[mjn]

You must not be flying the low-cost airlines in Europe. I have never seen any US-based airline that rivals the combination of low-price and bottom-level service provided by Ryanair. Unfortunately, the low-end airlines are so popular within Europe that it's increasingly hard to avoid them, even if you want to pay more, because they have many of the direct flights (especially to vacation destinations).

[onemorepassword]

Unless your destination is as low-budget as the airlines, it's pretty easy to avoid them. They're mostly the equivalent of a cheap holiday bus.

Also, although I will avoid the EasyJets and Ryanairs as much as possible, for a direct flight the duration of a bus ride it doesn't really make that much difference.