Thinking about postponing that trip to Europe? Jane McIntosh, creator of Jane’s Smart Art Guides™, audio guides for independent travelers, says, “Go ahead and go.”

While the exchange rate keeps getting worse and fuel surcharges increase the cost of flying, there’s still no guarantee that the dollar will power up to the euro’s mojo or that air fares will plummet anytime soon.

Jane recently sent us this dispatch of her top tips for reducing the strain on your overseas budget.

Know when to go. 

If you don’t have to vacation during the summer, don’t. Airfare can cost hundreds less during the off-season. Seasonal pricing holds true for lodging too and off-peak travel ensures shorter lines at museums and other major attractions.

Why not check out a traditional European Christmas market? Click here for a list of some favorites. Remember, the days might be shorter, but Europe seems to be the only place on earth where you can still enjoy cultural offerings in the darkness. Chamber music, anyone?

Compare airfares.

Compare the fares of major airlines with charter flights and consolidators. And, consider flying into a hub like London or Brussels and then transferring to a no-frills airline in order to get to your destination.

You can use tools like CheapoSearch to research low-cost carriers including RyanAir, easyJet and Wizz Air. Check out Kayak and Mobissimo for great fares on major carriers, especially for travel from the U.S. to Europe.

Plan transportation ahead of time.

Especially if you intend to visit more than one city, look into your travel options well in advance. Car rentals are much less expensive when reserved from home and purchasing inter-city rail passes before you go can also save you money. Truly intrepid rail pass travelers avoid hotel bills by riding overnight trains (a favorite Cheapo pastime)! RailEurope, AutoEurope, and EuropCar are great places to rev your engines.

Forget about taxis.

Taking a taxi from the airport may not have seemed a luxury two years ago, but it certainly appears so now. If you’re traveling alone, public transportation is likely to be your cheapest option. Advance “googling” will help you determine the economics of train versus taxi if you’re traveling with others.

Rent an apartment, flat or villa. 

To drastically reduce your cost-per-night, stay in an apartment, flat or villa instead of a hotel. The web is awash with vacation rental agents. But beware falling in love with an apartment or home you find on a web site and then getting stuck with an unresponsive agent. Do your agency homework first, then choose your lodging. Will the agent be available to you (in English) if you have questions or need help?

Go local.

Use the hotel room’s coffee maker and, especially if you’re staying in an apartment, find out where the nearest food markets are. Going out for breakfast can add up fast, so load up on the hotel’s continental fare.  If possible, stay somewhere that offers a kitchen as dining out every night adds up quickly. It’s fun planning dinner when many of the available ingredients are so different from what you’re used to back home. Just remember that 1 kilo = 2.2 pounds!

Be your own tour guide.

It’s this easy: take a detailed map and load up your iPod with any number of walking tours, site guides, and podcasts.  You’ll find touring at your own pace and customizing sightseeing to your own interests is a great way to go! If you have your heart set on a tour, look for economical multi-day or multi-site tourist passes. But forget about group tours, sightseeing buses, or expensive private guides.

Take a walk.

In some cities the cost of public transportation is off the charts, so walking is the best way to get to know a place—and save money in the process. If you prefer public transport, look for off-peak fares, multi-day tickets, zone passes (like the Oyster card in London), and other money-saving deals.

Make your own souvenirs. 

Instead of buying souvenirs, take pictures. With a digital camera your millionth shot costs no more than your first. Just be sure to take extra batteries and memory cards from home as these items are expensive to purchase in Europe.

About the author: Jane McIntosh is the creator of Jane’s Smart Art Guides™ (www.JanesSmartArt.com), audio guides for independent travelers who like to know what they’re looking at.

With budget airlines, you can fly between European cities for startlingly low prices. But, is there a hitch to that €20 flight from London to Venice? Maybe. Here’s our quick recap of budget airline advantages and disadvantages.

Some pros

1) You can fly for cheap, especially with advance planning.

How? There are many ways to fly for close to nothing. Lots of airlines offer promotional fares that are essentially free, requiring customers to pay for taxes and incremental charges only.

2) Transportation is quick.

For example, traveling from Paris to Warsaw by train will take a minimum of 15 hours, with many connections taking 20 hours. An air journey takes just two and a quarter hours.

