It may be cheap (but not always), but it certainly isn't
clever. And it definitely isn't funny! Flying Ryanair is
not the fantastic low cost and cheerful option that it is
made out to be. First, the low cost airlines (Ryanair, Buzz,
and Easyjet/Go) have made Stansted their main hub.
Stansted is a major pain to get to and from as it is situated
some 68km north of Central London and the principal way, to
get there using public transport, is on the Stansted Express
from Liverpool St in Central London. A return ticket from
Liverpool St in central London costs £23 – not
cheap for the 50 minute journey each way. If you arrive back
into Stansted after midnight, the chances are that you will
have missed the last train, because they do not always wait
for the last flight, so the alternative to travel back to
London is by expensive taxi – we are talking £60+
(or $100+). Now that the Stansted Express no longer runs on
Sundays due to rail works, you have to take a painfully long
coach journey that takes around 2 hours.
Secondly, one of the particularly unendearing habits
practiced by BAA (British Airports Authority) at Stansted is
to be selective as to which flights they decide to put up on
the flight information screens. This lack of info seems to
apply particularly to Ryanair flights. This means that you
could be sitting waiting in the check in area for your flight
check in information to appear on screen and it never does. A
weary frequent Ryanair traveller warned the Beetle that this
happens frequently, so a lesson learned is to occasionally
prowl around the airport to check that your flight hasn't
already started checking in. This happened to the Beetle
going to Trieste, resulting in a late check in, only 15
minutes before the gate closed, reducing the amount of time
available for foraging for duty free chocolate (and other
Beetle fodder) to a minimum!
Thirdly, Ryanair do not give you a boarding pass with a
printed seat number – it is free seating. What a
nightmare, all those people with their sharp elbows.
Dignified British queuing (um, no!) turns out in reality as a
training opportunity for a rugby scrum! Is it really too much
trouble to put seat numbers on a ticket?
Once you have wrestled your way on board, you may think about
reading material to while away the excessive amount of time
spent on the runway awaiting clearance to depart. You'd
be disappointed. There is no reading material whatsoever; no
free newspapers or magazines to read. The staff do hand out a
brochure with pictures of perfumes and silly Ryan Air models
(as if!!) and then when you approach landing, you are
requested to hand them back again! (There really isn't
anything worth reading in them anyway all, unless you like
looking at pictures of grey coloured pearl necklaces.) Buzz,
by contrast have excellent info brochures with information
about your destination, what to see, where to go,
recommendations on where to eat, day trips away etc.
Fifthly, forget on-board entertainment or headphones, music
or films – the only entertainment to be had is to
observe the no frills service you are paying for, for
example, watching the faces of the uninitiated when they are
asked to pay £4 ($6) for a sandwich, and £1.50
($2) for a small and nasty coffee. For her trip to Oslo, the
Beetle took a flask of coffee, much to the envy of fellow
passengers and the annoyance of the air crew. (Buzz do the
best and very drinkable coffee if you have a choice! Also
recommended by our Webmaster!)
Even for someone of limited height, (5'2”), the
seats are cripplingly unrealistically tiny with next to no
leg room. Even the Beetle's knees touched the seat in
front.
Sixthly, presumably also to cut costs, passengers are
responsible for cleaning; whilst I agree with our webmaster
that passengers should be tidy and take their rubbish away
with them at the end of their journey, the Ryanair way is to
have 2 “hostesses” walk down the aisle with a big
bin liner open. You are required to lean over your fellow
passengers and throw your rubbish in the bin liner as they
walk by. Talk about target practice. It is one of my
nightmares that one day, someone will actually use the sick
bag provided (the only object to be found on your seat
pocket) and be too embarrassed to try and throw it into this
walking bin bag, so they'll leave it for me to find,
whilst thinking oh, that's strange there actually is
something in my seat pocket, I wonder what it is!
Seventh: the staff. My theory is that people who work for
Ryanair failed to pass the Aeroflot entrance exams. Rudeness,
ability to glare and make unnecessarily snotty remarks are
all prerequisites for hiring. As for the pilots, flying
Ryanair for them must be their first job out of pilot school.
The Beetle has never, ever had a smooth two tyred landing on
the handful of flights she has been with them.
But my biggest complaint about Ryanair: it's not just the
poor service, which is abominable, it's not the
supercilious staff, the lack of decent coffee or seat
numbers, it's the fact that to cut costs, they often do
not fly into the main airport in a city – and they
don't even warn you about it on booking! The Beetle finds
this practice offensively misleading. For example, if you
want to fly to Copenhagen in Denmark, you actually arrive
into Sweden and have to take a bus journey back into Denmark.
The Beetle recently flew Ryanair to Oslo. It was only after
she had booked the tickets when she investigated how to get
from the airport to the centre of Oslo, that she realised
that Torp airport, where Ryanair fly into is 100km away from
Oslo. At no time was this made clear when booking on-line,
even though the booking was for Oslo. Had this been made
abundantly clear, the Beetle would have gone elsewhere.
Not only is it 100 km away from Oslo, but there is no public
transport after 8pm to Oslo from Torp (and even then, it is a
very expensive taxi ride to the train station) as Torp is a
very small sleepy little town. The Ryanair dedicated coach
cost around £20 or $30 return and took 2 miserable
hours so that a 7.25pm Stansted departure resulted in the
Beetle arriving at her Oslo city centre hotel at almost 1am
– and it is a 1 ½ hr flight and a one hour time
difference. Do the math, as they say! The real airport in
Oslo, where all of the other carriers fly into has excellent
transport connections and takes less than half an hour from
Oslo city centre by train. Never again!
For more info on Ryanair, visit: http://ryanair.com/
What do you think? Do you have a fave or hated airline? Want
to get an airport or airline off your chest? Drop the Beetle
a line: beetle@globetrotters.co.uk
