I know that low cost carriers have now reached Istanbul and Marrakech, but do you know of any plans for them to fly to the Middle East? George Dunn, Oldham

Sunday Times travel expert Richard Green responds: For the time being, the range on the type of aircraft that the low cost airlines currently favour ­ the Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320, means that they are about at their range limit with the five hour flight to Sharm El Shiek ­ as flown by Easyjet.

However, until the low cost carriers get larger aircraft and take on the traditional airlines over longer routes, as does Zoom to the US and Canada, and Oasis Airways to Hong Kong, it's a question of using low cost carriers with a plane change on the way.

Ryanair and Easyjet leave you to your own devices if you try and make a connecting flight. A bore if your first flight is late and you miss the second, as they will wash their hands of you.

But one national carrier that's also a low cost carrier, is busily encouraging passengers to transfer at its hub. Air Baltic (0871 288 7416) is based in Riga, Latvia, and in the 13 years since it was started, has built up a rather interesting route network, and one that is quickly expanding.

It can save a small fortune on business trips to say to Almaty, Baku, Tbilisi or Yerevan. Flights from Gatwick to Yerevan for example (via Riga) start at £285 return, as compared to Bmi's cheapest fares of £452. But it also flies to Hurghada, Istanbul, Kiev, Moscow, Odessa, Simferopol, Sochi, St. Petersburg, Tashkent, Tbilisi, and Tel Aviv, all with the same no-nonsense options on one-way fare, cheap early deals, and food to buy onboard.

Look out for German Wings (0870 252 12 50) too, which also sell flights with a plane change en route, offering fares from Stansted, Edinburgh and Dublin, to 34 cities across Europe. The same goes for Air Berlin (0871 5000 737), which is also expanding fast, and offers connecting flights over its hub airports.

And then there is Aer Lingus, which is in the process of forging a revolutionary tie-up between it and the US low cost airline Jet Blue, which means that you'll be able to book from the UK or Ireland to New York and then connect onto any of Jet Blue's 40 US destinations.

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