Any Ryanair experience on board ?
 

Greetings all,

I am working on a report regarding discount carriers in Europe and the US.
I am seeking anyone with onboard experience to tell me their personal experience with Ryanair or similar carrier.
What kind of food and beverages does Ryanair sell onboard?
Are they good ? What did they cost? Would you buy them again?
Did it increase the satisfaction of your experience?
What might you suggest to make Ryanair or any other discount carrier a better experience.

Is there anything the US carriers could learn that Ryanair already does well.
All feedback is greatly appreciated.Thank You

Cheers

The stuff they sell is crap, it mega expensive and for sure a big money spinner for the airline fro the mugs who buy it.

They are great as an A-B carrier and thats it.

THey are loosing out to Easyjet as they go the extra mile and make you feel like a customer

I've never bought food or drink aboard a European LCC. Mostly because UK airports tend to have decent sandwich shops (Pret a Manger, for example), where the quality is always better, for the same price.

What Ryanair excels at is cutting costs to the bone, and serving obscure routes. If I wanted to fly from London to Rheims or Haugesund, they're the only option, and a lot better than changing or using ground transport. In terms of prices, if you get the ultra-cheap fares (which is not a given with short notice or weekend travel), then they're a real bargain.

I can't see Ryanair significantly changing. What I feel they should do, though, is be a little more up-front about what their service is. There's a misconception that LCCs are just airlines that don't serve food onboard. Oh, there's so many more savings you can make, and they do.

If US LCCs can learn from them, it's that you can make fares cheaper by flying to small, barely-used airports, and providing onward transport (at a cost) to near-ish cities. This certainly seems to serve them well.

I would agree that the food sold by Ryanair is really bad (and expensive).

I have much better experience with Virgin Express (which is not a "true" LCC, but which is significantly cheaper than traditional carriers). Their on-board choice is limited (sandwiches), but certainly better than Ryanair.

They also offer the possibility to order food with http://www.alphadlish.com/ who offer a quite good selection. I have done this several times and was quite pleased.

Brilliant
My gratitude to all that have posted .This is exactly the kind of feedback I was hoping for. ^ :-:
The US press sugar coated Ryanair in a story making them sound like heroes at everything because they turn a profit.
It will be very helpful to my project as it wraps up next month.

Great Steve @:-)

It would be very helpful to know what Ryanair serves onboard good or bad.
And what makes it bad or good.
Also what approx costs they charge their customers for these products.

How does Easyjet go the extra mile in your experience when they deliver their higher levels of service.

Are they friendly? helpful? generous? good at problem solving?
Thank You

In general, Europeans love Ryanair, American business people loathe it, or at least that's my experience being an American buinessman in London.

The beverages, food and duty free are effectively a clone of the Aer Lingus service these days, except the flight attendants just left Irish Convent Schools. ;) The 737 was pretty well standard, no-frills Europlane, the board in order of arrival like Southwest, no seat allocations, they board from the ground at Stansted from both the front and the back of the plane.

I sat in the back and didn't order any food because, by the time they got to me, they were out of all the sandwiches they could sell.

I won't fly them again, but I know many Londoners who swear by them for the low fares. Personally, I appreciate their pressure on pricing, but I'd rather pay 10-20% more on SAS, Lufhansa or the other *A carriers (or even BA) than go through it again. If you fly twice a year, you don't mind. But if you're a butt-in-seat business man, I don't think it's a good choice.

Don't even get me started on our conflicting definition of "Oslo."

Timothy

Varying levels of LCC service
 

There are lots of European LCCs, and the difference between them is enormous. Some of them even serve complimentary food (I'm sure AB do).
IMHO the defining feature of a LCC is that it's a point-to-point operation that will do its best to refuse/minimise liability for anything in case of irr ops. Even if I do appreciate a free and/or good meal, I happen to care more about the way whoever I am flying handles irr ops than the food quality on a 2-hour flight, that's why I don't fly them unless they are less than half price than conventional options (but this has only happened ONCE in the past 3 years!)

i wouldn't say europeans love the Ryan Air concept,

it sucks! friends of mine had a lot of problems with Ryan air, bad weather, fog ? sorry your flight doesn't exist anymore, next flight, ok buy a new ticket, oh sorry next available seat ... next week, and not at a bargain price..



they fly remote airports, so only good choice if you have to be around the airports Ryan air flies,


they have a lot of one time customers, a lot never fly them again after their one time experience

...and I know for sure they have a lot of "NONE time" customers, based on their total lack of responsibility or customer care in case a flight goes non-op. As mentioned above, it has happened too often that flights were canceled resulting no refund and passengers having to arrange their own alternatives, or buying a ticket or “upgrading” their ticket to a different flight. (even though their Conditions of Carriage state otherwise). Sometimes these occurrences have made it to the press.

If this happens, not only do you loose out on money, but possibly also time (extra vacation days...)

The most crass story I know of (happened to a colleague and her friends earlier this year) on Ryanair was the cancellation of the last flight out on a Sunday evening Rome Ciampino (CIA)-Charleroi(CRL)(aka "Brussels South" in Ryanair terminology). This was only found out by passengers as they arrived at the airport. The alternatives offered to my colleague and her friends were:
1) flight next day (arriving midday in CRL) paying extra, to cover the price difference between their tickets and the lowest available fare.
2) next Ryanair flight on same day with seats available to the airport nearest to the original destination: turned out to be Frankfurt-Hahn (HHN) also for extra money.
3) try to get seats on another airline and/or other airports, entirely at your own cost and effort.

