With Ryanair all you WANT is to pay for a bum on a seat BUT Ryanair will do their best to make you pay for other things - some of which are extremely difficult to avoid

I'd take a cheap LH fare too. You won't have to spend a couple of days in FRA unless you want to, and it's much more convenient/reliable.

Another one booked £20, return to Berlin, hand luggage only and priority boarding.

Nearest comparable fare BA £115.80 including flight times etc?

You decide

When Ryanair works, it works fine. It has, for example, opened up many towns like Carcassone and Biarritz to British tourists who previously had no way of getting there, and has also been a massive boom to the British 'French second home' market. We use them to fly to Lubeck because my partners parents live near it.

However .... you need to look at the pros and cons each time. The original poster in this thread was flying from Frankfurt to Stockholm. These are possibly the two most out-of-the-way airports used by Ryanair, and the fare quoted was not far off what LH wanted for a direct flight. It would have been a ludicrous decision to choose FR in these circumstances.

In general, I would want a Ryanair flight to be at least £100 return cheaper than an equally well timed flight on a scheduled carrier. £100, in general, offsets the lack of lounge facilities I'd have with BA, the cost of inflight food and drink, the lack of priority check-in, the lack of any FF miles and the generally unpleasant FR in-flight experience ("no, I do NOT want to buy a scratchcard, thank you").

Or the calendars and the ridiculous music they play when they arrive on time

I will back up what most posters are saying here.

FR will nickel-and-dime you (as we say here in the States) for having the audacity to carry more than a couple days' clothing, check-in at the airport, or (gasp) pay with a credit card.

In 2004, we spent 3 weeks "over there" - arriving London, touring there, flying STN-TXL on Air Berlin (very nice!), spending two weeks on the continent, ending in Salzburg. To connect with BA's LHR-JFK, I booked us on FR SZG-STN, with car rental STN-LHR. Our bags were 2-3x overweight, and I'm sure what we paid to bring our dirty laundry with us, plus the car rental and fuel and overnight hotel required, far outweighed the "extra" we would have paid for a through-ticket SZG-JFK.

Don't do it.

Flying hitch-hiking service
 

I have to add to the last poster's description of FR.
I travelled with FR 3 times. The first two were bearable but the last one was a disaster which made me swear that I would never fly with them again and warn anyone who will listen to do likewise.

The best way that I can find to describe FR service is that it is like a hitch-hiking experience but instead of automobiles they use airplanes.
Just like with the automotive kind, most of the times it will get you (ultimately) to where you want to be. I would say about 90% of the times. However, just like with the typical hitch-hiking, sometimes you will not be able to get a ride or you will be dumped somewhere that you had no intention of being and then you will have to fend for yourself. No explanations or reasons will be given. No assistance will be offered.

My advice is this: before you decide to commit yourself to a 'ride' with Ryanair, ask yourself this: what will happen if my planned flight does not depart for a few hours or for a few days? What will happen if I am delivered to a different destination than the one where I wanted to be, sometimes several hundred kilometers away and maybe even in a different country? Do I have enough flexibility that I can work around it somehow? If you can then go ahead and take advantage of the sometimes low fares (as long as you don't check in too much luggage, can check on-line, etc. etc. etc.) This is especially true in winter when the probabilities of having some sort of adverse weather conditions that prevent FR planes from landing or taking off are much higher. Keep in mind, FR uses secondary, out-of-the-way airports because they are cheaper. Why are they cheaper? Because they do not offer the same level of service as the major airports. For example, very few of them have Category III landing systems that allow airplanes to land even if the visibility is minimal. Most only have Cat I or Cat II landing systems which require much better weather conditions to be useable. When you're talking about towns like Treviso or Hahn or Ciampino which are prone to fogging, you're asking for trouble.

If you know you travel plans long enough in advance, it's amazing how inexpensive air travel can be with airlines that actually care about their reputation, be they low fare or legacy carriers.

That's a good tip about the Cat. I-III systems, which I will remember next time I am taking budget airlines in the winter.

