Flight costs Munich/Innsbruck with Easyjet anyone?

[CorporateBull]

We’ve just booked for Christmas and the Easyjet schedule isn’t out yet. We’ve found some flights for six of us (three adults, one teen, two kids) for £1600 travelling out the weekend before and back the weekend after from our regional airport, but just wondered how much people who jumped on the EJ flights when they came out paid for a similar journey? The ones we have are Lufthansa but with a change, and direct would be preferable if we could get it for a reasonable price!

I flew to Innsbruck with EJ last month from Gatwick. Didn't book very early - in fact we booked in November. Return flights for each adult came out at about £ 220 each but we had to get lots of extras - hold luggage for each of us and 2 x ski bags. We also booked seats. Total cost for 4 adults was about £1240 once everything was added.
We were skiing in the Dolomites and the drive from Innsbruck was really quick and easy so I'm glad we did it. Small airport and very easy to get through, and find our hire car.

In 2019 we had return Geneva flights for about £160 each, but did travel out on the Monday rather than weekend.

As a pp says, the difficulty is that the EJ schedule - certainly for Innsbruck - is once a week as far as I recall, and that was from Manchester - so a regional airport but quite a big one. With only 1 flight per week (I think it was Sunday to Sunday), it was cheaper than others (such as Lufthansa) but not massively so. We weren't actually going for a week - so ended up having to fly out of Luton to Innsbruck on a Wednesday I think and back to Manchester on a Sunday. If you've found flights that fit with your accommodation / lessons etc, for £1600 for 6 of you, I think the convenience would probably outweight the £200-£300 you might save waiting for EJ.

Thanks, everyone. This year EJ are flying to Munich on Saturdays from Manchester (one of our options) so would work for us but I agree it’s not remotely a given that they’ll be as useful next year. And the Lufthansa flights are from a closer airport with family nearby to stay with before the very early flight, so we also save on an airport hotel.

My only hesitation is over the change and the heightened risk of lost luggage - pretty stressful if you need all the ski paraphernalia to arrive safely. But Lufthansa are (to my knowledge) no Air France.

Should add that my gripe with Lufthansa was that they wouldn't return the cost of flights - we'd booked to go to Austria for Christmas 2021 I think it was, weren't allowed to fly with lockdown restrictions and they wouldn't refund (said they would at some future date but didn't) so after about 9 months we had to go through our credit card to get the money back.

What dates are you looking at?

I just put Manchester to Munich into Skyscanner for the 23rd to the 30th and they are direct for about thd price you've mentioned.

The Skyscanner fares don’t show the luggage costs so those fares are quite a bit higher once you add baggage, and IIRC one way doesn’t have a checked baggage option for some reason. We could try carry on but the ski stuff is so bulky it would nice not to have to worry about it (plus ideally we’d like to take stocking presents with us). But they’re definitely an option - Manchester is further from us so we’d need to add parking and/or airport hotels to the cost. But we definitely have options.

We're in Austria now having flown to Munich. The flights to Innsbruck are bonkers expensive compared to Munich so I'd very likely expect to fly there.

We've paid about £800 from MAN to Munich before.

We're on some ridiculous KLM/Air France connecting routes this time due to the dates we needed, don't do that, it's an utter pain!

Gatwick to Munich was coming up far far cheaper for this half term than Manchester to Munich.
Airport parking wasn't bad either.

I generally find easyjet Innsbruck flights extortionate in school holidays, and therefore we normally go via Munich even though its a longer transfer. One year the Innsbruck flights were £250pp and the Munich flights were £50pp (One way, not return - flight price on the first day of flight release). Even though the flight times meant that we needed to stay an additional night in Munich it was still vastly cheaper to do so, and it meant that we saw a bit of Munich.

That being said, this year for the first time ever on booking on the first day of release the Innsbruck flights were only about £100 (in total not per person) more expensive than the Munich flights (return price) which meant that it wasn't worth going via Munich. I don't know if this was a freak one-off post-covid occurrence or not. Going next year at Easter, so got a while to wait until the schedule is released.

We’re also in Austria right now (have booked in situ!) and would definitely assume Munich would be better for flights but Innsbruck is slightly closer, and I wondered if the flights were reasonable if bought quickly. I got flights to Greece for May half term this year for a decent amount at 6.01am the day of release so you never know I suppose.

London is always cheaper as more options, but it’s a good three hours on trains plus hotels or long drive for us so nice to avoid it if we can - plus would need to travel south the day schools break up so no fun at all.

There’s no perfect way (we’ve driven before and have got the train here this time) but looking for the quickest reasonably priced way for a trip over Christmas.

Ah, fair enough. I didn't factor baggage in. That's on me as we travel with hand luggage only. We get my boots and 4 helmets in, too. I'm a packing ninja as I refuse to be fleeced for the extortionate baggage charges.

