99). The JAT search engine worked fine, and we were approaching that magic, banal moment that drives all online air travel purchases: the invitation to print an e-ticket.

But the moment didn’t arrive. Instead of seeing a screen confirming our purchase, we were greeted by a screen informing us that we’d merely reserved our ticket, and that we had just four days to drop by a JAT office to purchase it.

Happily for us, there’s a JAT office here in New York. Yesterday morning we made our way to the JAT office on Madison Avenue to pick up our ticket. After a brief chat with two very friendly ladies, we were told that we’d need pay with cash or a money order. We ran down to an ATM to obtain cash to buy the ticket, and there it was: our handwritten, old school JAT ticket, for under $100. Its bright red duplicate and accompanying booklet of contract conditions and notices were reminders of the old, pre-Internet days of travel booking—as was the (unexpectedly) completely satisfying experience of purchasing a ticket from live, actual people in an office covered with airline posters and calendars.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Neville Walker’s ode to Vienna in this past weekend’s Financial Times is gorgeous and plaintive. Writing about Vienna in the newspaper’s “What I Love About…” series, Walker compellingly nails Vienna’s eccentric character.

Walker writes that Vienna was “once a cul-de-sac on the edge of the Eastern Bloc” now “learning to be hip and modern.” Yet what makes the city so interesting is not its uneven emergence into contemporary European cool but rather its vestigal otherworldliness. Walker knows this; by singling out the Kettenbrückengasse flea market and Peter’s Operncafé Hartauer as emblems of today’s Vienna, he gets at a city that is not so much resting on its laurels as much as it is holding the uncanny tight, as if it were a lifevest. Or, in Walker’s words: “Vienna is like an estranged relative grown eccentric by living alone, but suddenly seized with enthusiasm for a newly-expanded social circle.”

Popularity: 7% [?]