I was diverted to from Treviso to Milan because of fog, in fairness Marco Polo was also shut and they have the full kit and kabudle I understand. But was not a nice experience though and worth bearing in mind.

I recently flew Ryanair, and had a decent experience. I was flying from Pisa to Stanstead on a completely packed flight and was worried that I wouldn't be able to take my rollaboard and small daypack on the plane... I was not met with any incredulity by the ticket counter rep when I said I had no bags to check, and had no problem passing through security. I was a bit worried that the gate agent would reject my two bags, but smiled, handed her my boarding pass, and proceeded onto the jet without any problem whatsoever. My small backpack fit under the seat and the overheads were practically empty, so had no problem whatsoever. The only hitch was on the return flight from Stanstead to Pisa, b/c the London airport system is privately owned and security absolutely will not allow any more than one bag to go through... So I ended up having to shell out extra $ for checking my bag, but all in all, you get what you pay for! Considering I got the ticket for $120 when Alitalia was charging $330 with layovers, I was overall a pleased customer...

This is a rule that was imposed by the UK government over a year ago

...and SHOULD be enforced Europe wide.

Abebix was lucky in Pisa but it's likely the one bag rule will be relaxed in 2008

I'm going to visit my girlfriend in Manchester in two weeks, we booked a day trip to Dublin with Ryanair. Cost 1p for the flight, 10 pounds each with taxes. We could have gotten away with only 20 pounds total but instead because I am not an European Area passport holder, I have to check in at the airport and as a result so does she. An extra 8 pounds. Plus credit card fee, in the end it came to 31 pounds for the both of us. Certainly not expensive. ($30 for me, though it could have been $22) to fly 50 minutes. Both airports are extremely convenient as well. We'll be sure to arrive in time and are not bringing much luggage, just a backpack with a change of clothes and toiletries. I'll reserve final judgments until the flight.

My father just recently sold 150 shares of Ryanair taking a $1000 loss, with these sentiments it makes me think that was the right move, but I still think for cases like mine, they seem to be a good option. So long as you are smart about avoiding the charges.

Yeah- I don't think RyanAir's baggage allowance is that much more stringent than other LCC's, wherever they are operating. I will reserve my judgment until I return from a trip to Asia in which I will be flying 7 segments on 3 LCC's (Tiger, Air Asia, JetStar Asia)! I'll let you know how they compare to RyanAir :confused:

Ryanair - hand luggage 10kg, checked luggage 15kg plus £5 fee per bag
Easyjet - hand luggage unlimited weight, checked luggage 20kg plus £3.99 per bag

Plus Ryanair charge you for not checking in online, but if you have checked luggage you have no option of cheking in online. a bit naughty in my opinion

Ryanair WILL rip you off. If they don't get you with booking, card charges etc, they'll make it up with baggage. You will have to join a queue to pay excess baggage and if you don't leave enough time for this you'll miss your flight, then have to join the queue again to pay the fee to transfer to another flight. You couldn't make it up!

This is a real problem at Stansted. You queue for 30 minutes to check in then, once your bags are weighed, you are sent to another desk - with another queue - to pay, then you need to rejoin the check-in queue (unless the agent lets you push in at the front).

Be clear - they will NOT let you off. There is zero leeway on baggage weight, at least at airports where the staff are direct Ryanair employees.

2 of us flew FR from genoa to stansted 2006 with 3 large cases well over weight (just off a cruise) and we were expecting a hefty excess fee but not a mention of being overweight, on a brand new plane for £20 each, and i would rather pay for brand name coffee than have the free undrinkable stuff of other airlines
cheers cal

How on earth did you manage to get away with that? That's normally unheard of.

Only have flown Ryanair once, and the flight was fine...I did come in with very low expectations, but found them to be no problem.
From what I have read, this is what I believe to be the case:

Price wise, there are a lot of nickle and dime type fees. But they are fairly clear about the fees, its not like you show up at the airport and they say "oh you want an actual seat rather than standing in the back, thats another 10 euros." The fees seem to be something that you can figure out in advance, so that you don't compare one airlines fare to Ryanair's fare, you compare the total package.

