Whether it’s a narrow seats, no leg room, or extra fees for hand luggage, we love to moan about low-cost airlines.
But, while we might spend a few hours feeling like the proverbial sardine, you can get to Spain for less than your family’s weekly shop – a worthy sacrifice.
As Ryanair once sassily posted on social media alongside a picture of a smirking Ryanair jet: ‘No matter how much they complain, they will always fly with you.’
Good point.
So, if you want to make your budget trip as comfortable as possible, you’re in luck.
A new ranking has revealed the top 25 low-cost airlines for 2024 – and four favourites amongst British passengers make the cut.
Top 25 low-cost airlines for 2024
- AirAsia Group
- Air Baltic
- Air Canada Rouge
- Cebu Pacific
- easyJet
- Eurowings
- FlyDubai
- FlyNAS
- GOL
- Jetblue
- Jet2
- Jetstar Group
- Jeju Air
- Norwegian
- Peach
- Ryanair
- Scoot
- Spicejet
- Suncountry
- Southwest
- Transavia
- Vietjet
- Volotea
- Vueling
- WizzAir
Source: Airlineratings.com
The highest ranking UK airline is easyJet, which placed at number five. Believe it or not, easyJet has been flying passengers since November 1995, and became a household name after it’s founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou, appeared on the BBC TV series, Airline.
Despite it’s high position, 80% of reviews on Trust Pilot for Easyjet are just one star, with scathing remarks such as ‘shambolic’ and ‘a sack of sh*t airline’,
However, the airline carried just under 83 million passengers last year – so it must be doing something right.
Are you guilty of this ‘evil’ airline habit?
An American flight attendant who goes by Cher on TikTok has revealed what she believes is the single worst thing a passenger can do on an airplane.
‘Putting any type of bottle that has liquid in it in the overhead bin,’ Cher declares, in a video which has been viewed more than 73,000 times.
‘Every single time, without fail, that water bottle, as soon as we take off, is going to leak inside the bin.
Cher, who has been cabin crew for five years, hates this so much, that she described it as ‘heinous, evil and diabolical.’
While she admits it’s an easy mistake to make, saying, ‘it’s tempting to do this if it’s in the outer pocket of your backpack,’ she’s adamant it’s poor plane behaviour.
So why is it so awful? ‘Not only does that soak everybody else’s bags, the water always picks one person and it’ll follow a stream and completely dump out of the bin onto one person,’ explains Cher.
And she’s not wrong that bottles will most likely leak. As an airplane climbs higher into the sky, the air pressure drops and it causes the air inside the cabin to expand. This means any air trapped in water bottles will also expand, which can force the water to leak out of it.
Next up in the list was Jet2 at number 11, followed by Ryanair at 16 (an Irish airline, but a close neighbour and favourite among Brits). Finally, WizzAir (based in Hungary, but again, popular among UK passengers) just scraped into the list at 25.
The ranking, compiled by, AirlineRatings, used 12 criteria to determine their winners. These included passenger reviews, fleet age, product offering and safety and incident ratings.
Overall, it was AirAsia, the Malaysian low cost airline, that was crowned the winner. Air Baltic, the flag carrier of Latvia, came in second, followed by Air Canada Rouge, a subsidiary of Air Canada, who off the top three.
There were a few on the list we hadn’t heard of, including the sweet-sounding Peach (a low-cost Japanese airline) and Spicejet, the fourth largest airline in India.
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