please boycott ryanair

[hermykne]

this is why
he is anti family
he being michael o leary (who had his first child last year and should appreciate travelling with kids)

this week he bumped up taking a piece of luggage in the hold of the airplane by 50%

so in essence
a family of 4 buy their four equally priced flights, and then pay 114? to bring their clothes/toys/books on holidays with them.

he is a rip off merchant and i have so little respect for him even though he gave ireland a pathway to the world when aer lingus was incredible expensive..

so i shall not use ryanair unless absolutely vital.

please think before u have to pay your hard earned sckecles over to him/ryanair

anyway surely he's not being ANTI family? He's treating families in exactly the same way as everyone else. It's just that this policy don't happen to particularly suit families. Don't think that's worth getting in a twist about...

No.

I go for the best deal to suit my needs.

If Ryanair offered the best deal I'd go with them. If not, I'd look elsewhere.

Yep, like kindersurprise says, back in the 80s, my mum used to have to fork out £300 to send me from Dublin to London to visit my dad. £300! That's like paying almost £650 for a return flight today (I know, because I just worked it out using the Retail Price Index.) A business class flight doesn't even cost that today.

I take my hat off to Ryanair and the other pioneers of low-cost air travel because they released the stranglehold that the big airlines had over pricing.

Yes, travelling with Ryanair is crap, but if you don't like it, go and pay the extra to travel with a standard carrier.

I can pay about £40 per person to fly at some Godforsaken hour out of Stansted to Dublin now. Or I can pay £125 per person to fly from London City to Dublin with Air France.

Regardless of which I choose, the point is that without Ryanair putting pressure on pricing, Air France (or any other standard carrier) would be able to charge much, much more and get away with it.

They are the champions of competition and we are all the better off for it. Nobody is forcing anybody to fly with them.

Oooh, I was just going to start almost this exact thread this morning! I just booked 2 return trips last night - the offer price was £1.99 (which is plainly ludicrous, so we discount that) but the fares including taxes were under £70.

BUT after adding on £6 per bag each way, and £3 per person to check in each way, and £1 per person per flight to pay with a debit card (would have been £3 pppf with a credit card) it bumped it up to £108!!!

And although your wildly generous 15kg baggage allowance can be in up to 3 bags, THIS MAY NOT BE SHARED!!!! So it wouldn't let me do 1 with the bag charge and 1 without.

Easyjet's allowance is 20kg, they only charge £3.99 per bag (no compulsions about 1 bag per head) and no charge for check-in - honestly that's the bit about Ryanair that bugs me the most, being charged £3 every time you have to stand in the sodding queue

(Anyway I've booked it now, but I will certainly think twice about using them next time)

(btw I concede that a total of £108 for 2 round trips to Italy in July is pretty good - but if they said "the fare will be £54 each" rather than "the fare will be £1.99 each and then you have to add on this, and this, and this, and this" at least you'd know where you stand before you start)

Wendy,
yes, that does annoy me a bit, because you have to go right through to the end before you can really compare prices with other airlines.

It is just a marketing ploy so that it sounds good when you get an email about flights for 20p.

I don't know why they don't just offer the end prices and be done with it.

Goodness, you are getting het up aren't you, hermykne

Here you go:

PAYMENT DETAILS
0.05 GBP Adult
**63.45 GBP Taxes, Fees & Charges
***63.50 GBP Total Paid

PAYMENT DETAILS
0.05 EUR Adult
**66.95 EUR Taxes, Fees & Charges
***67.00 EUR Total Paid

OK that actually comes to around £113 for 5 x 1p/1 cent tickets, because of the extra car seat i had to check in, but hey who is quibbling? And it was at half-term too, and we visited friendsa and relatives we wouldn't otherwise have seen

It obviously would've been better if we had only paid 10p in total

i would never use ryanair! every time i've used them to price something up it turned out utterly exorbitant and from the press coverage forget about getting any help if things go wrong - just what you need with a young family!

