Ryanair flights from Bergearc to London, ten euros each. Now that sounds like a bargain. but have you ever booked these flights on a cheap airline? What starts out as cheap can rapidly become, well, less cheap.

Imagine if I advertised a week in our gite for 50 euros. I’m sure it would be snapped up in no time. Then what would happen if I added a credit card fee of 500 euros. A property entrance charge of 200 euros. Sundry tourist taxes of 75 euros. A charge of 100 euros per suitcase that people wanted to bring. Perhaps some cleaning charges and bed-linen expenses. Now the week costs maybe 1400 euros. Would the customer think I had been upfront and honest?

When Ryanair started separating out government imposed taxes from their own flight costs I though it was unnecessary, but could see the reasoning. They were cross that their very cheap flights suddenly didn’t look at all cheap. Not very practical or useful in real life – imagine if petrol prices were advertised at 50 pence per gallon because the stations preferred not to mention the £4 tax per gallon – but fair enough they were trying to make a point.

But that point is lost when, as we did this week, you book your cheap flights from France to the UK. The tickets were about 20 euros each, which of course seemed very cheap. A couple of the other charges then imposed included:

- Credit card charge 24 euros – 6 euros per person. Where is the relationship between the cost of using a credit card and the number of passengers? There is none. On our PayPal account we have to pay about 3% when someone pays by credit card. I’m sure Ryanair will have struck a much better deal with their bank, perhaps 1%. So they might have incurred total costs of 1-3 euros, and we are being told to pay 24 euros.

In case you are wondering, I couldn’t find an option which avoided this cost, and people we know who went to the airport to try and book there were told it would be more expensive, they should go home and book on the internet.

- check-in fee 12 euros per person. Err, is it possible to get a flight without checking in?

- baggage fee 12 euros per bag. Well you could travel without baggage but it wouldn’t be easy in most circumstances.

- we eventually managed to avoid the ‘optional insurance’ that was automatically added back in to the total every time we changed screens, although it was very reasonably priced at only 14.50 euros per person. I didn’t read the policy to see what was insured – an insurance cost that is the same as the cost of the item being insured seemed a bit steep so I didn’t investigate further.

- we also resisted the option to pay quite a lot extra to be among the first to board the plane. Who pays this? 50 euros to avoid what? We’re all going to take off at the same time and land at the same time, so what is being paid for?

As we all know, the governments like to take a fistful of dollars as well, so four 20 euro tickets actually cost about 400 euros. Still not too bad as a total cost (these flights are in February, so not really peak season!), and I’m as pleased as the next person about the growth in cheap airlines between France and the UK. But a bit more honesty and openness about costs and charges would be better for everyone.

And I am aware that many people who visit the Dordogne in the summer fly to Bordeaux rather than Bergerac, because when everything is included the cheap flights often cost more than a regular flight at a regular time from a regular airport. So check both if you’re flying to France next year!