Can Ryanair turn over a new leaf?

I’ve used both EasyJet and Ryanair and with everything running smoothly no real difference between them for the flight experience
Both now allow seat reservations for a reasonable fee.
However with limited hold luggage allowance Easyjet’s policy of permitting the allowance to be shared between people on one booking is a big plus.
Its bad enough carefully packing 2 cases to make sure both are under 15kg on the way out with easy access to bathroom scales , but far more of a hassle on the return journey.
And for booking Ryanair’s system is so stressful.

I now actively try to NOT book with Ryanair, and I’ll pay a little more for that – which is VERY unusual for me! But the atrocious website and ‘Big Brother’ company ethos are just 2 reasons why I always try to go elsewhere.

Swiss was a revelation on a recent flight. Helpful staff, clean, comfy, a feeling of safety and precision (yes, a bit of a cliche) – and a chocolate when getting on and off the plane.Budget flights don’t get much better.

Lufthansa have been good, too – until they lost my wife’s suitcase/frocks for a week on a ‘special event’ 2-week holiday.

Have not flown Easyjet, but I would always prefer them to RA. That’s the power of branding and customer feedback!

In fairness, 2 non-recent return RA flights to Rome (the less-common airport) passed without incident, apart from the stressful queuing / loading scenarios; and the feeling (just a feeling) that you’re constantly being threatened to be tripped up and forced to pay extra charges. This destroys your ‘holiday mood’.

I wonder if Mr O’Leary’s apologies and pledges are just another publicity stunt.

I remember the publicity that Ryanair generated regarding the suggestion that they might make a charge to spend a penny.

We have a small local airport 5 miles from home that Ryanair fly to London from. When I need to go to London I drive 65 miles to a bigger airport so I don’t have to fly with Ryanair!

I have used them in the past but if I can find an alternative I use that instead.

I agree that the extraordinary antipathy the name RyanAir evokes is now coming home to roost. I fly frequently to Europe and occasionally (where there is no alternative) with Ryanair. A recent low point was being pushed out of the air terminal onto the tarmac of a small airport (Baden-Baden) in heavy winter rain -and kept waiting for 25minutes while Ryanair de-planed the incoming flight.Got to keep to those turnaround targets I guess (but sod the passengers – or are we customers..?). One plus point is that budget airlines have reduced ticket prices on their more upmarket rivals. Often Lufthansa and BA etc. can offer an attractive deal without the stress offered by Mr O’ Leary’s outfit.

In the words of my daily newspaper -“am I the only one not to have had a bad experience?” Having flown 50+ times all over Europe from UK bases with Ryanair I can honestly say my wife and I have always been very satisfied. We have paid pence to go to the South of France, Spain and recently to Sweden to follow the Wallander and Stig Larsson trails. Of course there are no lounges( a favourite moan of retired business persons used to travelling at someone else’s expense) and the baggage size/weight is small. As retired persons on fixed incomes we travel lightly but often at what I call realistic prices. Long live Chapeter 3 competition..

I have never flown with Ryanair, and hope I never have to. I use Easy Jet and am generally very happy with them, although the last experience of having to check in a ‘hold’ bag at Budapest, was a bit of a nightmare. The first bad experience I’ve had, but the rest of it was great. I just don’t like the sound of Ryanair and especially Mr O’Leary, who really does not come over well at all. (I’m being polite here !)

It seems some who never fly with Ryanair have already made up their minds! Personally I fly with them about 4/5 times a year and they usually always get me there and back on time for a modest fare.Yes the website is a bit clumsy and we need better transparency on pricing but I find staff generally very helpful and apart from difficulty understanding what some of the (foreign) ones are announcing I think they do a very decent job.Also Ryanair have done their bit to keep fares low.

