One mans RyanAir experience

http://wellthisiswhatithink.com/2014/04/28/ryanair/

never flown with them, are they that bad?

Always book priority boarding and reserved seating for the extra money, means you can get on and off as quickly as possible.... worth every penny. I hate to say it, but for the example set above it was their fault for not planning their journey properly. Traffic on the M25? Never..... I've heard examples of that kind of f**king around from other airlines too, Aer Lingus made a magnificent pig's ear of some colleagues recent trips to Ireland, all due to inconsistent behaviour from their staff.

Do hate Ryanair in particular but as long as plenty of time is given they are at least functional.

However, I always laugh when I hear the 'thank-you for choosing to fly Ryanair,' announcement after the flights. What choice? You're the only f**kers that do regular flights to Malta from Birmingham now

Very funny that. I've flown with them once and they were OK apart from the fact that they almost forgot to land and eventually came down with a large bump and heavy breaking at Gatwick.

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Ultimately you get what you pay for. If all you want is a seat on a plane to take you from one airport to another for bugger all cost, they're perfect. If you're expecting a first class service from them, you're going to be very disappointed.

If all things go well then they are ok - and cheap.

Flown with them dozens of times and whilst not the best airline in the world they get me where I want to go cheaply and usually on time.

I gave up them years ago once I realised that by the time you added in the schlep to Stansted, the pay for seat /coffee/snack/ luggage it worked out far cheaper, quicker and more pleasant to use BA from Gatwick.

I gave up them years ago once I realised that by the time you added in the schlep to Stansted, the pay for seat /coffee/snack/ luggage it worked out far cheaper, quicker and more pleasant to use BA from Gatwick.

This

Ultimately you get what you pay for. If all you want is a seat on a plane to take you from one airport to another for bugger all cost, they're perfect. If you're expecting a first class service from them, you're going to be very disappointed.

Pretty much as I see it.

With regard to the story (Which was funny) I'm guessing it might be a tad embellished based on the 35 pound sandwich

You would struggle to pay that at the Ritz, not least a hotel he cites as costing 79 pounds for the night.

They're easily avoided. I've only ever used Easyjet and Flybe and I've never had any problems with them. Yes, he should have go to the airport sooner but 1 hour before flight should have been long enough to check in. Why are there always long queues for these airlines anyway?

I hate them with a passion, undercut a lot of flight destinations from Liverpool so stuck with them, off to Majorca in a few weeks and paid more not to go with them, disgusting airline with no empathy for their customer at all.

They're fine, compare what it used to cost to fly to the same destinations and the value is incredible. Agree it's well worth paying for priority boarding, not much extra to avoid the wrestling for locker space.

Sure I get irritated about the little fanfare they applaud themselves with every time they're on schedule but I can remember paying hundreds of pounds to fly to Paris years ago....small sacrifice for a lot of money saved!

They are basic but they will generally get you where you need to go on time.

However this summer may be different. They have already had to cancel a fair number of flights due to a lack of pilots, who are leaving in their hundreds. They are attempting to plug the gap by wet leasing aircraft from Air Charters in Ireland and some Slovakian company called Air Explore (at hilarious expense to Ryanair I might add).

I will always avoid them on principle if I can. Stick with Easyjet or Norwegian for a decent low cost service (free wifi on the latter).

Flown with them quite a lot and you pay for what you get.

Priority boarding is a complete con if you have young children ( under 14 I think off the top of my head). They are not allowed to sit alone , they have to sit with an adult they know. At some airports they load families first, but when they didn't I used to wait until the mad scramble where 80% of the travellers were using their "priority" , and stroll onto the plane with kids in tow. Then tell the stewardess that the kids have to sit with us. There would then be a period of reorganisation as the " priority " payers were moved around. We would end up with me and Mrs duck sat with a nipper each or if I got lucky Mrs duck with both and me peacefully sat alone.

Tend to use other carriers now because you don't seem to get the bargains anymore and if you book at the right time it can end up just as cheap.

Nothing wrong with them, I would love them to get into Southampton. I cannot stand Flybe.

No need for priority seating any more (unless you really want to get on the plane first up). Ryanair now do allocated seating at check-in (as standard i.e. no extra charge) so there's no need to queue up for ages to get on the plane just to guarantee sitting together.

