come on, my fiancee booked a flight for EUR 17 round trip recently, including their credit card handling fee (which can be avoided by using visa electron). if that's not budget then i don't know what is. i have booked GBP 20 round trip flights with ryanair or easyjet numerous times, you just have to know how to play their special offers game and be somewhat flexible on dates. often, getting to the airport or parking costs me more than the actual flight. if treating incompetent customers badly enables these prices then so be it.
AA does the same thing. I spent last weekend in London and will spend next weekend in Frankfurt for that reason. And I will get around 35,000 frequent flyer miles out of the deal; enough for a free domestic round trip.
If this means that someone has to pay $35 because they can't follow the directions on the website, I am not going to shed many tears for them.