I have, like may people, actively avoided flying with Ryanair due to their reputation (or lack of). I read all the horror stories about excess charges and luggage being dis-allowed in the cabin etc. However, earlier this month I was forced to fly with them since it was the only practical option to travel from Scotland to visit friends in a certain part of France. They claim to be cheap but I found the opposite. It cost us £100 more to fly to the south of France than it had cost us to fly to the south of Spain with EasyJet the month before. That being said, after my attempts to squeeze my hiking daypack down to their cabin baggage size failing, and having to simply take a handbag on board, there were people being allowed to board with bags much bigger than mine would have been,. They did have priority boarding and a few seats could be reserved. Really everything went very smoothly. I did notice that the seats seemed a bit more cramped than EasyJet, with no pockets in the seat backs, and the food/drink was more expensive. I wasn’t complaining about that though since I hadn’t expected Ryanair to be providing anything and had taken sarnies. I still can’t see me ever using them as airline of choice, however, due to all the stupid charges for printing our own boarding passes etc.

My wife and I frequently fly Ryanair as we have no alternative unless we take a two hour drive to Toulouse. One needs navigates their dismal website carefully and remember to tick the many ‘no/not wanted’ sections. Ryanair without any extras is cheap but it is certainly not cheerful. The aircraft cabin is unattractive and uncomfortable. Often the cabin crew appear to be as unhappy as the passengers and so would we be if I worked for O’Leary The continual announcements for drinks,food or scratch cards are irritating. We are pleased that Ryanair usually arrives on time so that we can disembark and leave their aircraft although their last punishment is the excruciating sound of the bugle and self congratulations for arriving on time.

We have used Ryan Air several times over the summer. We take hand luggage only and have found the flights competitively priced, easy to use web site, easy on-line check in and no problems with our flights at all. Staff are always professional and helpful. I have not used the customer service staff but would expect the same prompt, efficient friendly service if I did.Perhaps it is a self- fulfilling prophecy for some people. If you expect trouble you usually get it!

I’m not surprised to learn that so many people have negative feelings about Ryanair and that they came bottom in the survey of passenger satisfaction. I too have done my best to avoid flying with them for much the same reasons as many others have commented on here – the sense of intimidation arising from the sense that their staff have been told to try to catch people out for their very limited cabin baggage requirements; the ludicrously high cost of hold baggage; the smug self-satisfaction of their appalling bugle call on arrival; the overbearing public arrogance of Mr. O’Leary when he is interviewed or challenged on these issues. Ultimately these feelings come to a head and public unpopularity leads to outright dislike of this self-satisfied style of management. It will take a lot to persuade me to use Ryanair unless I really have no alternative options!

Most companies are concerned about retaining their good reputation. Michael O’Leary revels in the bad reputation of the company he heads. It’s past time he spent more time with his family.

After some years of travelling Ryanair I found Easyjet to Gibraltar and never looked back. The very slight extra cost and sometimes inconvenient departure is a small price to pay. I have even ordered a new hand luggage case 1.7 k. Over the Internet to make sure my hand luggage fits every airline.
Viva Easyjet and sometimes BA which can compete with the others out of Gib.

Ryanair is going to have to do a huge amount to get my business back again. I notice many many people are complaining about Ryanair but there is just one small voice praising it on price. How many companies would be able to continue functioning under those conditions without addressing the endless problems and criticisms?

I have flown several times with Ryanair and on every occasion bar the last one I had no problems. On the one occasion when I did have cause to complain I experienced first hand the rudeness for which Ryanair has become infamous; the call handler was flippant, unhelpful and put the phone down. It seems that if everything goes smoothly and you obey Ryanair’s rules you’ll be fine and get a good deal but if it doesn’t you’ll pay for it dearly and have little chance of redress. I don’t use them now.

My wife recently had to follow me to France on holiday due to the death of her Mother.She was in a fragile state and was not relishing the lone flight. On collecting her from Nantes airport she was up-beat and very complementary about Easy Jet from Liverpool airport, in fact she still comments to anyone she talks to about the superb experiance of the flight.It just goes to show it pays to be respectful to your customers because they will come back if treated well, and do your promotion for you! Its not hard to imagine if she flew with O’ Leary ‘s Ryanair she would have been near to tears, with the insensitive flight staff, petty rules and unbelievable hoops you have to jump through to actually book the flight.