As one person in the group of friends absolutely needed to be in Belgium the next morning (job interview I think it was) and it seemed no other same day options were to be found at such short notice, they all decided to take the 2nd option and help their friend get home in time.

For those of you who don't know, Hahn is about 400km=250 miles=4hours driving from Charleroi, where their own cars were parked, then another 45-60 minutes to Brussels (1 car) or 60-75 minutes to Gent from Charleroi (the second half of the group).

So they proceed with the second option: Ryanair gladly takes the price difference + another admin fee for payment (no cash accepted, but you do have to pay a fee for using credit or debit cards), booking of Hertz car through the Ryanair agents in CIA (Ryanair earns a commission on those). Add to that of the original return flight’s airport taxes, which Ryanair gets to keep, as the flight did not take place.

This is how Ryanair makes a cancelled flight into a revenue generating situation.

All in all they all got to their bed by 5.30 AM, instead of the original midnight.

The next day, the rental car was returned to Hahn (not sure if they did not think of a one-way rental, or whether it was not available), so the rental car and another car drove back to Germany to drop of the Hertz car and then drive back to Belgium... additional cost: 2 times 1 vacation day + fuel cost for 2 cars.

So if you have enough time to risk such an occurrence, fine by me. Of course I know that the bad stories stick more then the good, which is why it is very important for any business, but even more for an airline, to treat bad situations as good and correct as possible, which all too often Ryanair does not.

I did not intend to make this a "Ryanair sucks" post, but I did, so to end on a positive note, I am interested to see the success of the AVOD device Ryanair is currently testing. http://www.ryanair.com/press/2004/no...-011104-2.html Of course it will depend very much on the content they will put in it (and knowing Ryanair, they will have advertising on there, another revenue post!)
The device itself looks very promising (http://www.digeplayer.com/ ) and if proven reliable, I expect to see this or similar machines on more and more airlines, either as a hire option in Y or on LCCs, or as a complementary service in Business and First class (and possibly costing less in operations and repairs than fixed, central server IFE systems).

Perhaps more interesting for your paper: Ryanair is generating 14% of their revenue on secondary services (in-flight options; commissions on bookings for hotel, rail, hotel and car rental; organizing in-flight raffles…) and is aggressively looking for more revenue possibilities. As you might have heard, Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary has announced that he foresees dropping fares all the way to zero, and only generating profit on these services and commissions. It is not clear to me whether this will be all seats or a limited amount of seats per flight. Taking into account that currently Ryanair’s operating cost per passenger is €33.5 and it is uncertain whether this can be further lowered (as mentioned at the financial press briefing 2 November 2004 by COO Michael Cawley) I expect these zero fare rates will be promotional only.

Let me do it for you then. Ryanair does suck and is every frequent flyer's nightmare.

If there was no option but Ryanair then it would time to find another job (that did not involve travel!).

Ryanair is only a success because it is a leach/niche player. If they ever do become mainstream they will have to rethink their business model. If they don't then someone else will do it for them.

-- Dambus

Dambus said: If they ever do become mainstream they will have to rethink their business model.

I'l go further again, if Ryanair becomes mainstream, people will loath airlines in much the same way that people loath train companies in the UK now. This is a self defeating model - initially very profitable, but it will kill the golden goose.

I booked a RyanAir Flight last summer. First it was Paris to Stockholm. Each airport was an hour and a half bus ride to the city, and the bus to the airport from Paris required that you leave Paris 3 and a half hours before your flight. So you basically waste an entire day travelling within Europe. Another experience I had was when I recieved a blank confirmation E-mail for my flights. I figured all was well, and didn't worry about it. I got to the airport and they said all was well. (I didn't want to pay .50 euro a minute to call Ryanair). When I got to the Glasglow airport, they said I was booked on a different day, and would have to buy a new ticket. I showed the ticket person a copy of a blank e-mail from Ryanair. She said she didn't work for the airline and either did the check-in staff and the only thing I could do was purchase a new ticket. So I spend over 200 euros to buy a new ticket for a flight the next day. I wrote a letter to Ryanair with copies of the e-mail the new ticket purchase and everything stating I would like a refund or compensation. I got a letter back saying it is not our fault tough ****. I will never fly Ryanair again. They are by far the worst airline in the world.

Timo

Great feedback all
 

It has been a great learning experience from all the various posts above.
Once again my sincere gratitude to all. My report has greatly improved as a result of the feedback.
It is interesting to me that Ryanair remains as profitable as it does.
Which tells me that at the end of the day for most its all about cost.

I'm with GodOspoons when it comes to wanting to pay a little more for the better quality roomier carrier.
And usually you can solve problems a bit better when they happen.

Never underestimate the willingness of the British especially but also the Irish and other Europeans, to put up with third rate service and rude staff. It is worth remembering that mass market travel within Europe has traditionally revolved around the charter airlines. I see the LCC's as catering primarily to the same niche, the cost is everything crowd, rather than those who look at total value. Whilst many of the LCC's make a big play as business carriers (Easyject especially), they seem to me to be only a viable proposition f you are unfortunate enough to live very close to one of the secondary airports they use (e.g. Luton or Stansted in the UK, for London).

I wouldn't use an LCC unless I had no other viable option, and would chew off one of my own limbs rather than use Ryanair, but I guess I am not part of their target demographic, which is probably made up of those who used to take cheapish package holidays with charter airlines, and who now use the LCC's to go on short breaks and increasingly their main holidays too.