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Eastern Europe fares will plummet soon
UK: Expansion of EU will lead to massive deregulation of industry
Travellers heading to Eastern Europe will be the latest to benefit from plummeting air fares, according to a report in The Times.
Lower fares are likely to be introduced as soon as the EU is enlarged to include 10 new countries some time between now and May 2004, the newspaper argues, with Ryanair and EasyJet the most likely to star offering cut-price tickets. Passengers are likely to see fares to such destinations as Slovakia, Poland, Latvia and Hungary drop as low as £100.
The enlargement of the EU will effectively deregulate travel to the new member countries; at present airlines need to go through the complicated process of applying for a licence before laying on a service to a country for the first time.
The managing director of MyTravelLite, Tim Jeans, told the newspaper that many low-cost airlines are closely studying potential new destinations and expects Warsaw and Budapest to be high on the list.
And Alex McWhirter, of Business Traveller magazine, pointed that fares to the Czech Republic dropped dramatically following a special deregulation agreement in 1988, adding: “In the bad old days you could pay up to £300 for a flight to Prague. Today you can get there and back from £76.”
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