Operationally, it seems like 9 out of 10 times they are fine. The one (or maybe less) out of 10 that they screw up, though, they will screw you bad. Customer service does not exist. They don't care about your satisfaction or being what we might think is reasonable in the situation, and they will screw you in ways other airlines wouldn't even consider (delaying you two days, flying you to a different airport and saying too bad).

My synopsis would be that if you're flexible, than they're great. They're especially good if you want to take a trip that otherwise just wouldn't be in your price range. However, if you have children, absolutely must be in a certain place at a certain time, or have a complicated itinerary, you might want to look elsewhere.

My guess would be that the check-in staff at Genoa were contract staff - they were employed by some ground-services operator that Ryanair hired, not by Ryanair itself - and they just couldn't be arsed to do the extra work of processing the excess luggage charges.

I agree with your statement though - usually Ryanair doesn't show an inch of flexibility on this subject. If the luggage scale says 15.1 instead of 15.0kg, you're paying! :mad:

It's notable that when the UK recently relaxed the 'one-bag' hand baggage rule that EasyJet and Ryanair declared that they would keep it.

Not surprising - a significant percentage of their revenues comes from hold baggage charges. Although EasyJet is more generous than Ryanair in its allowance you must observe the rules scrupulously or be prepared to pay mega-$$$ in excess charges

I wonder how this is actually going to work in practice...

In the last 15 months the drill for UK depatures has been to put one's handbag/camera bag/laptop bag inside one bigger bag for the security check and then take it out again. Once one was past the security check nobody cared about that extra bag any more.

So - I presume from now on it's going to be the opposite way round, i.e., one can keep one's handbag/camera bag/laptop bag out for the security check and will THEN put it inside the bigger bag before boarding?

Or will security personnel be instructed to identify Ryanair/Easyjet passengers, and tell them to merge their two bags into one?

It's not surprising because one bag has always been their policy - even before August 2006

Probably in exactly the same way it happens everywhere in the world - at checkin & at the gate. After all not every airline has exactly the same rules for hand luggage so why should security know what the rule is for a particular airline

Question: I need to take two Ryanair flights to get to my final destination. I also will need to check in a bag. I know I will be charged for airport check in and a bag fee but will I be charged twice, since I am taking two of their flights? Will they check me in for both flights or must I go through their check in process again, instead of being considered a transit passenger?

Pretty sure it will be you check in twice

Ryanair operate point to point and like most of their fees, the fees for check-in & bags are per flight - so 4 flights = 4 sets of fees,

They do not allow you to check-in for a 2nd flight at the 1st airport nor will they check luggage through.

You will have to pass through immigration (if applicable), collect luggage and recheck-in. If you aren't checked-in in time then its your problem and Ryanair will do nothing to help you - except sell you a rather expensive ticket

Thanks for the quick replies. Looks like I'll be flying on SAS instead of Ryanair. By the time you add up all those extra fees and having to go through check in again....not worth whatever savings I might have gotten on Ryanair.

I agree completely, they just have to many rules and double check in is miserable.

Ryan Air is a point to poiunt airline. So you will have to check in each time you fly. So when booking your flight you will have to pay the fee's.

With Ryan Air you have to realise that you are on a bus with wings. If you are familliar with the service and it is a penny flight then its worth it. However if you are doing a trek round Europe then I would say pay more are use either legacy airlines or other LCC such as EasyJet, Air Berlin etc.

EasyJet are much more flexible about the rules. Including if you miss your flight. They will let youbook a second flight for a small fee, but with Ryan Air you have to buy a whole new ticket. Which undoubtedly will be very expensive.

If time is not at a premium then the DB NachtZug service is pretty cheap and easy to use. http://www.bahn.de The night train network is extensive and quite cheap. Otherwise there is the traditional coach service that is operated by Eurolines. http://www.eurolines.com

yes the check-in staff were contracted then