How does the prospect of a 12 months of limitless flights inside Europe and so far as the Maldives for a flat fare of £9 per hop sound? Properly, should you’re tempted, you’ve gotten till midnight tonight (Thursday 15 August) to enroll in the Wizz Air “all you’ll be able to fly” deal in return for a cost of £430 – miss the deadline and the identical deal will value £85 extra.

The supply is successfully a standby deal: you’ll be able to solely ebook your flight 72 hours forward – and, as you might think about, a good variety of phrases and circumstances apply.

I’ve been wading via the principles and rewards so that you didn’t need to.

Is the concept of limitless standby flights new?

No. They had been huge within the Nineteen Nineties, within the US at the very least. You paid round £300 to Delta or Northwest and flew round America and even Canada on a shoestring for a month. Like the brand new take care of Wizz Air, it was a standby ticket – however it was additionally fully free. You’ll flip up, present your ticket and step on board if there was at the very least one empty seat.

The Wizz Air “All you’ll be able to fly” deal is fairly completely different. You pay the upfront charge of €499 (£430) by midnight on 15 August, which works out at £37 monthly. From 16 August onwards the charge rises to €599 (£515).

For every flight you ebook on-line a most of three days forward, and it’s essential to pay a flat charge of £9 for every flight.

Even so, when you’ve made the down cost, £9 per flight sounds a tremendous deal?

Sure. The deal extends throughout nearly all of the Wizz Air community, which extends far and vast:

Reaching a few of these is a little bit of a stretch: to get from Luton to the Maldives you’ll need to fly to someplace in japanese Europe, then to Abu Dhabi and onwards to the Maldives.

Below the scheme you’ll be able to take as much as three flights a day – theoretically over 1,000 in a 12 months.

The £9 charge stays the identical so long as you don’t desire a pre-assigned seat, any baggage larger than a small backpack or something to eat or drink on board. All of these are extras.

Are seats obtainable on each flight?

No – and be warned that even when seats are nonetheless on sale to the general public there’s no assure it is possible for you to to avail of the deal. Wizz Air desires this supply to assist it fill seats on flights that the airline is aware of it is going to by no means fully fill.

Wizz is being coy about availability, saying: “The supply of flight tickets relies on a lot of inside and exterior components These components embrace, however not restricted to the a) variety of complete registered members of Wizz All you’ll be able to fly, b) variety of total passengers with reserving to the given flight, and the c) seat capability of the given flight.”

Some other catches?

The large one is: most of us need to go there and again once we journey. However you’ll be able to solely ebook 72 hours forward. So for a one-week vacation, midway via you’d should be looking for a seat on a flight dwelling. The airline says: “If there isn’t a return flight obtainable because of seat unavailability … you’ll be able to ebook a flight utilizing the common reserving course of.”

The deal works higher for a brief weekend journey, since you ought to be capable of ebook each legs with the deal.

Different points:

Are you a purchaser?

Nobody likes an inexpensive ticket greater than I do, however I’m not tempted. I usually fly round half-a-dozen occasions a 12 months with Wizz. Assuming I may get on each a kind of six flights with my standby move, I’d be paying £475 – a hefty £79 per journey.

The Wizz Air community overlaps considerably with different airways – British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair. So I’d be capable of double the variety of flights to 12. Every of that dozen would value £44 with the airpass. That determine is fairly near the typical I pay for Ryanair.

I desire to keep up the flexibleness to decide on the optimum flight time fairly than limit myself to a single provider.

So who would it not swimsuit?

Frivolous flyers who’ve time on their palms. For individuals who need to discover Europe, the Center East and Central Asia, and for whom the burden of being unable to ebook the specified flight is just not too heavy, the prospect of a 12 months within the skies might be tempting.

Folks fortunate sufficient to stay close to Luton, Wizz Air’s primary UK base; reaching the airport will add further value.

Travellers who repeatedly commute on routes with comparatively excessive frequency. Twice a month for a 12 months is doubtlessly 48 flights, or lower than £10 every. Add on the £9 cost for every flight, and you might be nonetheless paying lower than an categorical rail ticket from London to Luton or Gatwick. You probably have two properties, then the issue of baggage will evaporate, too.

Limitless flying appears extraordinarily damaging for the atmosphere?

So long as the passenger is occupying a seat that may in any other case be empty – which is Wizz Air’s agency plan – the marginal influence is the small quantity of gasoline burnt to fly the additional weight of the particular person and their baggage.

So it’s much less damaging than shopping for a ticket usually, which creates demand and informs airways’ choices about future flight planning. However the query for each traveller must be: is your journey actually obligatory?