London's Luton Airport is comfortably among the top ten busiest airports in the United Kingdom. As a major hub for no frills, low cost airlines in Europe, cheap flights from Luton Airport are often more frequent to other UK and European destinations than from other airports in the UK.

Among the low cost carriers at Luton are those that are household names in Europe, including Ryanair and EasyJet. EasyJet's main hub is Luton Airport. As its main rival Ryanair and other carriers are also at the airport, it is not unusual to find cheap flights from Luton Airport as they are often competitively priced. This is often the case if a new carrier sets up an operation there in direct competition with one of the other airlines. Ryanair has often employed cutthroat tactics in the past when in direct competition with other airlines; adding additional low-cost flights to a route so that the new airline finds it almost impossible to compete. If you are looking for cheap flights from Luton Airport, or anywhere else in the UK, a glance through the business section might not do any harm to see who's competing with whom!

Cheap Flights from Luton to the Emerald Isle: An Authentic Irish Experience

If you want to take a quick trip to Ireland, Aer Arann, an Irish operation, runs flights from Luton to two of Ireland's regional cities. It may be a good idea to check the rates against the carriers that run to Dublin. But you can probably get cheap flights from Luton to Ireland on a small carrier like Aer Arann for a variety of reasons. While the more established low cost carriers focus on big name destinations including Ireland's capital, Dublin, Aer Arann will take you farther afield, to Ireland's west coast city of Galway and the "sunny southeast" (Waterford city). The air fares are competitive because landing and maintenance costs at the regional airports won't be quite as expensive as at Ireland's capital. In fact, they often need business from the smaller carriers to remain operational.

A cheap flight to Galway is a painless way to get to the more scenic part of the country and avoid the busy and congested roads that now blight Ireland every weekend. The west of Ireland is famed for its clifftops and rugged landscape. The culture is cosmopolitan but far more bohemian and authentically Irish than the east coast. You may even hear Gaelic being spoken, as the west coast is one of the few regions left in Ireland where many of the natives speak it fluently.

Another option is to fly to Waterford city, in the south east of Ireland. It is known as the "sunny south east", but sunny is a relative term in Ireland. Also nearby is Rosslare, an Irish hub for ferries to France and the UK, so if you plan to travel through Europe in ways other than by air, you could take a liner over to France from here.