3) Multi-stop holidays in Europe can be effortlessly and inexpensively scheduled.

The low-cost carrier business model is based on one-way fares, not roundtrips. Leisure travelers who don’t have to adhere to strict schedules can flexibly plan very affordable hops around Europe.

4) Approached the right way, the experience can be enjoyable, even exotic.

This is a matter of taste, we suppose, but various aspects of the budget air experience can be recast as enjoyable and interesting, from flight attendant uniforms to in-flight publications and—in the case of SkyExpress—onboard games and lotteries.

Budget airline cons

1) Secondary airports are often quite distant from the cities they purportedly serve.

How far? Oslo Sandefjord is 90km (56 miles) north of Oslo. Stockholm Skavsta is located about 89km (55 miles) from Stockholm. Frankfurt Hahn sits 103 km (64 miles) west of Frankfurt. These are particularly extreme examples, but they serve to make the point.

2) Cancellations are common and passengers will not automatically be rebooked.

Some airlines (easyJet, Ryanair, and Volareweb are among the most notorious) are known to occasionally cancel flights on various grounds. EasyJet offers as its only recourse a telephone line that you must call to rebook or generate a refund—and that charges you per minute. If you live outside of Europe, you may find it to be quite difficult to obtain refunds or rebook given the restrictions and means of communication at hand.

3) Additional charges mount up and make cheap flights far less of a bargain than they appear to be.

Charges are assessed for (optional) insurance, checked luggage (We’ve seen one carrier charge up to €20 for a bag), overweight luggage, priority boarding (see below), checking in at the airport, and using an unaffiliated credit card.

4) Cattle-call boarding process (common to many budget airlines) is unpleasant.

Ryanair and easyJet both sell the right to board early for €6. Many carriers also charge you to select your seat on-line. Even with priority boarding, the hassle and hustle are still no fun.

5) Last-minute fares can be much higher than those on “full-fare” airlines.

Even on so-called “budget airlines,” you can expect next-day fares on popular routes to be anything but cheap. This is especially the case when flying into secondary airports far from the cities they purportedly serve. Getting to and from secondary airports (take Stansted, in the case of London) often involves considerable effort, up to two hours transit time, and additional charges.

Are they worth it? 

So, given all these advantages and disadvantages, are low cost airlines worth it? We think so. You just need to know the rules and know how to avoid extra charges and hassles.

What do you think? Are budget airlines a great deal, or more trouble than they’re worth? Comment below.

In the spring of 2006, I was able to score some super-cheap tickets on Ryanair for a last-minute getaway to Barcelona from London, where I was living. It had been a great weekend, made possible by my low-cost flight. I booked a 6 PM flight in order to extend my holiday as long as possible, pushing off the reality of the next morning’s workday. As long as I was in Barcelona, I was on vacation! 

The tickets were basically free—I only had to pay the airport tax. The catch? I had to fly into and out of two less-than-central airports, London’s Stansted and Barcelona’s Girona airport. It was worth it, right?

What follows is a diary of my flight experience en route from Barcelona to London.

4:30 PM: I arrive early at the airport for a 6 PM flight. We all know you have to get to the gate before the other passengers in order to snag the best seat.

5:00 PM: Shortly after check-in, an announcement is made. The flight has been delayed an hour.

Ok, some extra time to score a panini at Girona’s atmospheric café. (In the above photo, do I look like I’m ready for take-off?)

Tip: Stock up on food, just in case. Girona’s airport café closed at 9 p.m. I’m glad I grabbed a sandwich when I did. Others would not be so lucky.

7 PM: A second announcement. The flight has been delayed for another hour. All assembled groan and pull out iPods, books and approved electronic devices. One nearby traveler starts clipping his nails over a waste basket, violating all manner of social codes (are clippers even allowed on airplanes?).

8:15 PM: A third announcement. Drum roll, please: The flight has been delayed for another two hours. The announcer says, with a tinge of exhaustion in her voice, “We hope to leave by 11. Thank you for your patience.” The thought of work the next morning was beginning to make me vaguely nauseous. 

Around 10 PM: Boredom sets in. All other flights have taken off. The airport feels empty, save the other poor souls flying to Stansted. With hardly anyone around, I attempt to fit myself, horizontally, into a row of seats in any way that could lead to sleep. I am not successful.

Above: Nothing happening under flourescent lights.

Tip: Bring back-up diversions. That could mean catching up on your trip journal, watching all the TV shows you earlier loaded up on your iPod, making progress on that novel, or even flipping through some celeb mags. In short, have something to do. I had packed ”Madame Bovary,” which only helped put me to sleep.

11:30 PM: All other flights have left the Girona airport, and there’s still no sign of our airplane.  The 20 Stansted-bound passengers are told we will not take off until after midnight. No excuse is given.

Tip: Make friends…if there are any out there. At some point after midnight, I found myself chatting with a couple from Los Angeles. A bottle of vodka became open. (Glad they took advantage of Duty Free when it was open…hours ago.) I pass up a shot (work seems ludicrously close), but others around happily partake. The mood lifts… and distorts.

1:30 PM: We take off, nine hours after my arrival at the airport.

Tip: Know when to go! Turns out there’s more than one good reason not to check any luggage on a budget flight. If you’re delayed, you could risk missing the last bus out of the arrival airport.

2:30 AM: We arrive at Stansted and immediately there’s a mad dash for the bus to London. And for good reason: The last one leaves the airport at 3 am (and sometimes earlier, depending on reasons I couldn’t quite understand). If you miss the last bus, you have to get a taxi, which can cost upwards of £60, or wait until 7 am when the buses start up again. I make the bus.

3:30 AM: I’m dropped off at Marble Arch on Oxford Street. What’s my name? Who am I? And how do I get a taxi? Work the next morning was, well, another story…

In the end, this experience didn’t deter me from flying on budget airlines. Over the next year, I’d often take cheap flights, including easyJet and Aer Lingus, for quick getaways. But I learned something about flexibility that long night in Girona.

Read another Cheapo’s tale of a long night in Stansted. Got a good airport story? Leave a comment or send us a note.

As part of our CheapoSearch flights launch celebration, we’re spending some time this week discussing common questions readers have about traveling on Europe’s low-cost carriers. A good place to start is with the most obvious question of all:

How can budget airlines be so cheap?

First of all, budget airlines manage to keep their own costs down, which translates into a cheaper ticket price. For example, many low-cost routes fly in and out of secondary airports with low landing fees. Many low-cost airlines have also eliminated conventional customer service departments, replacing them with toll-based telephone numbers that levy exorbitant per-minute charges (see: easyJet).

Additionally, the operating costs of low-cost carriers are quite minimal. Though practices vary, for the most part you’ll find baggage handlers checking tickets, planes being unloaded minutes before they’re filled with new customers, and planes not being completely cleaned during general flying hours. In the photo we snapped above, note that luggage is being removed from the plane at the same time that the next load of passengers is climbing aboard. (Talk about a quick turn-around!)

Budget airlines also make money off of additional products and services, from snacks and scratch-off cards sold in the air to the sale of affiliated services through their websites like car rentals, hotel reservations, tours, transfer services, credit cards, and travel insurance.

Low-cost airlines also charge for a dizzying range of “perks,” including seat assignments, airport check in (what a perk!), and checking bags (ditto). Some airlines charge for bookings not made with the airline’s co-branded credit card.

Do you know of other ways that low-cost carriers keep their prices down? Comment below.

For more frequently asked questions about budget airlines in Europe, check out our article on “budget airline basics.”

Today Ryanair announced 50 new routes around Europe for 2008; among these, there will be three entirely new destinations in the bunch: Angoulême in France and Arad and Constanţa in Romania.

The expansion to Romania is welcome; frankly, we expected it to happen months ago. Arad is currently served by Romanian low-cost airline BlueAir, which flies to Stuttgart, Valencia, and Verona from the far western Romanian city. Constanţa, at the opposite end of Romania, in the country’s southeast on the Black Sea, is a big regional beach resort. Ryanair will be the first budget airline to serve it.

The airline will also be the first budget airline to serve Angoulême, a department capital in southwestern France, thereby increasing Ryanair’s already notable presence in the southwestern quarter of the country.

Ryanair will fly one route apiece to each of these new destinations: Arad-Orio al Serio (Milan), Angoulême-London Stansted, and Constanţa-Pisa.

