Not sure where this goes, since Ryanair doesn't have an FF program.

I'm looking at a trip next spring, and the Rome-Paris leg surprisingly has few options. One of these is Ryanair which has, shall we say, a less than sterling reputation. At least on these boards.

Anyhow, the two flights a day they run are at about 7:30 AM and another at about noon. The noon flight is much more convenient, but it is the last flight of the day.

My understanding is that, in times gone bye, it was just "hard cheese, Charlie" in the event of irr ops or cancellations, and you were (maybe) offered a couple of increasingly unattractive options. However, it is now rumored that EU regulations require them to do something more for their stranded pax.

Can anyone fill me in on what would happen nowadays in the event that the flight were to be cancelled?

Also, others have spoken about trip insurance. What benefits would that provide me?

From what I heard (I get Google news alerts for Ryanair!) they are still trying to pretend the new laws don't exist and carry on as before - so it will probably take a few court cases to make them comply with their obligations.

This article may be of interest (warning: the site is down at the time of writing, hopefully it will be back up by the time you read this!)

Well, Ryanair don't actually fly to Paris, they fly to Beauvais then you need to get a bus to Paris

Are you sure about the noon flight as as far as I know they have up to 2 flights a day, one at around 7:00am & one at around 7:00pm

As for Ryanair doing anything if the flight is cancelled or delayed, well forget it, they'll get you there - eventually - but it may be several days later and even with the new EU rules expect to have to go to court to get any compensation

The Ryanair horror stories fall into several categories:

1) People who arrive at the airport later than they were told, find they can't check in, and then lose out on their paid-for flights.

2) Ryanair cancellations (a rare event). You can get travel insurance that will cover any fallout from such an event.

3) The airport is far out, and the flyer failed to plan for transport contingencies.

The vast majority of the time Ryanair has an excellent on-time record. Figure out the cost/benefit analysis of using their more remote airports and of buying travel insurance, and make sure to get to the airport well in advance.

what should happen under EU rules is that the airline should give you the choice between a refund of your ticket or alternative transport onto your final destination, meals and accommodation (if required) and communication facilities plus a level of compensation dependent upon the length of the journey usually �250 or �400.

What has been happening in practice with Ryanair is they have been completely ignoring this as Aviatrix says, and doing exactly what they did before - refunding your ticket, leaving you to buy a new one at whatever price is available on the day or offering seats on their "next available flight" whenever that may be. So if you got one of the 0.01 + tax tickets, you might suddenly find yourself paying out quite a lot more than the value of the refund.

My travel insurance, in the event of a cancellation, would basically step in to cover what the airline doesn't -eg hotel accommodation, cost of buying new tickets.... what I am unclear on is whether my insurance is less likely to pay out for these things than before because of the EU legislation - ie before it was a grey area, so I could claim on travel insurance. Now under European law, it is very definitely the airlines responsibility, so I don't see my travel insurer wanting to pick up the bill for stuff they should have done

Under the new EU reg, they would have to re-route you to your destination 'under comparable transport conditions at the earliest opportunity'.
What is likely to happen is that they would offer you a re-route at the earliest opportunity on one of their flights (i.e. refuse to re-route you on an alternative carrier), even if the only available flight of theirs is 1, 2, 3 or more days from the original date.
It is a grey area in the regulation whether a carrier would have an obligation to reroute you on an alternative carrier if they cannot offer you a reasonable option on one of their flights, and you can bet that FR will defend an interpretation of the regulation that minimises their obligations.
In any event, they would have an obligation to put you up in a hotel and cover meal expenses. As others have said, you would have to be prepared to fight for this, as FR will drag their feet as much as possible to comply with their obligations.

Or, in the latest FR story to hit the press, 10 days after the original date.

The pax clubbed together and hired a bus for the journey instead.

They did that a few years back (long before the new EU reg) and were sued in the Irish courts by a pax who bought an expensive o/w ticket on an alternative rather than wait a week for the next available seat on FR. They lost with, unsurprisingly, some rather harsh comments from the judge.

Is it worth the hassle though? There are enough horror stories out there to frighten me off using Ryanair.

Like most airline "horror stories" you might want to take them with a pinch of salt. a) Most of the time you get half the story and b) in comparison to the satisfied customers they carry (whom you rarely hear from, because they have nothing to complain about) they are a drop in the ocean (especially with carriers the size of FR).

I'm always wary about taking peoples bad experience stories with any airline at face value, but it's always good to keep them in mind and not totally disregard them

You'd have to balance that with the likelihood of irregular ops. FR have a very good record in that respect.
I would not necessarily avoid flying FR just because of that. I do my utmost to avoid FR, but for other reasons: I feel very uncomfortable about buying a ticket from an outfit which so openly and cynically rejects anything remotely resembling ethical standards, let alone concern for their customers. But to each their own.
An alternative, if somewhat less convenient, is to take a train down to NAP (about 2 hours from Rome) and fly to ORY with Easyjet. It involves obviously extra time on the train but, OTOH, you fly to ORY rather than BVA and probably save a good hour in the airport to city transit at the Paris end, and the NAP-ORY flight leaves in the afternoon (15.20 mon-sats and 15.45 suns). Meridiana also offers cheap o/w fare from NAP to CDG, with a midday departure.

The easiest would, of course, be to fly AZ or AF, buying a return and throwing the return away. Yet another option would be to fly Meridiana (or AZ) from FCO to LIN and then LIN to ORY on Easyjet but you would have to plan a substantial layover in case of delays on the FCO-LIN flight.

I have flown hundreds of times with Ryanair and never had a problem - I guess thats counts for a balanced view.

Just make sure you know which airport they are flying you to and their record of early/on time is the best a round but I am sure they pad out the timings to get this.

If the flight goes pear shaped just make sure you have good insurance from someone like American express travel.

Easyjet are good and more professional.

The vast majority of the time everything will go right with Ryanair and you'll be happy, but when things go wrong with Ryanair they go wrong big time.

As long as you realise that it's your problem when anything goes wrong, you shouldn't have any problems