No matter how much I favour „conventional“ airlines, there’s one word I never seem to get apart from with their budget counterparts. That word? “Free”.

Ryanair if a budget airline. While the safety aspect remains the same, there are subtle changes to your flying experience, including:

· No complimentary meals or onboard refreshments, although light snacks and drinks are available to buy on board, at prices that aren’t any worse than in the airports themselves. You do get a free in-flight magazine though, although it might not be waiting for you in the seat pocket in front of you. Instead one of the air hostess types will come round with a pile of them as you take off – a great idea as it stops people taking them (and binning them soon after) even if they don’t want them.

~*~*~*~* Destinations ~*~*~*~*

Ryanair don’t always fly from the most convenient airports. Take the one near me, for example. It may have “Frankfurt” in the title, but Frankfurt Hahn is over an our away from the city in question. Not always a problem, but make sure you know which one you’ll be landing at if your destination has more than one airport.

The simplest way to find and book a flight is through their website, www.ryanair.com. It’s a nicely laid-out place and I’m yet to encounter a broken link or dodgy connection. Plus it’s a tasteful blue and yellow, not orange like you know who. It’ll retain your details too if you tick the box, so you don’t need to type your address each time. You don’t need to register to book either, and can pay with Visa, MasterCard, Amex, Connect and Delta cards. If your journey originates outside the UK, you’ll be charged in Euros rather than GBP – for me this means I incur an extra (though minor) fee in the form of the dodgy exchange rate my bank use for euro transactions, because although I have a euro account over here, it comes with a debit card and not a credit one.

My flight out was remarkably painless. The plane was incredibly clean, especially considering it had only landed less than 30 mins previously. The leg room was no worse than with KLM, the airline I flew with on my way out here, and the staff were helpful. We hit turbulence, but that’s hardly something you can blame the company for. We landed ahead of schedule in both Pisa and Hahn (although I am beginning to thing this is a generic airline trick to lessen the likelihood of those negative “always late” points). Nope, my flights were fine. Checking in in Pisa however was a different matter. I arrived 2 hours before departure as they’d told me to. Because this meant an early morning start on a Sunday, I had to get a taxi as the busses wouldn’t get me there until quite a bit later. In fact, I arrived 2 hours and 10 mins before we were supposed to fly.45 mins later I was still sitting there, with my luggage, waiting for the staff to show up. I checked with the girl running the plastic-packing luggage machine but she just shrugged and told me that “Ryanair always late”. I sat and I sat. I watched people check in with BA and with Alitalia. All this time the Ryanair office at the airport was deserted, so we couldn’t even ask them. When the staff did show up, they were not in the least bit apologetic, and took a good 10 mins to settle down, start their terminals and check their make up before they let anyone check in. By this time, my airport shopping opportunities were greatly reduced, sob. I very much doubt non-budget airlines would get away with this. So grrrrr at Ryanair for that.