I view flying with Ryanair like getting the coach. You buy a cheap ticket, queue up, pick your seat and if you want a cup of tea – you buy 1. Its a short journey and as long as I have my bum on a seat the rest is gravy. I fly about once a month and most of the time it is with Ryanair, but sometimes it is with Aer Lingus and once at the end of last year with City Jet and my choice is based on price – because of the length of the journey – why pay more?

Southwest airlines are unavailable on my search for flights to the UK or mainland Europe, maybe I’m pressing the wrong buttons? Ryanair do what they do, it’s not full body massage. The marketing case studies you quote will replace SW Airlines with Ryanair. They might be twunts but be an adult and accept airline travel is cattle transportation, unless you are going long-haul and can afford better then….

Its not illegal because if you dont check in then you dont have a ticket, so you cant show up to the airport and expect to get on a plane without your ticket? do you even know how online checkin works? You book your flight but you dont get your ticket, you have to get your reservation number, enter it into the site, checkin and then get your ticket, as well as entering your passport and identity. Dont comment if you dont know how it works, no ticket means no plane, no check in means no ticket. You check in to get your ticket to get on the plane, if you paid and didnt get your ticket then you dont get on? Simple eh?

What really galls is that they actually charge you for booking yourself in online. It’s like going to a petrol station and filling up youself, paying for your fuel …. and then being charged €6 extra.

Would you rather pay 60 at the airport then?
Its still a fraction of what it can cost you on Aer Lingus. I got flights to germany for the summer 34euro return. Was 110 on Aer Lingus. 6euro is nothing. If you dont like Ryan Air fly with someone else, but if your gunna complain about 6euro then your not gunna pay an extra 50-60euro to fly with someone else just because they dont charge an online booking fee, which in most cases they all do, but some just put it into the overall price and dont tell you. I dont like RyanAir that much but they get me where I wanna go, for cheap, they fly on time (99% of the time) and Ive never had an issue with them.

@dave i am well aware how online check in works i have used it numerous times. But the because you purchased your seat on the flight legally its up to ryanair (or any other airline) to ensure you have your boarding pass to get on the flight, the responsibility is with them as the airline and the ones providing the service to ensure you have that. Ans if I remember correctly a lawyer actually took them to court a year or two ago over them charging him at the airport and they lost the case

Aer Lingus! A complete shambles! Must be one of the worst airlines in Europe! Expensive, unreliable and not far behind Ryanair when it comes to sneaky charges!

I went to check Aer Lingus the other day, even though it meant sending my dad further, more expensive base fare and higher CC charges, only thing cheaper was checked in luggage and I don’t need that!

What bull Rodrigo. I fly about two dozen times per year and I’ve yet to be let down by AL. They’re extremely reliable. I also know they’re not expensive. It’s a shame they’ve reduced their standards, but this was necessary to compete with Ryanair. One final thing: on AL you get a smile and greeting, Ryanair u get a grunt

That’s utter bollocks Damien, whilst I can’t comment on Aer Lingus, not flown with them in a while, Ryanair cabin crew are great, i was on a flight that came in very early last Friday and while we were waiting for buses they were having a right old laugh and chat with me, while the flight is in air they have so much pressure to sell that they dont really have a lot of time to say much to you but I never find them less than polite. Now the ground staff, in Britain in particular, that’s a different matter…

Oh right, so because you had one good experience it makes my my statement utter bollox. There’ll always be exceptions to the rule.

No Damien between flying home, to my gran in Glasgow and my friends around England i am on at least 1 a month, never had a problem ever, that is what makes your statement bollocks, I was merely pointing out one exceptional case to back up my point.

Cheap airline for cheap people

*you’re

I used to fly to London for €1 or €9 or €14 return regularly a couple of years ago, before the fares went up. Gap in the market now.

I used to get a lot of ?10 each way flights each way, but I still get them for 50 return regularly enough, can’t complain really it cost me the same on peril and tolls to drive to the airport and back…

Absolutely that’s why I do

Everybody is entitled to moan whether they fly with them or not.

Or you choose another airline, that’s how supply and demand works. Nobody’s putting a gun to your head to buy a Ryanair ticket. Stop bitching and shop around.

Oisin is is the cheapest flights, but treat people like shit. So that’s the pinnacle aspirations of free markets. You can get stuff that you can afford but make it as unpleasant as possible. Horray for capitalism. Imagine we walked around with a gun to our head. How awful would that be????

