Ashok Kumar was on his way to Chennai from New Delhi on a low-cost airline when he suddenly felt hungry. He ordered a sandwich and a coffee.

However, he was surprised when he realised that he was being asked to pay more than it would have cost him if he had ordered the meal at the time of booking his ticket.

Kumar, like many others, learnt that deciding early and saving money should be the mantra if you are flying by a low-cost airline.

Whether you are flying IndiGo, AirAsia India or SpiceJet, pre-booking a meal could mean a saving of up to 20 per cent.

For instance, on SpiceJet, a breakfast combo of vegetable upma , onion vada and sambar (which comes with flavoured yogurt and 200 ml fruit juice) costs ₹315 when it is booked in advance and ₹350 when ordered en route .

The difference is more pronounced when one is taking an international flight by any of these low-cost airlines. For starters, if you pre-book a meal in India then you can pay in rupees, whereas, if you order on the flight, you will have to pay in dollars.

Then the exchange rate between the dollar and the rupee too can add to the difference, in what you will end up paying if you order a meal on the flight.

Pre-booking a meal also has other advantages. On IndiGo if you have pre-booked a meal you are served before the rest and it is ensured that you get what you want to eat. Often, if your meal is not pre-booked, you end up getting what you don't want to eat and have to make do with whatever is available.

The same thing holds true for pre-booking checked-in luggage on some low-cost airlines. AirAsia India allows a free checked-in baggage allowance of 15 kg. If you pre-book checked-in baggage weighing up to 20 kg, you pay ₹498.

On the other hand, if you do not pre-book your luggage and reach the airport with the extra weight, then you are charged a per kg rate. AirAsia officials were unavailable to provide details regarding excess baggage charges.

The math behind it all

Airlines have a simple way of explaining this price differential. They charge less from those who pre-book their meals, for instance, because this helps them plan how much fuel they need to carry on a flight. Fuel accounts for 30-45 per cent of the operating costs of an airline and if it can bring down this cost, then what better way to thank customers than by charging them less for food?

This may sound convoluted but remember: every meal adds weight to the flight. For instance, if there are 160 passengers and all of them decide in advance that they will eat on the flight, then the airline can take the exact amount of fuel after adjusting for the weight of the food that it will also have to carry.

But if only 100, of the 160 passengers flying, decide in advance, then the airline is left with no option except to lift more meals as a buffer.

All this is an additional cost for the airline. Full-service airlines like Air India and Jet Airways do not have a price differential for the food served on board as the cost of the meal served to passengers is built into the cost of the ticket.

Getting cheaper meals is just one of the advantages of pre-booking.

You can also get a seat which gives you more leg space, provided you book in advance.

This is also provided upon priority check-in for some airlines.

The catch here is that you have to pay for the comfort. SpiceJet, for example, has SpiceMax which, for an introductory price of ₹500 (over and above the cost of the ticket) offers at least 6 inches more leg room compared with standard seats along with priority check-in at some airports.

The airline has configured most of its Boeing 737 fleet so that the first-five rows have extra leg room space. Most domestic airlines charge for pre-booking front row seats but SpiceJet also offers priority check-in with the service, that’s a bonus. The rates for these, however, remain the same whether you pre-book a seat or decide to fly in more comfort at the last minute.

The only hitch here, though, is that you might not get the seat with more leg space when you book last minute, as they may have all been sold out. So, the simpler thing to do is to pre-book just about everything if you are flying low cost.

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