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Deals of the Week: Planes past, present and future
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Your support makes all the difference.Planes past
"The Conquest of the Air" is the title of an exhibition of 20th-century art of the aeroplane, on show in Toulouse – home of Airbus – until 2 February. The work of artists such as Henri Matisse, Man Ray and Andy Warhol has been assembled in a gallery called Les Abattoirs (00 33 5 62 48 58 00; www.lesabattoirs.org) at 76 Allées Charles-de-Fitte, on the trendy Left Bank of the Garonne. It opens 11am-7pm daily except Monday.
You can fly to Toulouse from six UK airports: Birmingham on Flybe (08705 676 676; www.flybe.com), East Midlands on Bmibaby (0870 264 2229; www.bmibaby.com), Gatwick on British Airways (0845 77 333 77; www.ba.com), Heathrow on Air France (0845 0845 111; www.airfrance.com), Manchester on BMI (0870 60 70 555; www.flybmi.com) and Stansted on Buzz (0870 240 7070; www.buzzaway.com); the fare of £91 on Flybe on the weekend of 17-20 January looks good.
Planes present
All the low-cost airlines are staging January sales, but the underlying problem for them is how to fill a lot of capacity in the depths of winter. For example, easyJet (0870 600 0000; www.easyJet.com) flies five times a day from Luton to Paris, and three times a day from Liverpool, meaning 1,200 seats to fill each day, each way. Test bookings made for flights this month reveal reasonable availability at fares of £35 return from Luton and £37 from Liverpool.
Planes future
Five weeks from now, Ryanair (0871 246 0000; www.ryanair.com) invades Spain from Britain. The Irish no-frills airline is launching its first route to the Iberian peninsula, from Stansted to Girona, on 20 February. Test bookings made this week found a fare of £59 return (note that the airport is misleadingly described by the airline as "Barcelona", a city some 60 miles away).
Nine days later, on 1 March, GB Airways (booked through British Airways, 0845 77 333 77; www.ba.com) is launching daily flights from Gatwick to the Costa Brava airport. Fares will start at £99 return.
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