Cheap and cheerful (Ryanair)

Member Name: julwhite

Product:	Ryanair
Date:	08/04/09 (45 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Price is superb, everything went to plan

Disadvantages: Change of travel plans was irritating

I used Ryanair recently for the first time, to travel from London Stansted to Tampere in Finland. I had heard many bad stories about the airline, and had initially thought that this would be my only journey with them.

Firstly, customer service friendly they are not. But they never really claim to be, their systems are all automated and require as little human intervention as possible. But the documentation and information on their web-site and sent through e-mails was more than sufficient for me to not need to contact customer services at any stage.

Secondly, there are lots of additional costs. It's 30 pounds to put baggage in the hold, there's a charge if you check-in at the airport, a charge for priority seats and a charge for any extras. Although this was a little daunting at first, I finally realised that I didn't actually need these extras, so was more than content at the end result. The only cost I did incur is that my debit card incurred a surcharge, but there are free options available.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the price. My return flight to Finland, excluding taxes, was less than ten pounds. For that price, there was absolutely nothing in even close range from any other airline. It is an amazing price, and in my view, makes it very hard to complain about anything else.

The one downside that I did have was that a few weeks before the flights were due to leave, they cancelled a flight on the Monday night and replaced it with one on Tuesday night. Ryanair would have cancelled the flights, but as the hotel was booked, we had to make do with this change. It meant an extra day on the holiday, which was nice but a bit awkward for work, which was a little irritating.

As for the flights themselves, they were amazingly punctual. Everything ran to clockwork, the flights said they would leave when they did, and on both occasions, they plane arrived ahead of schedule. In Finland the lack of customer services staff did cause some confusion with regards to where to go, but airport staff were able to resolve the matter for passengers.

The plane was clean and the seats comfortable and more than satisfactory for the flights, which were just over two hours each way. The air attendants were polite and helpful, although they were forced to try and sell everything possible, from food and drinks to scratchcards, from catalogue services to train tickets. However they didn't force this upon anyone, and if you're not interested in the extras, just ignore them as they walk down the aisle of the plane!

In comparison, flights from other operators were around 250-300 pounds return. Maybe they would have given me more luggage allowance and maybe they would have more staff at the airport, but personally, I'm happy to pay a very low fare and get a reliable and adequate service, rather than pay lots more to get a very good service (which isn't guaranteed anyway!).

Ryanair's self-promotion announcement on the tannoy is a little annoying at the end, but is tolerable! They also have very little luggage go missing (although they carry little) and their flights are also on time more than most other carriers. Although their customer service staff might be short in numbers sometimes, the staff they had were polite and helpful, and so much thought had been put into automating the service, that inter-action with the company could be kept to a minimum.

For cheap flights, I would certainly use Ryanair again. It's not the most up-market of services, but value-wise, I rate it highly!

Summary: So cheap I was able to happily forgive their faults!