Mention budget airlines, and chances are you'll automatically think of one of two things - that billboard you saw advertising flights to somewhere for ridiculously low prices or some Belgian businessman screaming at bemused airline staff on that show about easyjet on tv. Put the two of them together, and you'll come up with a fairly accurate summary of how most people would describe a budget airline - cheap but unreliable.
So is it really worth it? Is it worth taking a risk flying with a budget airline? There are several stages involoved in flying with any airline, so I'll go through each of them as I have experienced them.
Booking the flight.
There are a few different ways that you can organise a flight with Ryanair. As far as I am aware, there are very few, if any travel agents that will book your tickets for you with the airline. This could be because of the fact that their fares are usually so ridiculously low that its not really worth their while to deal with Ryanair. You can also arrange flights over the phone directly with Ryanair, but the easiest way to plan your flight is through their website.
The site itself (www.ryanair.com) is very well organised and easy to use. You just enter your departure and destination airports and a date, and within seconds you are given a price for your flights. You
can then choose to accept the flights or search for a better offer. Some of the flights are amazingly cheap - I have paid more for a 10 minute taxi journey than some of the flights they have on offer.
One thing that I didn't like very much, though, is the fact that the prices shown on the main page of the site exclude tax and can be misleading. For example, you almost always get flights for anything between £0.49 and £4.99, but when you actually go to book these, tax is added and I have never seen a price for a flight that included tax that was below £12.
One thing about the price of flights is that you have to book well in advance in order to take advantage of some of the excellent offers that Ryanair have. Like any budget airline, the price of tickets rises the closer you get to the date on which you are going to fly. If you spot a really cheap flight, it is often better to take it right away as you could go back the next day and the price may have doubled by then.
Another thing about the prices of flights, in particular to the continent, is that the return flight is almost always a lot more than the flight there. Having said that, it is usually still no more than half the price that you would pay with any of the conventional airlines. In fact, a flight from anywhere in Europe to Dublin is actually cheaper than a train ticket from Belfast to Dublin.
Tickets
The beauty of travelling budget is that there ARE no tickets, just a number that you are given immediately. No need to wait for your tickets to show up in the post, you just get a reference number and you are immediately ready to go. You don't usually even need the number, all you have to do is show them your passport to get on the flight.
Service
I'm sure many of you have seen some of the programmes on television about budget airlines where about 50 irrate travellers are gathered around an airline employee, having just been told that they will have to wait another 10 hours for their next flight. I remember one episode in particular when an Italian lady was told that she was not going to make it to her father's funeral. One thing that has to be said is that it is, of course, a television programme and needs to be dramatic to keep people watching. It is obvious that nobody would be interested in watching a run of the mill flight where everything went right, so what we see on these shows are always worst case scenarios. In my own experiences, I have never been on a flight where I have been waiting for more than an hour, and I have flown about 20 times altogether with Ryanair. I have always found the staff to be friendly and helpful, and have never had any problems with them. The moral of the story is simple - turn up for your flight with plenty of time to spare and you probably won't have any problems.
The Flight
Ryanair is a no-frills airline and makes no secret of this. Don't expect that breakfast in the little plastic container that you get with more expensive airlines because you won't be getting it. They do have a trolley with snacks on it, but you have to pay for anything you get off it. You can bring your own snacks if you want, that's what I usually do. I have also heard complaints about passengers who find that the planes that Ryanair use are very uncomfortable and have very little leg-room. It is true that there is not an abundance of space, but I found that it was more spacious than most of the coaches that I have been on, and because most of the flights that Ryanair do are relatively short I cannot imagine this posing too much of a problem to most people.
Disabled Section
I am not really in a good position to comment on the facilities available for disabled people on Ryanair. The only thing that I noticed on the plane was that the first few rows of seats on the aircraft are reserved for people with disabilities and OAP's. For more information on services that Ryanair provide for disabled people, I would suggest contacting the airline.
Airports
One of the reasons that Ryanair can keep its flights so cheap is because it generally uses small airports instead of bigger airports nearer to the big cities. I have found this can be a little bit inconvenient sometimes, especially if you know little about the region that you are flying to. I found this out on my first flight with Ryanair when I flew into "Paris" and ended up in Beauvais, a town about an hour away from Paris itself. It is handy enough to get into Paris, as there is a bus that goes regularly from right outside the airport. The only problem was that the bus drops you off at Porte Maillot, and finding your way around for the first time can be a nightmare, as there is little or no tourist infomation available either at the airport or where the bus drops you off. I learned my lesson after that, and found out that if you research your destination before you go it could save you a lot of hassle. Ryanair flies to 85 airports in 16 countries, so it is possible that many of the other airports are more organised than the ones that I have been to. This is simply an observation based on the 6 airports that I have been to with Ryanair.
So is it worth it? My personal opinion is that it definitely is. I have flown on British Airways, Aer Lingus, British Midlands, Swiss Air and KLM and the only real difference between any of these airlines and Ryanair is the breakfast and cup of coffee that you get on your flight. While the breakfast usually goes down nicely, it is hardly worth paying an extra £80 for it.
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Dec 20th, 2003
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