Mark, I’m not saying its a perfect market, but obviously by your comment you prioritise customer service as highly as you do comparative pricing. That’s pretty understandable, everyone wants the best for what they can afford.

But if Ryanair doesn’t measure up in terms of what you’re (people in general) looking for, no one is stopping you from looking elsewhere. If you can’t afford to fly another airline then you (people in general again) need to readjust those priorities to accept that sometimes you get what you pay for and not a drop more.

Personally, I’d only fly Ryanair if I had absolutely no other choice left to me. I can usually find flights of equal value or slightly more but with better service on other airlines.

by the time you take in all the extras Ryan air charge the likes of aer lingus are as competitive and their airports are not in the middle of nowhere.

I’d imagine they are in breach of their own T&c’s if they can’t provide the check in service how can they charge you?

Oisin the only airline that flys from Dublin where I am to East Midlands, where my family is, is Ryanair, and I have few complaints, but this is ridiculous, it’s in their T&C’s that you have to check in between 14 days and 4 hours of your flight, so if they move the posts you shouldn’t be liable, I hope someone takes them to court over this!

That fee has always been there, its nothing new. You have weeks to check in for your flight and if you leave it til the last minute and something else happened (like your internet going down) you’d be without it and have to pay anyway. You get reminded a WEEK before the flight that you have to check in, its an entire week. This is barely 3 days. Its not robbery. If you leave it til the last minute something can always go wrong. I check in right after I book my flights, theres no reason not to. Quit whining, its like you have no idea how it works.

Lie, that fee hasn’t always been there, came in about 3 or 4 years ago!

I went england with them a few years back and never checked in and had to pay it, must be 4 or 5 years ago. Was my own fault because I forgot to check in completely. I didnt moan and bitch about it, I didnt have a ticket so thats how i got it.

I never fly Ryanair……ever!

Not true.
Cattle have welfare rights advocates.
Ryanair passengers don’t.

@Joseph If They are taken to court and lose, a new charge will be applied to EVERY ticket sold to cover their costs of such litigation, as they did with wheel chairs, ash cloud airline compo etc.
It would be the next big winner for them.

@ Stefan Hanrahan. Must say I never had a problem with their staff. Their’s is not an easy job and they earn peanuts while O’Leary and the top men earn millions. There was one Scottish hostess (host person?) on a recent flight and she was a born commedienne, had everone smiling.

“Ryanair are far better when it comes to punctuality” the only reason this is true is because they blatantly lie about the length of time a flight takes. Scheduling 1 hour to fly Dublin to Manchester while in reality it is not more than 25-30 minutes. This is stand practice across the board on all their routes. So they can claim to be the ‘on time airline’ all they want but in reality they are just lying

Peter, maybe you didn’t quite understand the point I’m making. If I book an earlier flight with Aer Lingus, I expect it to arrive earlier than the later Ryanair flight but too often that isn’t the case. I’ve flown with both airlines enough to know that Ryanair are far more punctual. I understand they deliberately advise that flights will take longer than they actually will but I always calculate a flight from Gatwick to Dublin to be 1 hour max.

Guys. You are comparing apples and oranges ref. on time flights. Aer Lingus fly to more congested airports than Ryanair. If you drive from Cork to Dublin the traffic gets slower the closer you get to Dublin.

Regarding Ryanairs punctuality, Everytime you get on a ryanair flight you get the usual Ryanair are the most punctual airline beating every other European airline.

Believe it if you wish but you may wish to read this
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/7965686/Europes-most-punctual-airlines-revealed.html

However, I’m expecting 6000 red thumbs because most here will still say the man is a genius and believe the hype. I bet you also thought Anglo were a great Irish success story.
Get informed.
Deal in facts.

Ryanair didn’t change all that.
Deregulation changed all that.
Are you suggesting if Ryanair didn’t come about we would still be getting scalped? Hardly.
We would all be flying Easyjet out of Ireland and be very happy.

*** bring in Easyjet….

Aerlingus do not run at a loss.

Complete rubbish. Ryanair weren’t a low fares airline when they started up and because of that they were on the verge of going out of business very early on in their life. When deregulation came in they then adopted the Southwest model because they couldn’t compete at the high end.

I don’t fly with them if possible (after a number of bad experiences – delayed flights/lost items) and that’s my choice, but please let’s nail this myth that they were the pioneers of cheap air fares. On top of which one of the main things Southwest pioneered along with cheap air fares was exceptional customer service, something which Ryanair dropped along the way.