As ever, you get what you pay for. No frills means no frills.

Looks like the page on that website has been taken down.

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Used them to fly to Poland, Krakow then by train to Zakopane in the mountains. This was a good six or seven years ago before smartphones and emails in your pocket, in fact I remember going to an innernetz cafe to find out the Saints result.

Anyway, whilst in the mountains, RyanAir decided they would cancel our evening flight - we had a train back to Krakow in the morning giving plenty of time to get to the airport etc. We arrived in plenty of time for our flight, only to find that RyanAir had cancelled it! They did though send an email to inform us we had been moved to the morning flight! Not a lot of use when you don't have any access to emails! They wouldn't give us any accommodation for the night so we had to source and pay for it ourselves. They wouldn't book us on the morning flight the next day either as it was full! However, we knew they would do the same to the next lot of passengers the next day so were happy to take our chances of a seat being free!

The reason they gave for cancelling the flight - both ours and the flight the next day - there were 'animals' on the runway! This at an airport that was fully functional with plenty of other planes taking off and landing! Frankly they lied, but we couldn't prove it.

Terrible airline that couldn't care less about its customers.

Someone linked this on Facebook too, and it's been pulled down. RyanAir getting their way?

I assume you wish to arrive alive? So as far as that goes they appear perfectly acceptable.

However watch out for all of the extras and make sure they go to the airport you really want,

just in case the one they take you too is several miles away from where you thought they meant.

I assume you wish to arrive alive? So as far as that goes they appear perfectly acceptable.

However watch out for all of the extras and make sure they go to the airport you really want,

just in case the one they take you too is several miles away from where you thought they meant.

Definitely do your homework on the destination.

Fly to Vienna arrive in Bratislava in another country.

Fly to Frankfurt (now they do add Hann) and you are a good 1.5hrs away from Frankfurt making good use of the unrestricted Autobahn speed limits.

However when I have to go to South East Poland rather conveniently they fly to a little town called Rzeszow leaving me only an hours drive down the painful Polish road system rather than 2 plus from Krakow, god knows why they fly there as there ain't much touristy around, Ukraine is just down the road so it could be that, but the daily flight in and out is nearly always fully booked well in advance.

The only real gripe with them is you can never sleep as they are making announcements all the time: has anyone actually won the €1m on those bloody scratch cards?!

I used to live in Hahn. What a place that was, a 60 mile dead zone around it Hiroshima would have been proud of.

In fairness to Ryanair, it's not like they keep these destinations a secret. They don't advertise 'Frankfurt' Airport, they call it 'Frankfurt Hahn', although it might as well be called 'Luxembourg Hahn', 'Cologne Hahn' or 'Spa Francorchamps international'. If you book a flight to a place like Hahn, Prestwick or Girona without checking where it is first, that's your own stupidity.

Someone linked this on Facebook too, and it's been pulled down. RyanAir getting their way?

Interesting, wonder if he has been paid off or just threatened. Luckily I saved the letter. RyanAir please feel free to pay me off or alternatively threaten Steve Grant @ Saints webs tower, Croydon CR1 2FU.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing for the attention of your customer experience team. I am definitely a customer, and believe me, you didn’t fail providing us with an experience.

My wife and I had booked to fly from Stansted on the Thursday 17th April, evening flight to Bratislava. After 2 hours of fun, fun, fun, stuck on the M25 doing 20 mph, we arrived at Stansted check in with just one hour until the flight. Knowing the strict Ryan Air policy on ‘check in closes 40 mins before the flight’ as you are the Low Fare Taxi of The Skies, we went straight to the Ryan Air assistant and explained our plight. She said we were still within the time and all would be fine but we had to make the attendant at check in aware and he would assist from there.

We approached the attendant as instructed and explained. Unfortunately, in the main part, due to him being a child, and forgetting to bring his mother to work, he heard only half of the words before his brain fell apart like a wet cake. He led us to the line for closing gates, advised we should wait and all would be ok. We stood patiently in the line for 20 minutes. We got to the front of the line and the lady, who we shall from this point refer to a Vacant, explained that she had literally just that second closed the flight and we had missed it. We complained that we had done as instructed and she said it was the child’s fault because he should have advised her that we were trying to board a closing flight and that because he hadn’t told her it was therefore our fault we had missed the plane.

Confused by this process of blame apportioning, another check in clerk, who we shall refer to as Not That Bright, tried to blame us for not responding to the last call for the flight as we should have made ourselves known. I argued that the last call had not been made. Not That Bright then questioned Vacant on whether she had done a final call. Vacant did what she does best and looked, well,…… After establishing that the child had not informed Vacant we were here, and Vacant had forgotten to do a last call and that all of this was irreversible, and my fault, Not That Bright and Vacant conferred to agree this was not a problem they wished to deal with and told us to get in a very, very long line of very, very unhappy people at the quite wrongly titled ‘Customer Services Counter’ as it was in fact a Customer Shouting Desk. We complained and requested the attention of a manager.

Out came Colin, a man so angry all his hair had literally fallen out. He was so aggressive I can only assume he had accidentally inserted something sharp into somewhere private and been unable to remove it before he came to work. He was definitely a middle Gimp. I know this as Vacant and Not That Bright were clearly quite scared of him, and he can’t have been a Big Cheese as he was talking directly to customers and we all know from the papers that no-one in Big Cheese management at Ryan Air has ever seen, let alone spoken to an actual customer.

Middle Gimp had clearly listen hard at Ryan Air Middle Gimp school as he managed to take two perfectly calm and sane adults and in a matter of seconds reduce them to angry people considering violence.

‘Check in opens 3 hours before the flight’ he barked repeatedly as if it was the answer to every question in life. We tried to ask Middle Gimp direct questions about why it was necessary for us to miss the flight because the Child had forgotten to do his job, and Vacant had forgotten to do hers.

‘Why is this our fault, and why should we miss the flight because Ryan Air staff have admitted they made errors?.

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘Do you acknowledge we have just cause for complaint as we tried to do the right thing and the only reason we are not on the plane is because of communication failures with Ryan Air Staff?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘What colour are my trousers?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘Do you think economic sanctions on Russia will diffuse the escalating situation in Ukraine?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘Were Man Utd right to fire David Moyes?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

‘My tinkle is hurting, could you take a look if I promise not to tell anyone?’

‘Check in opens three hours before the flight’

Middle Gimp then conferred with Vacant and Not That Bright, and agreed that this was all our fault as we should have noticed that Child had made an error and we should have called the flight ourselves to assist Vacant in doing her job because she was clearly busy being, well,…… Middle Gimp then insisted we go to customer the Customer Shouting Desk, as he was definitely not going to do anything else. This was handy as the queue was very long so that by the time we would reach the front the plane would be half way to Bratislava and the problem would be solved.

We waited patiently in line as customer after customer stood at the desk to hear the same song;

‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’

We got to the Customer Shouting Desk and explained our plight to the lady there (who was actually very nice and clearly should not be working for Ryan Air as a result). She apologised but explained that Middle Gimp had finished being angry for the day and had returned to his padded cage and there were no other Middle Gimps around. We would have to book in to the flight for the next day and we would have to pay £110 each to change the ticket. When she tried to re-book the flight she said that the flight we had tried to get was actually delayed by 1 hour and still at the air port and that what we should do is run to the gate with all our luggage, she would call through and they would check our bags into the hold at the gate. We ran as fast as we could, which is not very fast because I am fat, to security to do as instructed. Security advised us that because our flight should have left, even though it hadn’t, the ticket machine would not open the barrier for us and we would need to return to the Customer Shouting Desk.

We waited patiently in the very long queue yet again for about 40 minutes to discover the nice lady had also gone home now so we had to explain the whole thing again to a new lady that looked like all the joy had been removed from her life at birth. She recited the Ryan Air customer services song with a sterling level of apathy and dreariness, I am surprised she could muster the will just to breather and stay alive.

‘No, no, I can’t do that, no, there are no Middle Gimps available, no, no, sorry, no, give me all your money’

She recited it with perfection, Middle Gimps across the world would have been in awe and the effectiveness of the techniques taught in Middle Gimp School. Seeing no other option but to hand over all our cash and come back the next morning we happily paid and got new flights.

As the new flight was at 6.25am in the morning we decided to get a hotel, we paid £79 for a room and got a taxi.

So, our customer experience was insightful and liberating. From the incompetent Child with a brain so full of girls and Vauxhall Corsa modifications he couldn’t actually listen or speak, through Vacant and Not That Bright who decided on reflection that anything they did wrong was our fault for not pointing it out to them, right through Middle Gimp who made a Tasmanian Devil look calm and Zen like, and the sad one, oh so sad, having every last drop of life sucked out of her by her chosen career at the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk. I very nearly jumped over the desk just to give her a cuddle and tell her everything would be alright if she could just muster the will to leave the Ryan Air Customer Shouting Desk and find a more fulfilling job, like starting the very first Israeli pork pie factory, or being a parking attendant in Tower Hamlets, or in fact just resigning herself to a slow and uncomfortable death would have been indistinguishable from the current position and would require much less effort.

The net result of this ‘experience’ was;

New Flights – £220

Hotel £79

Taxi x 2 £50

Worlds most expensive sandwich in the only hotel we could get £35

1 x significant breach of Tort Law (2008 as quoted by Lord Atkin) by Ryan Air, Google it, it’s a cracking read. I will leave you to decide the monetary value of this.

1 x very angry and upset wife, in particular with Middle Gimp for being so unbelievably rude.

1 x Missed wedding reception for our Slovakian family (sorry, forgot to mention this nugget earlier) who all turned up from all over the country to see us for an event we were forced to miss, because Child and Vacant are clueless at best and Middle Gimp has anger management issues.

So, thank you Ryan Air for a comfortable and enjoyable experience. I have watched a program called the news so I fully expect this to land on the desk of the customer services team underneath the empty bottles and sandwich wrappers that you also file there. You treated us badly, you cost us money and made us miss our wedding reception through a display of incompetence I have not seen since Greece was allowed to have money and a cheque book.

I sincerely doubt you will do anything about this, compensate us, apologise, or even respond according to the news, so I have sent this recorded and sign for delivery to absolutely confirm my opinion of Ryan Air and that it is not just ‘lost in the post’

Regards

You bunch of …………….

You can fly on aging ba planes and get a free drink and roll, or get on newer easyjet /'Ryanair planes and not get a free drink and roll.

It's that simple.

Only done Ryanair once, but use easyjet several times a year and can't fault them.

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You can fly on aging ba planes and get a free drink and roll, or get on newer easyjet /'Ryanair planes and not get a free drink and roll. It's that simple.

 

Only done Ryanair once

Exactly - you don't actually know. Ryanair are ****e because of the way they treat people when things go wrong, and they do go wrong. Delayed flight? its our fault but **** you, go buy your own food and wait, no compensation. Missed your flight because you were delayed? £120 plus cost difference. Not got your print at home boarding card because our website was playing up? £70. We've lost your bag? you might get it in 4 or 5 days and no we wont pay for any new clothes to wear. Bag overweight by a kilo? £25. Instant coffee and a 65p packet of crackers? £6.50

BA have transferred me to earlier / later flights without charge; put us all on a cart to the gate when I was travelling alone with two small kids and luggage (Ryanair tried to insist my six year old daughter sit separate from us); offered me £120 to volunteer to catch a later plane (2 hours) while Ryanair bounced me for five hours with no compensation. The real price difference between BA and Ryanair over say 10 flights when say 2 or 3 things have gone wrong is non existent - so you get the better, more pleasant service for free.

Never flown with them, always preferred easyJet.

You can even try turning up at the airport on time to catch your flight.

You can even try turning up at the airport on time to catch your flight.

Of course, but an hour before should have been enough.

Looks like this story has made it to the Huffington Post now.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/02/ryanair-slammed-epic-rant-customer-branding-airline-staff-incompetent-gimps_n_5254849.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

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Of course, but an hour before should have been enough.

Not in my book. Not with the queues associated with immigration and security procedures these days. I make average half a dozen international flights a month, and if I arrived at the terminal building 1 hour before scheduled departure time for all of them, I would miss plenty.

I allow minimum 2 hours business class and 3 hours economy class, and even then there are times when I don't even have time for a cup of coffee.

p.s. I've only ever missed 2 flights.