I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect a certain level of suckiness when you voluntarily fly a budget airline. I understand that I’m not issued a seat number, that instead it’s a first come first serve frenzy of a free for all scramble onto the plane to get those precious exit row seats. That’s fine, with that kind of motivation to get on the plane we actually take off on time. I also understand that they won’t feed me, provide me with a seat pocket in the chair in front of me and choose to outfit their planes in the cheapest (and ugliest) fixturings imaginable. I also acknowledge that when they say they fly to Rome, Glasgow or Venice, what they really mean is the tiny shit airport a solid 55km away from the real airport that real airlines fly into. It’s like saying I’ll fly you to Toronto, but what I really mean is Hamilton. It’s a bit of a lie but I’m used to it.
But then there are some things that RyanAir does that are just plain stupid. For 2 extra pounds you can pay to upgrade yourself to a priority check in. This means that they’ll give you a yellow card and board your impatient self first. Sounds like a good deal, no? And for only a measly 2 quid! So you do it, patting yourself on the back for being so clever. Ya, you and about 80% of your fellow passengers! We flew to Spain on Ryanair and pretty much everyone had that special yellow card. So when they announce the priority boarding everyone swarms to the front in giant glob, each person thinking they should be boarded first. It’s pure chaos. People, what happened to the land of queuing?! I’ve seen better crowd organization a passport embassy of a former Eastern-bloc country. And that’s what really pisses me off about this airline. Not only does Ryanair not bother to complete the logistics in this £2 sham, the staff don’t even pretend to try to control the mayhem. They just don’t care. Instead, they let the mob do it’s globular thing and just check in who ever happens to be standing in front of them, yellow card or not. Of course as the mob gets bigger there is always one self important jackass who struts around the blob to the front of the crowd waving their yellow card.
Lady! You and everyone else!
(For the record, no, we did not pay to have the priority boarding. It’s only a 2 hour flight, I think we’ll survive if we nap in seats that aren’t next to each other)
And then when you actually get onto the plane, you get the joy of them trying to sell you crap the entire way. Food, drinks, perfumes, lottery scratch cards. I’m serious, scratch cards. How bored are you?! And each round of sales involves a long winded announcement over the intercom, in multiple languages if you’re lucky.
Flying Ryanair very quickly goes from tolerable to a test of your patience. From start to finish there is nothing pleasant about flying them. And it makes you wonder just how stingy are you to put up with this crap?
I got off that flight from Spain vowing to never fly them again.
Today they announced their latest tactic in the war on airfares. A whole new offering of £10 flights (including taxes!).
How stingy am I?
As I scroll through their list of available flights the answers it seems to be clear. Apparently, very.
Nothing wrong with cheap.
There is when you have to put up with a pile of what I consider to be abuse!
But even though I leave their flights hating them, I always go back for more! It’s a such a love hate relationship with them.
how do they do that for 10 pounds?! shoudn’t taxes, security fees, airport improvement taxes and fuel surcharges be something like twice or three times that?
asia has it’s own share of ryanair wannabes. we’ve flown tiger airlines which mercifully doesn’t have yellow vouchers. but asians are way too kiasu (keen to be first at the expense of all those around them) that they mob the door to the gate as soon as they enter the waiting lounge. only a smattering of causasians are sitting with 30 minutes to go before the boarding time.
nothing’s gonna change until someone gets injured and sues the airline.
When you fly out of tiny Airports, 50 miles from civilization, landing on a dirt field, you avoid the tax stuff.