Yesterday I flew from Bergamo BGY to Niederrhein Weeze NRN with Ryanair (FR484) and I must say it was a really good flight experience. I had prepaid a catering voucher which gave a 10% bonus, but using it was slightly tricky. The cabin crew seemed to not know how to apply it to my purchase and they were looking for a code which was not on my mobile boarding pass on the Ryanair app. The purser (or chief cabin crew member) said he would take care of it and although my purchase exceeded the value of the voucher, he told me to not worry about it and offered me the purchase!

Anyone got any experiences, good or bad, with Ryanair catering. I only had a Lavazza coffee and Stroopwaffels, so I can't judge what the other items were like. Today I have a longer flight with Ryanair (NRN-OVD) and I purchased a voucher once again (paid 10 Euros, get 11 Euros worth of catering). So I will order a meal deal and report back here about it. The easyJet BoB menu is cheaper and more varied, but I think EUR12,50 for a snack, sandwich or panini and a drink is a fair price.

Lasagne as part of a meal deal. Looked great when served but dug into it and it must have been only about 5mm deep.

About those prepaid catering vouchers, DON'T BUY THEM. Each flight I have recently flown involved a total mess with redeeming those vouchers. Pax coming back from the toilets were lining up while the trolley blocked the aisle. The crew have never seen them before and don't know what to do with them. They appear to be looking for some sort of code to input, but there is none on the boarding pass, paper or digital (I had both versions with me). The whole thing took rather a lot of time and possibly annoyed other passengers. But in the end almost nobody bought anything off that trolley.

Today I flew from Asturias Oviedo OVD to Niederrhein Weeze NRN. This time I was on an Irish registered plane, so I thought things would go well with the catering voucher. But no, cabin crew stood for an eternity in the aisle, looking for some nonexistent code to input. In the end they refused me service and told me to take up the matter with Ryanair, ha ha. I knew Ryanair was basically a dishonest company, but this is a new low. Please, fellow travellers, DO NOT BUY these prepaid vouchers. Just endure the flight without ordering anything or, better still, bring your own catering. Spend as little money as you can with Ryanair. Best, fly with a proper airline.

lots of airlines have problems with pre order catering / vouchers.

I spent years getting a refund out of Aer Lingus when they didn't have my pre purchased items in stock.

The BA board has a whole thread of people posting about failed delivery of advance purchases.

That's a very good point, especially the issues with BA. I wonder to what extent the other airlines sell vouchers, though, then reject them like 3-dollar bills once onboard.

Flying with Ryanair is not so awful and sometimes quite pleasant. They have an interesting route network which complements the majors nicely and their operations are very efficient. I like the way they give some small airports a new lease of life. For the inflight catering, I would have no problem in the future buying coffee or tea and a snack. The hot sandwiches were quite good, I thought.

So, just to give a bit of feedback about this issue, I got a response from Ryanair customer service today. I was really surprised and I had already written this off as a loss not worth pursuing.

"Hello Concerto,

We refer to your response dated 22nd of September.

Thank you for your patience. We are pleased to inform you that we can offer a refund for the prepaid voucher in the total amount of 10 GBP.

Before we proceed, we kindly ask you to confirm whether we may issue the refund to the card originally used for payment, ending in XXXX.

Once we receive your confirmation, we will process the refund promptly.

If no response is received within 10 days, your case will be assumed resolved and closed.

Sincerely,

Jessica B."

I think I will accept it, even though the card used was my Lufthansa card and is therefore in Euros. I this is a take it or leave it offer and they won't offer anything more.

�10 < � 10, so why not?

Well, lots of airlines conversely have absolutely no problem with pre-order catering. I've done it on the likes of Norwegian, Air Baltic and Austrian and it was absolutely smooth and straightforward. In one case, my meal on DY was missing the starter, crew couldn't do anything about it but I wrote to their customer service afterwards (easy on the website) and the full meal was refunded immediately. On all other occasions, no issue at all.

Just to give you an update about this catering voucher issue, I was asked for more detailed information, which I supplied (they make you work for your refunds, do Ryanair). I gave a concise outline of the exact details of the voucher refusal and offered a couple of brief suggestions to help make it a smoother process in the future. In their response (it takes them about 10-14 days to turn around a response) I was offered a refund of €20 (instead of GBP10) to be processed to the card originally used. The only problem is, I'm not sure which one that was, because I used a different card to pay the extras. And the actual flight (not the extras) was paid for with my Lufthansa Miles & More credit card, a card which has now changed because I have been upgraded to Senator.