We went to Austria for Christmas. The closest airport was Salzburg, which was about £1000 return for 4, with no baggage. So we flew into Vienna instead. £440 return (no baggage). It was about a 4 hour transfer across two trains, changing at Salzburg, but we like the train, so didn't mind. Return train fare was about £150.

That was flying with AirAustria from Heathrow. As you say, London flights are cheaper. We live in the southwest, and our regional is Bristol, but Heathrow is easier to get to as Bristol is in the back end of nowhere and often tends to be the more expensive option.

We've found that if you just take carry on these days, Easyjet has stopped being the competitive option.

In terms of booking your flights via EJ. We were booked for Christmas 2021 (cancelled due to testing requirements), and those flights went live around the 1st of April. So, it's not long to wait and plenty of time to find an alternative.

Don't forget too that other airlines have a more flexible hand luggage policy. EJ are strict on their ONE bag per person unless you've paid the premium or have squashed it into a duty-free bag (all policies seem to stop then).

Last year, I flew with AirBaltic to Riga, Lufthansa to Munich, and Air Austria to Vienna.

For AirBaltic and Lufthansa, I had my Kanken backpack that I use as my handbag in addition to my wheeled case, so not a small backpack.

Coming back on Lufthansa, I had my ski boots in a shopping bag, too, as I'd bought them there. Nobody said a word to me, though I was expecting to be stopped and charged.

For AirAustria, I had the same backpack and my helmet in its drawstring bag, DH had a backpack, and we had a Bag for Life with snacks in for the DC.

All of those airlines allow you your case + one under seat bag, so across six of you, that's a fair amount of luggage allowance.

Did you hire a car to get from Munich to Austria? If so how was the drive?

Yes we hired a car, absolutely 100% fine, no issue at all!

That was for @tilestoclean they keep the roads super clear and it's largely motorway.

Great to know - we go next week - thanks

My warning would be that the road from Munich into the Tyrol can get very busy on Saturdays.

EJ hand luggage is just not doable any more. The size has been reduced enormously. Paying the extra for a premium seat does at least give you the larger size but at a cost of course.

We almost always do do carry on but I was thinking the Christmas presents would tip us over the edge. Only stockings but it’s a suitcase down I guess. If Lufthansa are kind we could probably do it!

We’ve done so many routes over the years that we’ve got the point of wanting to do it as simply as possible over Christmas, when we’ll all be shattered on arrival after all the build up and school only finishing on the 22nd, but not having unlimited funds. We got five trains to get here this week for example, but other than the Eurostar and final train down to resort, none of the trains were busy, which I think may be a bit different the day before Christmas Eve. Even with reservations, packed trains are fairly full on for small kids.

Trains in Austria were jam-packed when we went at Christmas, this much is very true. I knew they were always busy in the UK at this time, and forgot they'd be the same in Austria. I totally get what you're saying.

What are you thinking for stocking gifts? When we were supposed to go in 2021, we planned things like small Lego sets, though as I said, it was cancelled. Could you designate a backpack for stocking gifts and have it as one of the younger children's under seat bag? Flight attendants won't bat an eyelid if you're the one carrying it, and they're not.

We squeezed all of the DCs tech into the backpack DH carried, so ours didn't have anything other than their own suitcases to deal with. I had my backpack, and we alternated who had the snack bag.

Last Christmas DS2 (9) wrote to Santa, explained that we were going away over Christmas and asked if he would mind coming early. We then had Fake Christmas on the 21st. The DCs (DS1 is 11) got right into it. It helped that they broke up the Friday before, though, so we had that entire week off before we flew on Friday 23rd.

Have a look at Nuremberg flights too. We’ve driven from there to south tyrol this week and the flights were SO much cheaper than the Munich ones. Literally hundreds of pounds.

Nuremberg to innsbruck was about 3ish hours I think.

For Austrian resorts in Salzburgerland, also look at Klagenfurt for flights - this has fairly easy train or road connections to Salzburg or the Zell am See/Saalbach area. As it is not an "obvious" ski resort airport, prices are often cheaper than SZG or INN.

For Austrian resorts further west (e.g. St Anton) look at Memmingen airport in Bavaria.

We fly regularly through the winter ski season from Gatwick to Innsbruck (including Christmas or NYE week).

We pay typically £125 pp (with 2 people travelling).

This includes 1 x 15kg hold case + the £74 ski carriage fee (we pack 2 pairs of skis in + clothes). We hand carry boots on (the boot bags will fit under seats).

The recent changes to cabin luggage are now killers on cost & can really rack up the price. My advice would be get as much checked in as possible with EasyJet or check our BA (who also fly into Innsbruck and have a better free carry on allowance).