Well, why not. There's a lot written about Ryanair on these forums.

Ryanair recently tried to make itself rather more customer-friendly, and business-friendly too. One part of this is the business plus fare, which includes premium seating, luggage, priority boarding and security, all that stuff (hence the quotes round "business class", although there are some out there that aren't much better than this...)

And they had a sale. Which was rather good, as the fares were only £10 more than the standard fare, and I wanted checked luggage and premium seating anyway, so it was a bargain. So, for the princely sum of £48 pounds, I was heading off to Copenhagen, a city that is very dear to me (and just very dear, so a cheap flight was a very welcome start). This was something of a farewell tour for me, thanks to a change in jobs. So an opportunity to do all those things I'd kept put off doing while I was going regularly.

And off we go!

As I was being cheap, I decided to get the bus to Luton. It is my local airport, so it's not too bad a journey. Train down to Hitchin, bus across to the airport. Actually, the bus, with its USB sockets and free wifi already beats the comfort standards you get on most flights out of LTN - and I bagged an exit row...



You can see how the glamour started already.

Luton airport is... Well, it's a mess. It used to be a little local authority run airport for charter flights, but then easyJet came along and it expanded rapidly. So now it's building cobbled on to building. It's also surrounded by hills, so the access road is rather constrained. And, right now, they're expanding it further, so the centre of it is a building site. There's a temporary bus station from where you drag your case through a building site to the terminal, through a fug of smoke of the-last-cigarette-before-going-through-security.

Now the Ryanairish part. The Business Plus fare is meant to include premium security at Luton, according to the website, but the security team at Luton know nothing of this (although they're polite enough about it). Ryanair won't give a straight answer, but basically they're advertising it and forgot to tell the airport. However, I'd found this out on a previous trip, so didn't bother. Given it was a Saturday afternoon, security (in a temporary area downstairs during rebuilding) was a breeze. I do find it usually pretty efficient and friendly at Luton, given the early morning passenger numbers - Heathrow T5 could do with taking some notes.

Airside is, well, it's OK. Basically like a provincial shopping mall that's forced all the smaller shops to close, and has ended up with just a couple of chain stores and a load of cafés. There is a branch of Wasabi, however, which was good enough for me:



Anywhere that can serve me a great big mochi gets a ^ from me. The plum tea was horribly sweet, though - they used to do decent Japanese, unsweetened green tea, but it didn't last. Whey does everything have to be so oversweetened in this country? Ach well.

The other feature of Luton is its layout, down to its cobbled togetherness. This airside area is a waiting room, and the only one at that. It's linked to a new pier on the same side, but also to the old building, which has its own pier, plus a rotunda at the end. All gates are stair boarding - no airbridges here. However, as it's almost all LCCs, the flight turnaround is rather speedy (and the gate utilisation high) so the gates aren't posted until a relatively short time before boarding. And, as you don't know which pier to go to (Ryanair normally go from the rotunda, which is about a 10-15 minute walk from the waiting area, but they sometimes go from the new pier too) you end up with something of a starting line by Pret, at the entrance to the gates:



You don't get the full impression of it as a) it's a static image and b) this is quiet. On a Monday morning, you can practically hear the starter's pistol as the gate gets posted, and the all-elbows jostling begins for position in the airport-style speed-walking contest that is the undignified rush to the gate. The days of unassigned seating are gone now, so there's less of an impetus, but it's all down to luggage storage.

The gates are all set up for LCCs too. There's relatively little sitting - the assumption is that you will stand in a queue as soon as you reach the gate - and that these are separated into priority and general boarding. Priority on this flight is pretty empty (at more businessy times and more businessy routes, it can almost being as long as the general queue) so I just grab a nearby seat until I see some movement. It doesn't take long before we're called forward for pre-boarding.

