Wales Low Cost No Frills Airlines

Aer Arann

Go to Aer Arann website

The Irish budget airline Aer Arann offers a single route from the Welsh capital to the town of Lorient on France's Atlantic coast. It's not an immediately obvious French destination, but - given that Thomson Fly doesn't fly from Cardiff to anywhere in France right now and that bmi baby's route from Cardiff to Paris will disappear when Air Wales stops operating scheduled passenger flights - it's the only one on offer.

Air Southwest

Go to Air Southwest website

Southwest England's reliably cheap carrier Air Southwest not only flies from Cardiff to Newquay on the north Cornish coast but also to Manchester, the regional hub of northwest England.

bmi baby

Go to bmi baby website

UK no-frills airline bmi baby is the only low cost carrier to operate a substantial number of scheduled flights out of Cardiff, though Thomson Fly, below, flies to numerous destinations on a charter basis in addition to operating its own budget routes.

bmi baby's supremacy at Cardiff means that it is the only budget airline connecting the Welsh capital to Prague in the Czech Republic, Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Jersey in the Channel Islands.

However, if you are thinking of flying from south Wales to Palma de Mallorca or to Alicante or Malaga in Spain, bear in mind that, depending on when you want to fly, Thomson Fly may have more competitive fares than those being offered by bmi baby.

Excel Airways

Excel Airways website

Excel Airways is a charter airline rather than a scheduled low cost operator, so its cheapest fares can usually only be found if you are booking return rather than one-way flights.

That said, a quick glance at the table of example fares on the right will show that even the lowest regular return fares don't compare favourably to buying two one-way flights from no-frills airlines like bmi baby or Thomson Fly.

Nevertheless, Excel Airways flies to Turkey, Corfu, Cyprus, Egypt and the Canary Islands, which the others don't. So, in this case, probably the best strategy is to keep checking the Excel Airways site regularly for promotions and then to take advantage of promotional fares when they are published.

Thomson Fly

Go to Thomson Fly website

Thomson Fly operates some of the cheapest low fare routes out of Cardiff to its scheduled destinations in the Balearic Islands and on the Iberian mainland.

Note that, depending on the season - and whether you can get the website to work - this budget airline also offers numerous charter destinations from Cardiff including Tunisia in North Africa, the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean and Rhodes and Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean.