Sorry, a very long review! (Ryanair)

Member Name: mdhughes03

Product:	Ryanair
Date:	18/07/09 (62 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: We didn't fall out of the sky

Disadvantages: Everything else

Before I start, I'd like to point out that my parents are always off on £2 flights and have never had a problem with Ryanair. Now, that said, here's what happened on a recent flight with them...

At Doncaster Sheffield airport passengers were trying to decide amongst themselves which queue was for checking in and which was for bag drop. Having had our printed boarding passes checked we went to security to be told that our boarding passes did not scan and that we would need to have them stamped by the check-in desk. We therefore had to go back down to check in and queue again then re-visit security where there was now a queue (including other passengers being turned away for the same reason). However finally we got through to the departures lounge and continued without further incident. The return flight was another story...

On arriving for the flight 2 hours 15 minutes early, we were surprised to see huge queues at the check in desks. The board merely stated desks 26-33 which made it very unclear where to go-there were no destinations, merely screens stating "Ryanair" and there were no Ryanair staff to ask. After asking at the main airport desk all we could be told was that Ryanair were checking in at desks 26-33. However, there was our flight to Doncaster, one to Luton, one to Teeside, one to Germany and one to Sweden all trying to check in at the same time. Let me be clear-these flights were all leaving at different times and therefore some people in these queues were half an hour early for their check-In window opening, some close to take off time!

The result was utter chaos. One huge queue had formed which many of us assumed was feeding the smaller queues (we were naïve enough to think they had some kind of system in place!). It had also formed as there was not physically enough room to accommodate all the people for the 5+ flights in this small space. All the passengers had to question one another as there were no staff available and no one from Ryanair was organising anything. Finally after queuing for twenty minutes, a passenger who had just completed check-in told us that if we squeezed through the queues and got to desks 30-33, online check-in passengers were being dealt with in smaller queues. We therefore moved over and sure enough the queues were slightly smaller however, bedlam still reigned. We were now 35 minutes from our boarding time and getting concerned, however the customers in front of us were checking in for a flight boarding 40 minutes later than us! It's not rocket science to figure out that if you have 200 passengers spread over 5 flights with no guidance as to where to go you will end up with people two hours early for their flight at the head of the queue and those with 10 minutes to go at the back of the queue. This was no fault of their own-we arrived 2 hours 15 minutes early and ended up checking in 5 minutes after our boarding time purely down to the size of the queues.

When we finally reached the check-in desk we were not offered any explanation of what was happening. I asked whether the "system" for checking in was meant to be this chaotic and was told by the check-in agent that he must bite his tongue but must say that the "New system" wasn't working as well as the old one. I enquired as to whether we would still be able to board the plane as our boarding time had now passed and was not given an answer. We therefore rushed to the gate where only half of the passengers had managed to arrive. Slowly the rest managed to make their way through but nothing was happening at the gate where we now should have started boarding 15 minutes earlier.

Half an hour after our flight should have boarded a plane turned up at our gate and everyone rushed to queue up to get on. There was one airport employee present at the gate who did not move. It turned out that other passengers were boarding this plane and we ended up waiting another fifteen minutes to board. Once boarded we were subject to another delay. We were told after sitting on the tarmac, fully boarded, for twenty minutes that we were waiting for some passengers.

The flight was awful, the weather was fair but we bounced around as if there were thunderclouds surrounding us. The flying experience was so bad that once we completed a very bumpy landing in Doncaster, there was a sarcastic round of applause from many passengers and exclamations that they were glad to have got there in one piece.

The worst thing about the whole experience was the total lack of customer care involved. We were never instructed about how/where to check-in, delays were never explained to us, our complaints were met with apathy at the check-in desk and there wasn't a single Ryanair member of staff to talk to in the whole ordeal.

Having paid for "Online" check in and finding out that there is no time saved and that printing your own boarding pass can actually lead to having to check in twice, I consider the whole concept a fraud.

Summary: Hopefully other people have had much better experiences!