Bossykate
You need to know how to use Ryanair. The earlier you book, the cheaper the flights. Booking a midweek flight is cheaper than at weekends. Booking an early morning or late night flight is cheaper. Never book a connecting flight. Don't expect help.

You are getting a Skoda, don't expect Mercedes service.

Here is our flight from Germany to Scotland on Friday, coming back on Monday

PAYMENT DETAILS
**20.00 EUR Adult
124.72 EUR Taxes,Fees & Charges
**23.16 EUR Aviation / WCHR Levy
0.00 EUR Car Rental
0.00 EUR Insurance
**167.88 EUR Total Paid

Hardly extorbitant.

what an odd post, kindersurprise. ok because you got a good deal and are flexible when you travel then everyone should love ryanair?

I've never used them. I think they are the worst of the budget airlines for whacking on all manner of extras, and I've generally heard bad things about their customer service. I find flying stressful enough without being at the mercy of a sod-you-proles approach to their clientele.
So have avoided them. But that's easy for us because we don't need to fly to see relatives and prefer to drive on holiday.
Agree Michael O'Leary is not an attractive personality in as far as how he comes across in the media

This midweek flight thing is all very well. But it rules out tons and tons of lovely villas in Italy and Spain and France that have Saturday changeovers. And I have devoted hours to trying to find accommodation and flights that match and are affordable...

Bossykate,
Sorry if that came over wrong.

I meant to be helpful and give you advice on the best way to get cheap flights.

I do not expect everyone to love Ryanair, or any cheap airline, but it does irritate me when someone moans about shoddy service when they are getting flights for less than it would cost us to take the train home from the airport.

hi kindersurprise, thanks for that perhaps i am too ready to take offense sometimes, sorry like bozza, whenever i've looked at ryanair, it's been to fit in with villa/gite hire somewhere in school holidays - so sat to sat in august = exorbitant!

bossykate
No problem. This will be our last year of cheap flights, I fear, as DD starts school in the autumn. Really annoying that all the holidays/airlines bump their prices up for the school holidays. That is something to get het up about.

unfortunately already got tickets from ryanair... flying to sweden in feb. can anyone answer me this... will dd and ds be allowed to take hand luggage on board... i keep hearing different things.... thanks....

sorry for the slight hijack!

Each passenger (excluding infants) is permitted to carry one piece of cabin baggage on board (free of charge). It should weigh no more than 10kg and not exceed the maximum dimensions of 55cm x 40cm x 20cm. Due to security restrictions - certain items cannot be carried in cabin baggage - click here for details. For the safety and convenience of all passengers, cabin baggage must fit underneath the seat or in the overhead compartment.

From the website.

Assuming they are not booked as infants, then they do have their own baggage allowance.

you can't fit much in a 10kg bag, though, kindersurprise, and it is a total pain having to have 4 bags (or however many) rather than one big one. Even if you pay, you can't pool allowances so you have to lug loads of bags about with you.

but also it's about the dishonesty of it all. once you've paid all the baggage costs (assuming you are going away for a week with kids so therefore the cabin baggage is not enough), it can be more expensive than BA.

thanks all! have to get that measuring tape out and the scales!!!

Why dishonset? I like the transparency of it, you can see what you are paying for. If you want to travel light, you can do it cheaply. If you prefer to take the kitchen sink, use a traditional airline. Hurrah for the budget carriers, I say!

We're doing Sat to Sat in August (renting villa in Spain) from Bournemouth to Malaga at very agreeable times and it's costing just over £400 in total for two adults and two children.

None of the other airlines (and believe me, I checked them all) came anywhere close.

Yes, the service might not be the best but the flight is only two hours.

Wendyweber, as I understand it, you can't share baggage allowance (ie, take one 30kg bag using two people's allowance) but not everyone travelling has to pay for a bag. DSs will have one 15kg bag between them so I've only had to pay one lot of baggage allowance for them. I hope that's how it works anyway