Darren

I have always said I would avoid 2 airlines, Ryanair and Virgin. However after flying Ryanair yesterday I may change my mind. Only reason I booked them was there was no other choice. As I have posted before I compare total flight prices and Ryanair are very rarely more than a few pounds cheaper and several times they are more expensive. So after my flight I have I would fly them, but they would have to be more than £20 cheaper for me to put up with there system. I missed my free drink .

Virgin however I have flown 4 times each time had problems, overbooking, delays, rude staff, lost luggage. I know I probably been unlucky but even with out these problems I just do not think they are any better than any other airline.

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I hope to avoid flying with Air One in the future, but if Alitalia bellies up I will be limited here in southern Italy with my choices. Air One’s customer service rivals Ryanair for “Worst of the Worst,” they don’t respond to customer complaints, emails or letters and don’t answer their phones. Ridiculous.

I always look forward to my flights, as well and agree they are part of the experience. Hopefully we’ll still have a few good ones to choose from.

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Travelling with kids put me off Ryanair for life. Aside from the miserly 15kg baggage allowance, with resultant baggage bedlam at check-in as hapless fellow travellers divest themselves of ‘non-essentials’ to avoid forking out £12 per kilo baggage penalties, the absence of any check-in priority for families with young children is short-sighted.

On my last Ryanair flight out, we incurred £50+ of excess baggage fees. More fool us, you may say, but 15kg of luggage allowance each is tight, to say the least, more so when you have children. Ah well, one lives and learns, either book more luggage next time, or, better, fly with a more generous airline’s allowance. Our EU-bound flight fares each were £120+ though, so this was hardly cheap by 2008 standards in the first place. The poker-faced check-in girl felt sorry for us and gave us priority boarding – a godsend with 2 kids under 3 yrs old in tow. With the return flight, our check-in clerk would have been better suited as a Gulag camp commandant, so no such luck – unless we wanted to pay for the priority boarding – but we declined, feeling we’d paid Ryanair enough already on our trip.

The usual elbow-exercising scrummage to get seated ensued, with the result that as a family, we ended up unable to sit together. Placing my screaming 3 year old next to a moody young ipodder brought about an amusingly swift seat re-shuffle in our favour however – occasionally travelling with young children has its perks. Anyone who’s unavoidably had to travel with their young kids in tow will testify to the necessity for priority boarding – to navigate where to leave the buggy, get the kids in place without holding up other passengers, ready the food/dummies/distractions/calpol, etc.; travelling with kids is stressful enough. Airlines like Ryanair just compound it.

This is why airlines like Jet2, SkyEurope and bmiBaby are superior to Ryanair – they consider this and factor it in to the benefit of customers. I also dislike having to stare at chernobyl-yellow seat backs for the duration of a flight. Ryanair, null points!

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Darren

You said it, they do not suffer delays and flight was trouble free, those are the only reasons. But yes the bad out weighs the good, hence I would want to save a fair bit of money but something I never seen Ryanair able to do, always TOTAL price is close to others.

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I have to say Thomsons meals have improved greatly. Aldo Zilli meals, lovely puds, 2 lily o’brien chocolates, cheese and a roll.
The meals I had recently were going – 2 beef sausages and mash with red wine, onion and tomato gravy. Coming back spinach filled pasta with cheese sauce and chicken breast. Very tasty for airline food

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Add me to the bunch of Ryanair haters. I will not fly them if I can help it. If you add all the extra fees they charge and the cost of getting to whatever dumpy airport they are flying to/from, then the total price is closer to what the big guys charge for their tickets anyway.
I also refuse to fly Air France, Aeroflot, and Wizzair. And American Airlines.

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Four hours is not a long flight to suffer without a meal or entertainment – for an American. I expect most here are not experienced with US carriers. You’re not missing anything, believe me. US carriers are the absolute worst, without peer. I’ve been on coast to coast flights in the US without entertainment. Considering America is so consumed with pop culture, the idea must seem unbelieveable to most Europeans. Can you imagine 250 Americans spending a full seven hours in the air without news of Paris Hilton or Britney? Unthinkable!

Thankfully, I’m an expat and enjoy the comfort KLM on most flights. KLM economy is a real joy for me. An added benefit of my frequent use of red-eye flights is that I can quaff a couple glasses of wine and sleep through the flight. And on KLM, the wine is free. Delta charges for a glass of wine on international flights!

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Darren,
Might Virgin be a better choice?

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