Ryanair review by John 2014-10-01

o We flew Ryanair on two sectors - Krackow-Stansted and Stansted-Dublin. Incidentally, My daughter also flew Ryanair around the same timeframe MAN-DUB and return and had much the same bad experiences. o First glitch was I was twice double charged on-line for our flights. The first I was able to fix and get a refund by making a phone call to ENGLAND from the US. For the second double charge, they said they could not fix it on the phone. Then I had a mysterious charge from a company in Strasbourg that looked like fraud so I went to my bank and they deleted it together with the second double charge but had to cancel the credit card I had used. This caused all kinds of cash problems when traveling as that card was my only card for cash out of ATMs. o Booking Ryanair flights on-line is fraught with problems. It seems only the site called Obodo books Ryanair flights. Even if you go direct to Ryanair's site, it transfers to Obodo when you start making a flight booking. No other airline I know does this. o After we got back to the US, I discovered on the credit card statement that I was being charged monthly, EU9 for some Obodo travel club membership that I did not join. I got it removed from my account and had a block put on any future charges from Obodo. This is a fairly common on-line purchasing con trick here in the US, but not with airline bookings. o When traveling Ryanair, we went to a lot of trouble keeping our bags under 20 kgs. When we checked in at Krakow, the gate agent told us we were 10kgs over weight. She said we had only paid for 2 x 15 kgs bags. I said I paid for 2 x 20 kgs bags and she said I didn't. I told her 15 kgs bags were not an option on-line when booking a Ryanair flight. She said they were. This, and other incidents convinced me Ryanair staff are well trained/coached in lying to passengers. Clearly, the Obodo website is set up to either trap you into inadvertently buying 15 kgs bags, or the booking is changed after you select a flight. I did notice the total cost kept changing. I suspect there is some well hidden trap in the software that defaults the paid-for bags to 15 kgs unless you know the secret to overriding it for 20 kg bags. My daughter fell into the same trap and had to shell out lots of money at MAN and DUB at check in. She is pretty savvy with computers and booking or buying on-line, so it is highly unlikely she mistakenly selected 15 kg bags instead of 20 kgs on two occasions. Prior to the Ryanair flight to DUB, I was able to check our booking on-line, and as expected, we only had 2 x 15 kgs booked so I changed it at some cost. o Ryanair have a sneaky and most inconvenient rule where you cant print your boarding pass more than 23 days before the flight. This meant I could not print any of our boarding passes before we departed for a EU tour. I then found I could not access (and later print) the boarding passes in the hotel the night before the flight out of Krackow. It was extremely costly not having a boarding pass. I was able to print the Dublin flight boarding passes in England. The cost of the boarding passes and the 'Excess Baggage' was more than the actual flight! Just to rub in the aggravation for passengers, I could not pay all this money at the Krakow check-in desk, but had to walk the length of the terminal to a hole in the wall to pay. After a few minutes there, the man would not take a credit card or US$ or any other currency other than the weird Polish money. I then had to find a money changer, which of course was at the other end of the terminal near the check-in counter. I estimated, after all that, it took us an hour to check in. o Boarding Ryanair flights leaves a lot to be desired. Fortunately, my wife and I are OK at going up and down stairs and taking long walks and fortunately, it was not raining on any of our flights. The aircraft stairs (B737-800) seemed quite narrow and a bit rickety to me and totally unsuitable - when descending - for the aged and infirm. Our assigned seats on the Krakow flight were in row 4 but everyone had to board at the back of the plane, so we, and many others had to all walk the length of the cabin and squeeze past many passengers struggling to get their bags in the overhead stowage. When entering at the back door, I asked a cabin attendant why we couldn't board at the front and she (clearly lying through her teeth) said the front stairs were broken. After we sat down, I saw Ryanair staff using the front stairs. I have been unable to find out from any airline knowledgeable folk why Ryanair would have this rear door policy. It made absolutely no sense to us. o When everyone was seated, I thought I would take a photo inside the cabin. As I was putting my camera away, a surly, Gestapo-looking foreign male cabin attendant came up from the rear and asked to see the last picture I just took. I selected the last photo and showed him. He then said the photo was OK but passengers were strictly not allowed to take photos of the cabin attendants. I later found out that 70% of Ryanair's cabin attendants have other jobs and are sort of part-time, temporary workers with Ryanair. They probably don't want other employees knowing they have another job with Ryanair. o The actual flight to Stansted was OK, other than the ludicrous cost of food. Not that we wanted any. Everything - a hot dog, fries, a sandwich, a drink, etc., was EU8 per item. This equates to $11. o At Stansted, we exited the aircraft by the front steps! An engineer, hidden in the belly of the plane must have fixed the steps during the flight. Same long walk and up and down stairs to get to the terminal. o I would have much the same comments for the flight from Stansted to Dublin. On both flights, Ryanair make no attempt to board passengers in some logical order, as all other airlines do. Boarding by assigned seating or by cabin zones speeds up boarding and gets everyone seated quickly. Ryanair's policy has the unintended consequence of encouraging most of the passengers to stand in line at the gate for about 30 mins, so as to get on board sooner and find a space in the overhead for one's bag. o One thing that was nothing to do with Ryanair was the totally insane security at Stansted. I nearly got arrested by two heavily armed police for arguing over a half-full tube of prescription toothpaste that they tried to throw away. As it was, they took down my US passport details and I suspect they forwarded them to a database in the US because when we finally arrived in ATL, my wife breezed through the passport control but my passport was scrutinized for about 10 mins. The attitude of the women security agents and their male manager at Stansted was insanely pedantic. The stupid problem was not the toothpaste but the size of the tube. I was given the option of throwing away the toothpaste or going inside the terminal, buy an empty tube/container, return to security and squeeze the toothpaste into the container (which probably had the same volume as the ½ tube of toothpaste). Absolutely insane! Despite all of the above, Ryanair is the world's largest and most successful Low Cost Carrier (LCC) and has 350 Boeing 737s and will have 500 of them in a few year's time. It is unfortunate they put so much emphasis on saving money or avoiding spending money and treating passengers like cattle. Using the lowest rent stands at airports and avoiding using air bridges to get on the plane results in the long walks from the terminal and using the rickety built-in steps on the plane obviously saves them money. Having so many part-time staff results in an unfriendly and often deceitful attitude towards customers. I worry about the quality and training of the crews. 40% of Ryanair pilots are part-time workers and have other jobs. I have read several uncomplimentary articles in aviation journals about Ryanair and a Frenchman has even written a book about his bad experiences with the company. From our appalling experiences, we would never consider flying with Ryanair ever again. Same for my daughter. Sad that such a huge and visible company should consistently tick off its customers.