Last week, I flew from Nimes to London Luton on Ryanair. I've seen lots of complaints here about these folks, but my experience was just fine. The main things to watch for with Ryanair are the actual location of the airport and the baggage allowance. The locations are sometimes far from the cities they "serve" (in my case, though, Nimes was very convenient).

Also, I had to pay about 60 euros for my excess baggage. I wasn't really traveling that heavy, but I knew that was the deal going in.

The flight itself was similar to a Southwest flight, except that you have to pay for anything you want -- even soda and coffee.

So...I recommend Ryanair IF the price is right after you account for ground transportation and baggage charges.

Well, the price is sometimes very right. I have paid as little as 5 pounds for a round-trip including taxes LON-STO, which actually is STN - NYO, both about 2 hours from the city centres.

I have never understood all the complaining either. Almost all of the disadvantages of flying RyanAir are known prior to booking and definitely after ticketing. They send a very detailed e-mail clarifying how travel with RyanAir works.

Problems arise with Ryan for those that do not have experience with them. Another problem is when they implement changes often and are sometimes inconsistent, such as the change to allowing only 15kg of baggage when industry standard is 20kg.

These changes and inconsistencies seem to often be done in a way that even experienced travelers are confused by them and may error at least one time in a way that costs them or negatively effects their travel experience.

An example was that even aware of the baggage allowance and having a bag come in at 15.1 kg, the agent made me weigh the carry-on and it showed 11.9 kg. I indicated that I had newspapers and post that I would be going through and throwing away along with food and drink that I was going to consume in terminal. He insisted that I could not go through without it being under the 10 kg limit and forced me to change 2kg over to my checked baggage. But then being winter in Sweden came the shocker. He made me weigh my coat which contained keys, electronics and coins. Well, it weighed 4kg. He forced me to pack 2 kg of items over to the checked bag. My bag now was up to 19kg, under the industry standard but not RyanAirs. I was sent over to pay and then return to pick up my number, which was number 3 by the way. The man in front of me who was number 1 checked a plastic bag that weighed 2kg so they were already quite ahead on total weight. All of this occurred and gave way for the second buss from the city to arrive and there were now a hundred people in line and they had embarrassed an experienced traveler who even knew the rules. They should have just had me pay without all of this nonsense of changing things around and let me put aside the items i would be throwing out during my 2 hour wait in the Terminal as they force me to check in so early.

But what made me angry was that I sat to the side and watched the entire check-in process after I had checked in. Not a single other passenger was sent over to pay. I watched families with baby buggies, a band with musical instruments and then of course many who had relatives or friends standing to the side guarding their carryons so they would not be weighed, something that a single traveler can not do. They may have lockers in some airports though. Good idea to lock you carry on and coat in one though if they have them.

I had a rule to fly RyanAir only when they were 70% below my preferred star alliance carriers where I have gold status.

After this incident, and the fact that they did not respond to my letter about being the only one singled out they lost a customer that at least understood their business plan and knew what I was getting when buying my ticket.

They seem to be doing fine without me as one of the only profitable airlines in Europe.

Quite an unbelievable story you got there MADFlyer. Not that I�m not believing.

I had no idea they could make you weigh your clothes? That�s a bit too much in my opinion. I�ve got to try them sometime. I�ve only taken Easyjet, but they seem to use better airports than Ryanair. That�s actually the reason I�ve never flown Ryanair.

Easyjet competes more in the main airport market instead of negotiating dream contracts with regional airports as RyanAir does.

Weighing the coat went way over the top considering this was Sweden in winter.

Ryan has some other strange practices like blocking several rows at the front and back of aircraft and say it is for weight and balance and fuel economy. Boarding is by number series so that those that are there early get the best choice of seats. But it seams so strange when everyone is packed in the middle of the plane with all those empty seats.

I personally think it is done to establish a zone far enough from the staff complaining to each other about their working conditions or showing their inexperience for passengers to hear.

A good tip if you have an early number is to board at the rear of the aircraft where possible as you can more easily get your prefferred aisle or window seat and avoid the dreaded middle.

They do let you move to one of the free blocked rows during flight but force you back to the centre for landing.

the problem with Ryanair is irr ops. If your flight is delayed/cancelled, good luck finding a reasonable alternative. Of course there are now the EU regulations, but it'd be a PITA to get them enforced....

