A German low-cost carrier has claimed it is profiting from a creative new pricing structure.
The budget airline business model, pioneered by Ryanair and Easyjet in the late 1990s, has traditionally relied on monies earned from ancillary revenues, including charges for check-in, baggage and on-board food and beverages.
As these elements were, historically, factored into a ticket prices, the controversial trend of fragmenting costs became know as ‘unbundling'.
But in March Germanwings - a 100%-owned subsidiary of Lufthansa - came up with a novel way of attracting customers - they began rebundling charges into discount packages.
For a flat rate of 12 euros, passengers flying on the Germanwings network get check-in, priority boarding, a sandwich and drink on board and one bag in the hold.
"It's the equivalent of a Macdonald's Happy Meal for airline customers," quipped one of the airline's directors at a press conference with the UK press.
Thomas Winkleman, the company's charismatic chief executive, was speaking to journalists in Hanover after the airline's inaugural Stansted service touched down in Lower Saxony.
He admitted the low cost model had its limitations, but insisted a combination of honesty and value would make a business successful.
"We are totally focussed on the business traveller," he said.
"More often than not, he or she does not fly with anything other than hand luggage, so why factor this into the ticket price. But what the do want is a pre-allocated seat and something good to eat. We can provide them with both."
Since the launch of the rebundled package, Winkleman said it was included in 23% of all bookings.
The airline boss said he was always looking for a way to make an "extra buck" but claimed it only worked when the customer knew they were getting value.
Passengers on Germanwings, for example, can pay an extra few euros to reserve a seat in one of the first ten rows of the aircraft where the pitch is three inches bigger than seats towards the back.
During conversations with journalists, Winkleman continually berated Ryanair for giving the low-cost model a bad name. He would only refer to it as "the Irish airline" or "our friends in Ireland", such was his apparent dislike of Michael O'Leary's airline.
When talking of Ryanair's ballsy approach to customer service and public relations, he fumed: "[They] only get away with it because they're Irish. If a Russian or German airline acted in such a way they would be branded as arrogant and no one would fly with them."
He blasted Ryanair for pretending to fly to city destinations when "in reality its aircraft land hundreds of miles away from civilisation."
He said the Germanwings model was close to that of Easyjet because neither "tries to fool the customer".
Winkleman said that while the UK was a growing market for Germanwings because of the public's propensity to book online.
He said he expected growth in the UK market, and revealed services from Manchester to German destinations would become daily in the not too distant future.