More people than ever before are choosing to fly budget airlines, despite many describing the services provided by no-frills carriers as unsatisfactory.

Passenger numbers for the last few months show that traditional scheduled airliners have suffered falls in passenger numbers while budget carriers have prospered.

Finnish flagship carrier Finnair revealed that weak demand reduced the average price per passenger kilometer by more than 18 per cent in the second quarter of 2009, while Air France-KLM experienced a 5 per cent drop in passenger capacity in June.

British Airways (BA) also suffered, with passenger numbers down 5 per cent during June.

Budget carriers, however, seem to be prospering. Ryanair can now boast to be twice as big as BA, as it carried 5.8 million passengers in June (up 13.8 per cent on the year before), compared with BA's monthly figure of 2.9 million.

Luton-based EasyJet has also seen a 7.9 per cent increase in year-on-year passenger figures.

Air Berlin, another low-cost carrier, demonstrated the flexibility of its business model as it cut back capacity and managed to boost its yields by 14 per cent in June, despite a fall in passenger numbers.

The financial rewards, however, come at a cost as a recent study showed how passengers feel that their expectations aren't being matched by the budget airlines.

According to a report by Continental Research, more than half of passengers questioned for the study (53 per cent) complained of cramped seats and uncomfortable conditions onboard the low cost airlines. Less than a quarter (23 per cent) felt that conditions on non-budget, scheduled airlines were unsatisfactory.

Passengers also feel that there are too many extras included in the ticket prices for budget airlines. Nearly half (44 per cent) of the passengers taking part in the survey complained about excessive add-on prices, while only 16 per cent of those using non-budget carriers felt the prices changed too much from the original listed ones.