Amen to that! My wife and I had our first Ryanair experience this month from DUB-EDI. Ground transportation wasn't an issue with these two cities, but we knew we were going to be 7 kilos over on baggage and price-shopped on that basis.

We also flew Easyjet EDI-LGW, and although both airlines got us there and both offer a Southwest-style experience (including paying for any refreshments onboard), we just got better vibes from Easyjet. For instance, both flights were delayed, but Easyjet told us why (they had to offload baggage from a no-show passenger on the inbound) and Ryanair never did. In general, Easyjet ground staff and flight attendants also just projected a much more professional appearance - even in those hideous brown and orange shirts !

As a counterpoint to the coat incident, three years ago I flew them Graz to London.

I was carrying a great deal of canned food (very long story) and as a starving student, I didn't want to pay for excess baggage beyond the 15kg. I put all the cans in my various coat pockets. No one said anything. My coat probably weighed around 10kg. My carryon was over 10kg and they didn't bat an eyelid.

Don't they contract agents from other airlines at most airports? Maybe that explains the inconsistent attittudes.

Yonatan

I don't want to be too picky but why is this in Other European Frequent Flyer Programs?

The one thing Ryanair most definitely does not have is a frequent flyer programme .

It seems that over the years all FFP boards have become places where one discusses airlines rather than airline frequent flyer program(me)s... so for "Other European Frequent Flyer Programs" read "Other European Airlines" and it all makes sense!

Yes, to avoid having to deal with the government agencies and labour unions the check-in employees are employed by a local agency that would would be stuck with all the contract problems if Ryanair was to just suddenly pull out. At NYO i beleive they are actually employed by the airport authority who signed the dream contract with Ryanair.

Employing local handling agencies is very much the norm in Europe - for all airlines, not just Ryanair. I don't know of any European airlines that employs its own handling staff other than at their home airport and a few major hubs. As a general rule check-in and gate staff are provided by airports, or by specialist handling agents such as Servisair, or by other airlines.

Indeed. True for the rest of the world too, outside North America. There are various different arrangements; for many years ground handling at Spanish airports was a monopoly of Iberia, the major Spanish airline.

In some cases the airline may provide some front-desk staff for check-in and/or ticketing, but not for the ramp work. If you get checked in by staff in Easyjet uniforms, for example, they may well be employed by the handling agent and are issued with uniforms for days when they are on Easyjet work. On one occasion we were checking in at London Stansted for a flight to Helsinki with the short-lived Flying Finn airline, which was handled by Servisair. They needed to check passports were valid for arrival in Finland of course but none of the staff could read visas printed in Finnish !

The North American approach of doing your own staff at each airport always seems strange. When Alaska airlines withdrew their once-daily service to Tucson, Arizona, last year, which had just a 30-minute turnround, they saved 13 of their own employees there, doubtless well paid, which is possibly a bit of an indicator where US airline costs manage to go.

Of course this has been true for many years with many airports having only a couple of agents, and almost every frequent traveler knows this. While very wisely implimented as a cost saving measure in larger airports making the best use of staff by spreading them out for check-in of several airlines the RyanAir case is not the same in many airports.

ServiceAir is a professional handling agent, working with many airlines, where workers can be trained and shifted around and have experience all around the globe. I do not know who RyanAir uses at each airport, but the information I have on NYO outside of Stockholm is that it is a local Airport agent that was created just to handle RyanAir. Local I think was the key word you missed here.

This does not have the same flexability that workers would have with ServiceAir. These companies that are set up run everything from the cleaning of the airport, local info desks to the kiosks and restaurants.

RyanAir contracts are usually very good and that is why they have headed out to these country airports in many cases and get huge tax breaks and incentives by local government authorities.

I have been told that most of the flight attendents at this base are from the Baltics and thus one of the reasons RyanAir has flights to Riga.

I have mixed feelings on RyanAir and the affect they have on the industry, but mostly feel they have created many new markets for people who might not have flown previously. But there are many ethical questions underlying their business plan.

Surely the term is used loosely?
PMSL

These incentives by local authorities to Ryanair were determined quite some time ago to be illegal under European law, and were stopped. Charleroi airport in Belgium was the test case.