Ryanair sprang up among the rash of budget airlines that helped every Britain take the bare minimum of holidays a year required not to go insane (at least three according to the popular press) and made it possible for every second Briton to buy a delightful holiday home in a former Soviet bloc country where the lawn was trimmed by the goat who happened to be living in the sitting room of said holiday home.
Sarcasm aside, Ryanair continues to exist as a supposed purveyor of dirt cheap flights to a range of European locations, buoyed up by a vast range of additional costs, surcharges and add-on sales. Shameless self-publicists, Money Saving Expert et al. are seldom free of banner headlines declaring yet another '1p sale' from the champions of misinformation at Ryanair.
*Flight booking with Ryanair - more 'will they, won't they?' than Ross and Rachel!*
I've had the misfortune to book flights with Ryanair on a couple of occasions and migraine inducing website aside, there's one very significant issue with the airline as a company - lack of trust.
Due to the fact that multiple family members have had flights cancelled (costing them £££s in re-booking costs) and because Ryanair are well known for culling their routes, booking flights
with them is very stressful.
I recently booked flights for a trip next February (which I now regret) and suffice to say Ryanair are the only airline I've ever flown with where I've felt the need to check that the flight still exists once a fortnight. They claim that they notify every passenger if their flight times are changed or cancelled, but this just isn't the case and I can cite multiple examples in my own family alone.
*Mister O'Leary - why did my '1p' flight cost £21?'
All budget airlines have additional charges - it seems to be a fact of life that thrifty consumers need to keep their wits about them when booking what looks like a good deal.
Ryanair take this further than most and before you know it, a '1p' flight has gone up in cost by a factor of thousands. Checking hold luggage, checking in at the airport, breathing, wearing clothes - all will incur extra costs. In fairness to the other budget airlines, most are getting better at displaying the 'real' cost to passengers, but Ryanair seem to be slow to catch up.
*Baggage drop*
I was going to call this section 'Check-in', but it's a loaded term for an airline where you pay £20+ for the privilege of speaking to a member of ground staff for 30 seconds.
Despite making almost all of its passengers check-in online, Ryanair still needs to have staffed baggage drops (doubtless due to security reasons). The queues for these are often as bad as regular check-in queues and I fail to see how they can justify that a few seconds of staff time spent processing the fact that you have arrived at the airport is worth £20. Hey, if Ryanair staff got even a small proportion of the £600 an hour they charge people to check-in they'd be laughing! (Assuming £20 for a 2 minute check-in)
Confused customers who haven't read the T&Cs properly are charged to check-in by angry, patronising staff who are obviously sick of the fact that they have to deal with the same confused customers every day. I can't help but wonder how hard it would be to check-in for older customers who aren't fans of the internet.
*The in-flight.... Experience?
Thinking of Ryanair flights gives me a Lady Macbeth style urge to wash my hands 'til they bleed. Think grotty planes turned round too quickly, with gum under the seats, used newspapers wedged into every available gap and a garish blue and yellow trim that could help you spot your local Ikea from the motorway.
Cabin crew who (in my experience) spoke pretty poor English, weren't interested and couldn't even bring themselves to flog the crap that head office obviously required that they push onto customers. My estimation of Easyjet has risen considerably since flying with Ryanair. Even the staff on the flight deck sounded disinterested and above making apologies on occasions where the flight has been delayed by over an hour.
*Delays and the worrying news that nothing is Ryanair's problem*
On our recent trip to Germany we returned via Salzburg and were delayed by an hour and a half (a Ryanair flight, although 'act of God' style situation). This led to my girlfriend and I missing our bus (no big thing) and our in-laws missing their connecting (Ryanair) flight.
Ryanair appear to be only willing to help passengers who have been delayed by two or more hours, unlike other, non-budget, carriers I've flown with who have bent over backwards to accommodate passengers who were delayed through no fault of their own. A good example of this would be KLM managing to have me transferred onto a (somewhat more enjoyable) Virgin Atlantic flight after messing up a connection to JFK.
Ryanair, however, couldn't care less and despite the fact that a delay in one of their flights led to the in-laws missing their flight, they wouldn't do a thing. They were eventually charged close to £500 for new (Ryanair) tickets, despite the fact that the original (Ryanair) plane was delayed and the fact that there were obviously seats going spare on their eventual connecting flight.
I don't really care what their terms and conditions say - if you miss a flight because of Ryanair, Ryanair should take the hit for providing you with a new flight. Sadly for consumers 'natural law' is ignored by budget carriers, while finicky adherence to the minutiae of contract law is the order of the day.
*Final thoughts*
My experience with Ryanair would recommend avoiding them at all costs. If you *need* to fly, is there another carrier who can get you there cheaper? Can you take a coach, train or ferry? Cost is not everything and Ryanair seems to be a continuing extension of the warped idea that low cost justifies crap service.
Two thumbs down from me.
Originally published by me on www.dooyoo.co.uk
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
I don't travel anywhere near as frequently with Ryanair as I used to, despite being withing striking distance of several airports that they use in southern Germany. The 'real' bargains are becoming ever more difficult to find and BA or Lufthansa often offer cheaper flights to London, with better service.
fizzytom 25.09.2009 19:48
I still get good value flights with Ryanair and I guess I'm lucky that i've never found service from the staff a problem. I travel light and avoid extra costs and just can't complain
flyingllamas 25.09.2009 13:36
Ryanair is definitely only worth it on the money front nothing else-unfortunately for some of us this is the pressing concern!
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olster99 22.10.2009 ·
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Review of Ryanair - RYR
Sep 24th, 2009
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