paulo, all your examples are skewed against how to get the best deals. they are not set up as an airline to take a weekly holiday with, taking bags. they are not set up for last minute bookings flying on romantic weekends, thats how they make their money. the last min business trip coming cheapest is more luck than anything. i woulnt take my family on a week long holiday with them, (if i had one), i'd do a package with transfers etc, but for single travellers, or a few mates on a city break / few days sun somewhere, carrying luggage, thats when they come into their own. all you've proven is that its best to shop arond, pretty basic advice really. there are always going to be examples where they are more expensive, on them occassions you dont fly with them. on occassions, like editors, where he has to get somewhere in france, which incidently is pretty short notice from when he is flying, even the plane hating anti ryanair lord of these BB's has conceeded that they are the best and cheapest way to get there. you can play around with dates and flight times all evening (and looks like you have!!), but without knowing them dates, playing around with days here and there, moving airports around i can never know what other deals there were to be had at the time of 'booking' last november i flew to return to lanzarote for 5 days (a near 4hr flight) for £55! which blows me away, and makes to odd negative story, or o'learys brash outbursts easy to put up with. it involved flying out from luton and back to stansted, and paying with my electron card from an abbey account i set up precisely for budget airlines, but it shows whats possible with a little planning, playing with options and days. its the examples you've provided, last min bookings, taking luggage, lost boarding pass charges, that make travel like that mine ridiculously cheap and possible.
So basically if you're prepared to be hugely inconvenienced by travelling in and out of different airports (and how much does that cost extra?) don't want to check in bags, don't have any mates and don't care where you go, then it's cheap? Of course it is, you're filling an empty seat. What a bizarre argument
what??? it was cheaper to go in and out of different airports, wasnt an inconvinience as we got train to luton and picked up from stansted, and i went with 2 mates. wanted somewhere hot, so it was between lanzarote and tenerife. i was showing what can be done with some flexability and planning. bizarre argument? lol.
Well it is. Ryanair doesn't position itself as the airline for young single men does it? Because that's basically what you're saying. They say they offer the cheapest flights. And yeah that is quite inconvenient for a lot of people to travel in and out of different airports - it's generally cheaper to get a return train ticket and not everyone is able to take the train. And most people can't go anywhere - they find their accommodation first and then their flights. It's a really weak argument. And another thing that really pisses me off about them is the way they say the flight costs 36 quid. Oh yeah, and then there's 25 quid taxes on top of that and a tenner for online booking and another 30 quid to check in a bag. I've checked them out against all the other airlines for my holiday in the summer and of course they're more expensive. But that is irrelevant in bizarro-world apparently
Me too. And if I'm only going away for a few days I'll just take clothes in hand luggage which is less of a piss about at the airport. I do pay for speedy boarding though, fuck getting a shite seat.
No one has to go with Ryanair. Do the full price comparison to your needs and if someone else is cheaper and you want to use them them use them. I still don't see how they are Satan. If you don't like the final price don't pay it. Anyone who goes to the site should know by now that the initial price isn't always the final price. They are the A La Carte of airlines. Choose your bits. Only pay for what choose. Go do the price comparisons you would with any other purchase before buying. It suits me who likes to take hand luggage only so I don't have wait for my gear at the other end. But then I only fly with then on deals. Did 5 flights for under £9 total Last October and a return flight to Germany for £8 two weeks ago. 7 flights in 4 months for under £20 and only one wasn't on time. That one was only 20 minutes late.
I've never used Ryan air because of their flights for £1 offers. It was obvious that other charges would be levied to make up the difference and I prefer to be told the price how it is and not through corporate smoke and mirrors.
To be clear, that example was one night. Out on the 14th, back on the 15th. The scenarios here were to simply to test the claims that Ryanair are the low price airline, rather than demonstrate the merit of any particular type of trip. In almost no scenario did this claim of being low price come true. Even without luggage, Ryanair was more expensive in half the cases. (@gromit: I do accept that if you travel when you hadn't actually planned to, you can get cheap fares as cabin-filler.)
I don't want to fly with them Gromit because Michael O'Leary is a vile cunt. He's a bit like an Irish version of derf and I'm damned if I'm going to put any money in his pocket.
Can we do that? I thought flying with RyanAir was compulsory. Thanks for that informative contribution
All of the scenarios and dates were picked without knowing who would charge what. There was no cherry picking to prop up a preconception. They included a mix of factors. Date flexibility, zero luggage and long-lead time booking. Each of these should favour low cost airlines. All best prices were those supplied by skyscanner, which automatically includes the non-optional extras in its price comparisons. In three out of four cases, removing the optional elements would not have made Ryanair cheaper. Nor does it seem to hold true about booking far enough in advance. The one case where they were cheaper was the shortest notice one. And in the case where our travellers were flexible about dates, they lost that one too. They do have cheap flights to some destinations on some days. In general though, they do not appear to be the low price airline, even when you take no luggage, book massively in advance or are flexible about dates.
My first trip was to support Wales so we had to go when the matches were. It was just a case of waiting and waiting till Ryanair had an offer and then booking. We did admitily run the risk of not getting the flights we wanted and having to pay lots more with another airline.
I wouldn't advise anyone to fly with Ryanair to/from Hamburg-Lubeck, purely because of location. Lubeck is more than an hour away on the train. It's like catching a flight to Manchester-Liverpool airport, and then having to trek from Liverpool to Manchester. Which wouldn't be so bad. Except if the flights are cancelled because of snow. And you have to keep toing and froing to the airport, because they keep saying the flights might take off, they don't admit until the very last minute that there's a snowball's chance in hell of taking off. And the train station at the airport doesn't go into the airport, it's outside, a five minute walk away, up/down some stairs, which would be a pain if you have heavy bags. And awful in cold weather, as standing on an outside platform when it's about -12 degrees is no fun at all. The airport information staff have been quite helpful. And I've yet to see whether the extra hotel costs and stuff are going to be reimbursed. The information sheet seems to suggest it will. What's the score? Do they wriggle out of it?
Well "London" Gatwick, is hardly next to Westminster Abbey and all the major airlines use that as a "London" airport.
Exactly, and this b/f is paying for priority boarding which means he'll get on the plane about 2 minutes earlier than the people who haven't paid
And would still have paid more for Ryanair had he not chosen that option. So your point is irrelevant to the question about whether they really are 'the low cost airline'. As I said earlier, the scenarios weren't concocted to play out a result. In the case of a special occasion it seemed quite plausible that - not being a frequent Ryanair flyer - the chap would have paid the extra. There are indeed cases where, if you tweak everything just-so, you're more likely to get a favourable result for Ryanair. The aim however was to avoid a cherry picked result.
I've always found it highly amusing when the gate is changed at the last minute and everyone who has paid for priority boarding is suddenly at the back of the queue. Oh how the non-priority boarders giggle
I'm glad your highlighting other ways in which Ryanair fleeces its customers. I didn't know about that myself.
If you want to waste £17 on Gatwick Express. Better off just getting the normal train which is only slightly longer and much cheaper and even cheaper still if you get it from Clapham Junction as you're not travelling from Zone 1
What I'd like to do is never be an air passenger ever again. But that isn't relevant to Ann's point either.
Well, I'd like to go back to NYC again one day. So that'll be the breaking point. For Europe though, maybe I'll never fly as a passenger again.
Imagine the fare traps he'd have to do to make that work. Maybe he'd actually invert his anti-disabled policy so one would have to pay extra if you had the normal number of limbs or something.
