Airlines have reputations and in Europe, the airline with the single worst reputation is Ryanair. If you’re fortunate enough to have never encountered Ryanair, it’s a low-cost low-frills airline of the lowest kind. To quote my boss’s disgruntled mum (to be fair, she’s disgruntled about everything and that’s putting it very politely), “we didn’t even get a bloody cup of tea”.
Ryanair has recently announced dramatic new baggage restrictions, initially applied even on flights booked long before anyone ever mentioned them, and now applicable only to bookings made since the announcement. Basically, all you get for free is a single small bag, like a handbag or a laptop bag. For an extra £10 you can add a standard cabin-sized bag and after that, you can take whatever you like as long as you’re willing to pay for it. I’m actually kind of a fan. I think people take far too much luggage into the cabin these days and that’s hugely down to the fact that you have to pay for hold luggage. If I ran an airline, I would also only allow small bags in the hold and payment for extra bags would be extortionate – but I’d give you a very generous free hold allowance, like at least a big suitcase per person. I think the cabin would be a much more comfortable – and much safer – place if it had less luggage in it.
Then there’s the fact that Ryanair’s customer service is pretty terrible. My dad says “Ryanair is probably just fine as long as everything’s going fine”. You don’t want to have to try to get problems solved by them. They’re the sort of airline that would cheerfully double-book seats and then throw paying passengers off and leave them stranded as if it’s their fault there’s someone already in the seat printed on their boarding pass.
And of course, there’s the lack of amenities. No free drinks or meals, charging for printing boarding passes and discussion of the possibility of charging to use the toilets. And wasn’t it Ryanair that brought up the possibility of fitting more people on the planes by using standing seats?
So I’ve kind of gone out of my way to avoid Ryanair but last weekend I used them to go to Malta. It was £33 return from my local airport. For half the price of a return train ticket to London, I could fly on an actual plane to an island in the Mediterranean. So I gritted my teeth and packed a small bag.
Actually, it wasn’t so bad. I admit, I was slightly surprised that it was a proper plane, that’s how bad Ryanair’s reputation is, but other than one detail plus the thing with the luggage restrictions, it was no worse than flying easyJet.
The first thing that struck me was that the seat backs were very plasticky and the second thing was that there was no seat pocket. You don’t realise how much you use the seat pocket until you’re trying to balance your sunglasses and your tablet and the little box you keep your headphones in and pick up your drink. It saves weight and therefore fuel and therefore money. You don’t get a bag, you don’t get a menu or a magazine and the safety card is stuck to the back of the seat in front. To be fair, they do have the magazines and the staff will walk up and down the plane during boarding handing them out.
Then there’s the issue of luggage. It appeared I was the only person on the entire plane who hadn’t paid to upgrade to a second bag, which Ryanair calls Priority. So when we boarded, the people who got on first filled the lockers with their luggage and the people at the back of the queue didn’t have anywhere to put their stuff. I heard a woman in the row opposite complaining that “We should have the lockers, that’s what we paid for. We should have been allowed to board first and put our bags in the lockers, we’re priority”. Well, no, you paid extra for the bag, not the storage and not the boarding privileges. And if 189 of the 190 passengers on board are priority, then the system falls apart.
Obviously, no one puts anything under their feet. Small bags and coats and things like that are supposed to go under the seat in front of you but I have never seen this happen. I do it, because it’s easier, because there’s never room in the lockers, because I like to be able to get at my stuff mid-flight. With a small backpack, there’s plenty of room. I was pretty comfortable, considering I was in the back corner, with a toilet behind me, a window to my left and two people hemming me in on my right.
One thing did go wrong. A member of cabin crew came along and handed the lady in front of me a bag and then switched on the overhead fan for her while her neighbour/sister/daughter/friend (two women, a baby and a man who called it “my kid”, as in “will you swap seats with me so I can sit next to my kid?”) fanned her. Emetophobe is not spending three hours sitting right behind that. Fortunately, there was a couple sitting next to me. The man seemed sort of doddery and confused and very pleasant; we compared notes on the view as we took off, but his wife was a bit younger, wearing those hippie-elephant trousers and constantly going on about this or that. Within five minutes of the fasten seatbelts sign going off, she’d explored the plane and discovered that there were entire empty rows near the front of the plane, although the husband was having none of it. But at the point where the bag appeared, I decided these seats sounded just the job, and so I politely asked if I could be really annoying by getting out of my seat and then I fled to the third row, where I settled down all on my own.
It was luxury I’ve not experienced in a long time. I could leave my stuff on the empty middle seat, I could put my small bag under the middle seat instead of under my own feet, I could curl up however I wanted. There was one person asleep in the opposite row, there were two people playing cards in front of me and only one or two people in the row in front of me. Pretty much anyone who wanted the toilet opted for the one at the back rather than the one at the front, so the traffic passing me was much reduced and there’s something about yellow walls and a big sunny picture occupying the front bulkhead that made it all feel so much more luxurious than any other airline I’ve ever been on.
For all the complaints about “no free hot drinks”, the only airline I’ve ever been on that gives out free hot drinks is Icelandair so that was an entirely normal part of flying for me, and anyway, I don’t really drink hot drinks. I’d bought a few snacks at departures and I was pretty comfortably settled. What more do I need on a three hour flight than a bottle of Ribena, a bar of chocolate, my sunglasses, my headphones and something to plug them into, like my iPod or tablet?
Yes, on the way home, we did board by priority vs others but “others” meant less than a dozen people. I was stuck in the back corner again on the flight back but my assorted neighbours were less distressing and I had no need to flee to the front again – probably for the best, because as far as I could see, there wasn’t an expanse of empty rows this time.
One last thing. This panel, on the back of the seat in front of me.
I don’t drink coffee but is this really revolutionary? Put hot water in cup, put lid on cup, stir, wait for it to cool and drink? Isn’t that how all coffee works?
It’s from their advert for the Ryanair app – you don’t get a menu, you download an app. Except once you’re on the plane, it’s too late to download. There’s no wifi. I guess you can download it on mobile data while everyone’s boarding but after that, you’re stuck. And does the app work with no internet? Isn’t printing menus to hand out cheaper than developing an app anyway?
Would I fly Ryanair again? I guess I would. It turns out the only frill I actually use is the seat pocket and I couldn’t work out what I’d been filling a 45 litre suitcase-bag up with a four day trip.
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