On our radar screens today:

1. Yesterday, Ryanair announced four new routes connecting Ireland and France. Connections between Dublin and Brest, Rodez, and Tours will kick off in April, and a seasonal Cork-Carcassonne link will fly from late May through early September.

2. Vardzia, Georgia is Gadling’s “Where on Earth?” spot.

3. Andy Martin blogs entertainingly on very English Bournemouth.

4. Over the last few months, Volareweb has added a bunch of destinations. Volareweb now flies to Helsinki, Lodz, and Rotterdam, among other destinations. We’d be more excited if Volareweb weren’t one of the least reliable low-cost carriers we’ve come across.

We slept in a good hour beyond our typical wake-up time. So it’s a sleepy Tuesday. This is just background information. Ignore at will, but know that our morning coffee is especially appreciated today.

The following things have caught our attention over the last few days:

1. Ryanair has announced five new routes in and out of Brussels Charleroi (to Bergerac, Limoges, Perpignan, Porto, and Zaragoza.) No Ryanair expansion these days comes without a cancellation, though there’s only one casuality here: the London Stansted-Charleroi route. Has Eurostar felled Ryanair on the London-Brussels route? It would appear so.

2. On Sunday, the New York Times published travel articles on Kazakhstan and Greenland. If Kazakhstan represents the eastern edge of Europe (with just a piece of its territory west of the Urals) and Greenland represents its western edge (technically a part of the Americas, but tied culturally and politically to Europe), then the NYT pleased us to no end on Sunday. More off-the-beaten-path destinations, please!

3. Those interested in traveling to or from Dublin and Cork over the winter should explore the fab Aer Lingus sale on through midnight Thursday (that is, midnight in Ireland). Good for midweek travel between January 8 and March 12, one-way tickets run just €36, once handling fees are included. Destinations include Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Madrid, Warsaw, and Zurich.

Today, EasyJet announced six new routes, all of which will launch in March and April: Bristol-Biarritz, Bristol-Olbia, Bristol-Split, Edinburgh-Nice, Glasgow-Faro, and London Luton-Pisa.

These six routes complement the dozen the airline will be kicking off over the next several months. Half of these (East Midlands-Barcelona, Bournemouth-Grenoble, Birmingham-Geneva, Bristol-Innsbruck, and London Gatwick-Innsbruck, and Birmingham-Grenoble) are kicking things off in December; other exciting new routes include London Gatwick-Thessaloniki (launching on January 30) and flights to Jersey from Liverpool and London Luton (launching at the close of March.)

These route announcement, taken with the purchase of GB Airways in October, underscore a heightened sense of hubbub over at easyJet. A few weeks ago, easyJet Chief Executive Andy Harrison exhibited O’Leary-esque bravado in his assertion that easyJet will be outperforming Ryanair on profit within the next year.

We’re still anxious to learn what they’re going to do with all those GB Airways Gatwick slots. We’re crossing our fingers that easyJet will take on GB’s routes to Ajaccio, Bastia, Gibraltar, Paphos, and Tunis.

Jet2holidays is currently marketing a £274 package (per person, based on four people sharing an apartment) departing from Leeds Bradford on May 31. The package includes a round-trip flight on Jet2 (from Leeds Bradford to Olbia), seven nights at the Residence Le Conchiglie in Budoni, transfers to and from the hotel, and taxes. The package gets more expensive later in the spring and summer—£274 for May 31 departure is the cheapest it gets.

Meanwhile, and in a completely unrelated development, Ryanair released its November passenger stats today. Passenger numbers in November were up 23 percent over last November’s numbers, at 3.89 million over last November’s 3.16 million. Load factor lagged slightly, falling to 78 percent from 79 percent. Load factor designates the percentage of seats filled relative to the number of seats offered for sale.

Today only, Ryanair is offering a serious fare sale. 150,000 fares on flights during the last three weeks of January are going for €1/£1 apiece.

There are restrictions, of course. This fare is only available between mid-day Monday and mid-day Thursday, and not on all routes. The promotion ends at midnight, so there isn’t time to check fares and availability to see how many cheap fares actually turn up. We’re going to trust that the fares are there and encourage readers to try to find them.

A partial list of covered routes can be found here (in PDF format.)