Now, this is the fun part with FR at LTN. The rotunda leads to some covered walkways towards the planes. But their turnaround efficiency needs passengers to be 'boarded' while passengers are still coming off and the aircraft is refuelling. Cleaning is performed quickly in the interim, although the aircraft are designed to minimise this, and crew have to do what they can during descent. So you're held here:



And that's alright on a breezy March afternoon. But I've been out here for 15 minutes at 6am on a December morning, and it's not pleasant. I chat here to a couple of other passengers - they can be quite friendly, these flights.

But we board quickly (well, send to the steps to await cabin crew direction). I have seat 1A, which is great, and the crews are generally very good at keeping the front lockers for front row passengers, so no problem getting luggage space (not that it's really going to be a problem boarding this early) but it's impossible to reach any further back when you disembark.

1A on Ryanair is a, er, rather special seat. You get one great prize - a small pocket on the wall where you can put a book and an iPad. I mentioned earlier that FR planes are optimised for minimal cleaning - part of this is that seats don't have pockets. Yup, that's fun.

But 1A is right next to the door. There's no divider in front of you. Now, Ryanair board using airstairs to save on airport fees, so you're completely open to the elements (and the steps are quite narrow). From 1A, then, you're right by the steps, and right open to the elements during boarding. There's a reason they have a load of blue paper towels handy. But on a nice day, it's actually a very pleasant place to watch boarding from.



The upside, of course, is the legroom, which is great. You're facing the jump seat, so you can't quite stretch out until you're up in the air, but then you've all the space you want (with a slight intrusion from the door). You rarely have someone next to you on this route, but today I did (the flight was completely full). But they were friendly, and not elbow-tennis players, so all was good.

All safety stuff progresses are normal, but they're quite strict at getting people to take headphones off (definitely not a bad thing).

The next part of the flight is where you need decent earbuds or noise-cancelling headphones. FR do seem to attract the tinny headphones and kids-playing-iPad-games-at-full-volume crowd, but these irritations are drowned out by the never-ending sales pitch, from food and drink (which actually looks pretty decent - at least you get more choice than a soggy sandwich and a minute bag of pretzels) to lottery scratchcards. And then, of course, the famous on-time fanfare are you land (from 1A, you can see the FA reach up to set it off just after touching down...)

But with good earbuds, it's just a flight. Couple of hours in the air, watch iPlayer and see our progress over Jutland, Funen, Zealand, then round over the Oresund with wonderful views of both sides and the bridge, to a pretty hard landing at Kastrup.

Copenhagen, like some other airports, has a dedicated no-frills pier, for those airlines wanting lower fees. Norwegian doesn't use it, but Ryanair (who caused quite a stir among the unions in Denmark - and now have all their flights based elsewhere) and easyJet certainly do. Arrival is simple enough, although being at the front (assuming you can wrassle your bag out as the queue to disembark grows) means immigration is easy - there's often only one or two booths open for a couple of busy 738s. You then have to walk the paupers' mile to the main terminal:



A good 10 minute walk at a good pace (the signs say 15) to D-pier, then you've a few travelators to take you to arrivals. Copenhagen is one of very few European airports that allow non-Schengen arrivals to mix with departures without security, and it feels unusual to arrive into the departures hall. Still, if you want to check the shops for anything:



it's easily done. Copenhagen is a great little airport - even down the paupers' mile, you can be out and on the metro 20 minutes after landing - and in central Copenhagen 15 minutes after that.



or Norrebo, a little after (as that's where I was headed, for an Airbnb apartment that was so Copenhagen, it hurt).

Had a wonderful few days, despite the very cold weather, just pottering around on a bike. I do love this region.



Wonderful trip. The flights were fine - well worth the price paid. I do have other problems with Ryanair, but this experience was more than acceptable.

The return flight was unremarkable as well. The F-pier boarding area at CPH is a little cramped for non-Schengen. Emigration control is just before the gate. They have an annoying habit of announcing gate closing early, causing a number of people for your flight rushing to the front of the passport control queue, asking to be let in, despite being on the same flight as most people in the queue. The layout of the gate itself puts general boarding into a snaking queue, but priority into a seating area, making priority boarding well worthwhile here.

Would I do it again? For that price, definitely.