If travelling across Europe or further on holiday by whatever means , it is prudent to make sure you have funds available to deal with unforeseen delays or occurrences and to be able to deal with a delay in returning home.
Too many people seem to travel with no emergency funds and on a schedule that sees them get home the night before they have to be back at work/school.
They then are unable to cope with a delay or cancellation and the return and accommodation options offered by the airline.
I’ve used RyanAir, Easyjet, Jet2 and all my flights have gone without any issues; however I am under no illusion that I will get great customer service when eventually I runout of luck and factor this is into my plans.

We use RA at least once a year. Not the smooth passage of a charter but the prices are very reasonable and probably more leg room than some charters. It’s a shame that the skimpy but expensive baggage issue means you can never take anything home with you. However, RA does what it says on the tin, you know what you’re getting, the Poundland of the air. It would be nice feel a bit more welcome and please, please stop the bloody fanfare when we touch down!!!!

For me its about honesty – Easy Jet are straighforward – RyanAir are disingenuous at best, deceitful at worst. I avoid using them if at all possible.

Overheard at the bar at Glasgow airport.

O’Leary: How much is a pint of Guiness?

Barman: 99p

O’l: that very reasonable, I’ll have one.

Barman: Did you bring a glass with you or would you like to rent one of hours? The no glass option is +50p, a plastic cup is £1 or a proper glass is £2 per half hour or part thereof.

O’L: A glass please.

Barman: OK now as you did not pre-order your pint before you came to the airport, there’s a surcharge of £2. So its £4.99 total

O’L hands over a tenner.

Barman: Thats £5.99 including the cash handling fee. ther’s tour £4.01 change.

O’L that’s ridiculous. How do you justify all these extra charges. I want to speak to the manager.

Barman: next!

Does a Leopard change it’s spots. I have used Ryanair once and Never again. The company does not care about it’s customers. They have proved that in the past, all they are interested in is the ££££ they can squeeze out of you and they are now panicking because they are not making as much.

I have also used Ryanair and will never use them again. I took a flight from Milan to Manchester T3; the flight time was 1hr 45 mins. The time it took the checked-in luggage to come out on the carousel once the plane landed was 1hr 50mins! Apparently, Ryanair employs their own luggage handling people. Says it all really….

Recently flew back from Malaga with Ryanair and was aware of their new policy with regard to the limit of the first 90 guaranteed carry on bags When finally queuing to board the aircraft a member of the airport staff appeared and started ticketing bags to go in the hold. He was not interested in the first 90 bag guarantee and so as we reached the aircraft for boarding our bags were taken from us but only after my wife insisted on taking out her medical supplies. Having taken our designated seats were we immediatley aware that our storage space above was empty. Further more, passengers boarding after us streamed on carrying their bags with them. Obviously the 90 bag rule had not been applied and the airport staff had just picked a group of people at random. Throughout the file the storage area above our seats remained empty!! No More Ryanair for us!

Decided to give Ryanair another try in April as their flight was most convenient in terms of local airport.
Booking was a disaster – could not enter my name correctly as it has a hyphen and Ryanair said this was an unpermissible character! But if I left the hypen out, my payment card wouldn’t be recognised correctly. So called a Ryanair number in Ireland. Helpful agent managed to take my booking over phone and payment. Immediate confirmation email.
3 hours later another email from Ryanair saying bank had declined payment. So I booked same flight using Opodo with no problems and this is the flight I used.
However when I got my debit card statement it showed Ryanair did take the first payment and hours before sending the cancellation email.
I have emailed them and even sent a letter trying to get the money they took and they seem to deliberately misunderstand, even though I attach all the evidence. They keep trying to make out I made duplicate bookings and ignore the fact that they cancelled my original booking.
It seems their policy is now to act stupid and hope you’ll give up.
However they owe me £80 and I won’t be giving up. The only mistake I made was to book with Ryanair.
I have now resorted to Twitter hoping they will react as it is very public.
Any ideas for next steps?