Stansted is about 40/60 minutes from the city fo london but Heathrow isn't exactly in the center and if you are travelling to the city you might be better off going to Stansted (which has great connections to liverpool st).

Also it may take 40/60 minutes to get to Stansted but believe me that is nothing to the wasted time sitting on the runway in congested in LHR.(it can nearly take this long to walk to some of the T1 gates)

As for paying for drinks on board, all airlines charge. BA, Lufthansa etc all charge - they just add a couple of hundred dollars on to your ticket for a meal /drinks you may not even want (they presume we are too stupid to notice that the drinks aren't really free). Ryanair have never charged my for a drink that I did not want.

Decentlegroomplease: Right on about never being charged for a drink you didn't want! On int'l flights, the FR approach is a great way to use up that extra foreign currency before returning home. It's probably on net a good revenue item for them, as it keeps sticker prices down and then allows them to charge a good markup on beverages; I've never paid extra for alcohol on a US carrier (I'm cheap and don't drink much), but if I'm already paying something for a juice/soft drink, the marginal cost to 'upgrade' to a beer (on which they presumably have a higher margin) is far less of a stretch.

I once got burned when a low cost airline two years ago...I can't remember which one off hand. It folded two weeks before we were going to go to Barcelona, and we read about it in the paper! It was a good thing I bought the tickets with a credit card...

I certainly would (and do) fly Ryanair.

As mentioned above, a big annoyance is that they don't include taxes in their advertised prices, unlike nearly every other airline in the UK.

Their headline prices are also never available on Friday afternoon/evenings or Sundays - when I try to fly at those times I inevitably find 'full service' airlines at cheaper prices.

They do tend to fly to 'secondary' airports - Stansted is good though - I much prefer it to Heathrow. On the continent their airports are often many miles from the city that they serve - no good for a city break, but if you're hiring a car to see the country, they can be good. I flew with them to 'Frankfurt Hahn' airport, which could be just about as accurately called 'Luxembourg Hahn', but was ideal for a trip around the Mosel Valley / Rheingau area.

You'd be OK with their Dublin service though - that uses the main airport in Dublin.

They do have a new service to Salzburg which looks good value if you avoid Fridays/Sundays.

I'm flying with them again in to Brescia in July for the opera festival in Verona.

Someotherguy: what's a "typical British airport" supposed to look like? It was designed by Norman Foster (go look him up), won several architecture prizes and was generally accepted at the time as being of a unique design. The new Kansai airport was largely based on how Foster's use of light, colour temperature etc. As if US airports had any more charm than Home Depots!!