Go Easyjet instead (Ryanair)

Member Name: worst_trip

Product:	Ryanair
Date:	03/06/09 (12 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good range of routes, airline offers fairly cheap air travel across Europe

Disadvantages: They charge extra for everything - and seem averse to their own customers

Before our sprog arrived, in the days before widespread panicking about carbon footprints, back when we didn't mind too much if the airport we arrived at was quite some distance from our actual target destination, we used to travel in Europe by budget airline fairly often.

I have to say that my most recent trip with Ryanair however - taken about a year and a half ago, when I think we flew from one of the London airports to Dublin for a friend's wedding, is likely to be my last. I don't tend to take account of quality of customer service all that much, but as we queued to board our outbound flight I was struck by what seemed to be a very real and near-palpable sense of utter contempt for their customers, that was emating from the Ryanair ground staff. I couldn't say for definite, or put my finger on exactly how this general malaise mainfested itself back then; perhaps it was that as we queued, the Ryanair staff seemed to look through us, or down on us in some way - and while I cannot say that it was anything truly tangible, man is after all a social animal, empathetic and sensitive to the moods of his peers, and thus I do believe it was a genuine antipathy from Ryanair's representatives, directed solely towards their customers that I detected that day.

What more can I say? This negative attitude of the staff has only been borne out by Ryanair's general corporate stance since then. They consistently cut so called extra 'services' to the bone, charging travellers more and more for each and every aspect of their journey. While this is largely in line with the policies of other budget carriers, who also charge extra for fast boarding, each and every kilogramme of hold luggage, guaranteed seats with or near your friends, online booking and so on, in my opinion this is carried out to such extremes by Ryanair that they....really at times seem to not want people to be travelling with them, inconceivable as that seems.

Why are they like this? Why are such people running an airline at all, if this is really the case? It's incomprehensible.

Summary: If Easyjet won't take you there, I shouldn't bother with another budget carrier if I were you