WE’VE all seen the headline of £14 flights plastered across airline websites, social media and publications – but what does a £14 flight actually look like and can you really get it for that price?
When it comes to booking a holiday, we all love a bargain.
And in the UK we aren’t short of budget airlines to choose from, such as Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz Air.
But the reality is that airlines actually often lose money on £14 flights if you book them without extras.
This is because the flight tends to be listed at cost or below cost to entice people in to go on the website.
According to The Flight Club, Ryanair has previously claimed that each passenger costs them about €34 (£29.55) to fly each way, excluding fuel.
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Broken down, this is about €8 (£6.95) for staff, €8 (£6.95) for airport and handling costs, €6 (£5.21) for travelling in the air space, €8 (£6.95) for aircraft ownership and maintenance and €4 (£3.48) for other expenses.
On the other hand, Wizz Air’s costs are around €52 (£45.19) per passenger per flight and easyJet’s are around €79 (£68.66) (again, both excluding fuel).
When looking at flights, once on an airline’s website you can get hooked in and before you know it you’re adding a return flight and luggage adding up to a figure far from that original £14 fare.
At the moment, the cheapest flight available is with Wizz Air to Gdansk in Poland, costing just £13.99 one-way.
But this is just one of a myriad of ‘cheap’ flights.
Other Wizz Air options include Seville in Spain for £19.99 one-way, or Barcelona and Valencia – also both in Spain – return flights for £40 each.
EasyJet has the second cheapest flight on offer, which is to Nice in France, costing £14.49 one-way.
Other cheap easyJet options include Fuerteventura in Spain for £16.99, Innsbruck in Austria for £16.99, Palma de Mallorca in Spain for £16.99 and Pisa in Italy for £16.99 – all one-way flights.
Ryanair then comes in a touch more expensive, with flights to to Alicante and Barcelona in Spain starting from £14.99 one-way.
The main issue with these flights from the offset? All of them except a handful fly out from London airports.
For those who don’t live in or near the capital, this is where your first additional cost will come in.
Either you spend money travelling to the London airports or you opt to fly from your local airport, but at the sacrifice of your ticket being more expensive.
The second cost on top of the flight price are add-ons.
These include things like cabin bags and hold luggage.
For example, to add cabin luggage to each a Wizz Air, easyJet and Ryanair flight it would cost around an additional £32.97, £17.20 and £43.98 per person, per flight respectively.
These additional costs do also include standard seat selection and ‘speedy’ boarding for each airline.
Though if you want extra legroom, then again that will come at a price.
So if you intended to take anything more than a handbag, your flight will already be costing you a lot more.
Another issue is getting a flight back.
While one-way flights can be a bargain, prices tend to rise when you book a return.
For Gdansk, for example, the return leg costs around £28.99.
So the basic flight costs you more like £42 and with cabin luggage it would sit more around the £75 return mark.
One way to get around this is by having flexible holiday dates, as then you can choose the day with the cheapest return flight.
Other hidden costs include checking in at the airport, which Wizz Air charges €40 (£34.78) to do – more than double the price of the actual flight!
If you are travelling light and able to fit your stuff into a small bag (45cm x 36cm x 20cm for easyJet or 40cm x 30cm x 20cm for Wizz Air and Ryanair), then the cheap flights are worth it.
One centimetre bigger than this though, and it could cost you an additional £70 at the gate.
But if you do choose to fly with just a handbag that fits under the seat in front of you, then perhaps opt for easyJet to make the most of those extra few centimetres allowance.
On the other hand, if you are travelling as a family with extra luggage, who want to sit together and have fixed holiday dates, then maybe this isn’t the best offer.
If we take the £75 per person price for return flights to Gdansk as an example, a family of four, with two children aged over two (under twos don’t need their own plane seat), you could be looking at £300 for return flights.
And that’s before your hotel booking.
The better option for families is to book a package holiday that includes flights.
For example, you could stay in a sea view studio at Albatros Family Hotel in Salou, Costa Dorada in Spain for four nights, flying from London Gatwick on April 20 with four 10kg cabin bags and four 22kg hold suitcases and airport transfers for £573 total or just £143 each.
And for that price, you get hold luggage, which if you booked on a flight separately, it would cost you even more.
Of course, with a holiday package you also get peace of mind in case of things going wrong, as you’ll have ATOL Protection, which helps in cases of your travel operator going bust.
The bottom line?
If you are travelling with a backpack, and live near an airport, go for it.
For those who like to pack more or are travelling as a family, perhaps book a package to avoid the headache.
For more flight tips, here are the new 2026 travel hacks you need to know about.
Plus, our travel team’s best tips for flying with budget airlines from ‘free’ legroom seats to a cheap food hack.