Manchester to Porto travel options

[One2threego]

Booked a lovely Airbnb next July just north of Porto. I’d love some advice regarding our options for getting there (return is straightforward with EasyJet). EJ don’t fly direct to Porto on the day we arrive. So options are
1/ Manchester - Amsterdam - Porto with KLM (2.5 hour transfer at Schipol)
2 / Manchester to Lisbon with EJ and hire car Lisbon and drive 4 hours to Porto 3 / Manchester to Lisbon with EJ and train although this involves 3 changes
4 / Manchester to Lisbon EJ and then self transfer at airport and TAP Portugal flight Lisbon to Porto?

Are KLM reliable? Are we likley to lose our luggage (both flights are KLM)?
2 adults, plus kids 18,20 and 22.

Given the choice I wouldn't hire a car unless necessary and I wouldn't change airlines. So 1. And KLM have been good when I've flown them.

3 / Manchester to Lisbon with EJ and train although this involves 3 changes

Why would the train journey involve 3 changes?

The Metro Red Line and buses run from Lisbon airport to Oriente station and there you can catch an Alfa Pendular train to Porto Campanha station.

Or is getting to the Airbnb from Campanha station more complicated than getting there from Porto airport?

Ryanair fly to Porto from Manchester, is that an option?

Or Ryanair goes Leeds to Porto 3 times a week, easy enough to be cross the pennies, not sure what day you are looking at. If none of these options work I would either a) fly to Lisbon and jump on a train to Porto, the trains are good and it takes about 3 hours. b) fly a day earlier and have a night in a hotel before going to the airBnB, you could stay in Braga or somewhere like that instead of the city. I've flown into Lisbon and back from Porto before and took the train in-between the two.

Should have added, we are hiring a car from Porto airport anyway but could pick up in Lisbon. Have KLM been ok with transferring bags etc? I guess you only read the negative reviews!

I think I was adding in the airport to city centre in my calculations. We would need to collect the hire car from Porto airport to get to the Airbnb

They just don’t fly on a Sat which is the same s EJ

That’s really helpful thank you. I have thought about flying a day earlier and staying actually in Porto. But the trains do appeal simply because it cuts the risk of bags not following during an airport transfer, unless we do self transfer. So the trains are quite straightforward? There are 5 of us plus 3 suitcases.

The trains were nice, spacious, reserved seats etc. Ours ran perfectly to time and it was well priced, 14 euros per adult one-way, that was booked about 6 weeks in advance. I am not sure how you time it though, we had a few days in Lisbon before we took the train. You would need to allow some contingency for delays. Also Lisbon passport control was really slow, took an hour to get through just that, although egates might be an option for you but we had kids with us.

I wouldn't do a KLM transfer. Ladt Christmas we flew KLM Manchester to Amsterdam and were thwn meant to fly on from Amsterdam to Prague.

We got stuck in Amsterdam because of a high wind storm and were not offered a flight to Prague until 1 day before our holiday was meant to be over 😪

We were chucked in a crappy hotel right on the outskirts of Amsterdam and it was awful because we had nothing planned.

Just a warning as Amsterdam is known for high winds if you have a connecting flight.

I wouldn't do self-transfer as you need to allow hours between flights in case of delays on your first leg and you'd have to pay for new flights if you missed your connection.
I'm not sure I could be bothered with doing a transfer at Amsterdam either for such a short haul destination. It's a massive airport and whilst your bags might not get lost, there's also a risk of missing connections and adding hours onto your journey time.
I'd fly to porto the day before or get the train.

I've also had a bag delay at Schipol on KLM but my connection time was under an hour. My bag got to it's destination just in time for me to collect it before my return journey.

I'd probably pick the cheapest from the train or flight from Lisbon to Porto, which I suspect will be the train as you have luggage.

If Portugal is anything like Spain, it's quite hard to find out online what the public transport options are, unless you're looking at the local provider's websites.

However, I've found Rome2rio the most helpful and that seems to be suggesting another option, which is a direct bus that takes just over 3 hours and costs about £8(!) each. This is likely to be a National Express type coach, rather than a double decker.

Baggage going missing can so ruin a holiday. I think that’s my main worry 😔

I should add that I literally had a baggage miracle happen to me while making a re-booked connection at Schipol but whilst that was miraculous, having an 8 hour delay on arrival time and 4 hours extra in the air, plus an extra connection was not so fun!!

Thank you so much everyone for your really helpful advice and experience. I think I have found a solution…Ryanair fly Liverpool to Porto on the day we want to fly. Although we are flying back into Manchester, a taxi even for all of us plus luggage back to pick up the car at Liverpool is only £80. Hotel and parking pretty similar to Manchester but a much nicer and smaller airport. Ryanair possibly the only negative to this! 😳

Option 4 - start the AirBnB booking on a day that you can get a flight!

or
Option 5 - Fly to Lisbon, spend a night or 2 there and then train to Porto.

I wouldn't take a non-direct flight to somewhere in Europe - so much extra time, for no gain (and more stress).

Can you go a day earlier and book one night somewhere near airport?

RyanAir are fine, what's your issue with them?

Only what is I’ve read and heard but then negative reviews always spread faster than positive ones!!

They're no worse than any of the major carriers and definitely no worse than EasyJet. Everyone is charging extra for luggage, seat selection and even food these days. I've flown with them the last couple of years and the planes have been very new and modern.

Ryanair regularly come near the bottom of surveys.

After a delay of 7 hours on one flight with Ryanair, I had to go through Aviation ADR to get the compensation I was entitled to. It took a year, and the dispute resolution service eventually found in my favour.

Then Ryanair only gave compensation for one of the two tickets, both of which I paid for. They claimed that they couldn't pay for the other one into my bank account as it wasn't in the name of the second passenger, and they couldn't pay into the second passenger's account as they hadn't paid for their ticket!

Ryanair are fine and certainly no worse than other airlines, even flag carriers.

I can think of at least a couple of examples where choosing the alternative hasn't paid off.

A day trip to Ireland for a work event - I wanted to go on Ryanair because the flight times were slightly better and it was cheaper. They made me go on Aer Lingus 'because they're better', however there was a 2 hour delay on the way out and I was late. The Ryanair flight I wanted got there on time.

Colleague and I went to a European city for a conference. Because we were travelling from different parts of the UK, he went from London on BA and suffered two cancellations on the way out and missed the first day of the conference. He was also delayed by 3 hours on the way back. My Ryanair flights went as scheduled. I used RA several times without issues and will continue to do so when the price and route/times suit.

This is from Which? It very much reflects my experience. Note the figure for compensation - just 18%.

"Ryanair regularly sits at the bottom of our table, and it only escapes last place this year through the poor experience offered by Wizz Air. One-star ratings for customer service and seat comfort tells you everything you need to know about what to expect when flying with Europe’s largest budget airline.

Its only plus point is that Ryanair cancelled far fewer flights than BA or easyJet. However, it's at its worst when anything goes wrong.

During delays it was less likely to have staff available, and staff were less helpful than other airlines. Only 18% of passengers got compensation after delays of three hours or more, compared with an average of 41% overall.

'They treat customers with disdain,’ one customer said. Another complained that ‘Ryanair just doesn’t do customer service’."

If you haven't already booked flights, we did this in 2022 - got the coach from Lisbon to Porto with Rede Expressos (https://rede-expressos.pt/pt), booked with a company called Bus Bud. It was £89 for 5 of us (we actually used the same company for Faro - Lisbon too). Was reliable, comfortable (all air conditioned etc), stress free and took 3.5 hours.

Thank you, I’ll look into it