[hs586]

I have found myself to be the only person in many conversations defending Ryanair. People complain about legroom, everything being a paid add-ons, you name it. The key is to treat it like a bus that takes you from A to B, sometimes cheaper than a bus, not some sort of luxury experience. The times when flying was luxury is over. And I benefitted from it greatly as a student, so have many shown by Ryanair's passenger numbers.

And I am also always confused about the non-transparency that people mention about their fees. When you do the checkout, you select the services you want and pay for those. There used to be a time when other airlines would have a lot of things included in the basic ticket price, but that's not the case anymore, so it's not different. And I think this was an inevitable in an industry with small profit margins where price differentiation would bring gains.

[xandrius]

Either you got used to their evolved dark patterns or you haven't booked with them recently.

I was also Pro-Ryanair: they allowed to see friends and family across Europe with a student budget.

Now, it's an 8-step booking process where you try to figure out what is actually optional and avoidable and what's included in the advertised fare. Depending on the airport, they threaten to charge you if you don't print your boarding pass beforehand. Depending on the flight, they become pretty aggressive in weighing your carry on, mainly to try to catch you out and make an extra 50 euro.

The company went from no frills budget airline to antagonistic and aggro where literally anything is cranked up to 11 to extract value from you.

[hs586]

I used it once since COVID, last year, didn't seem too bad.

Given the mood in the thread, I do indeed think that I may have a high tolerance for such practices and pay careful attention to fine prints. After all, I had all the training while applying for numerous Schengen and other visas, immigration paperwork. After those, dealing with Ryanair that faces at least some competition and scrutiny is not that bad.

[Stevvo]

A bus is generally a far more pleasant experience. When taking bus you are not herded like cattle into pens based on priority queue status. When a bus has technical issue, they don't hold you hostage on-board for hours to avoid paying compensation. in Europe, a long-distance bus has the comfort of a business class airplane seat.

[blell]

Just the fact that people can’t talk on the phone whilst on a plane makes it infinitely better than a bus.

[vosper]

Starlink on flights could put an end to this

[scottyah]

hooray for technology!

Multiple lifetimes of thousands of the most brilliant engineers collaborating, sharing algorithms, protocols, mining, smelting, developing tooling to create tiny rocks that can think and blasting them to hover over the earth just so we can slightly annoy the person next to us with a conversation about the weird stuff growing between our toes.

[Analemma_]

From a technical standpoint, the ability to make VoIP phone calls from planes exists right now, at least on planes with newer and better internet connections. It hasn't been enabled because of ferocious customer opposition every time the idea is proposed. Which, frankly, is just fine with me. People can still send emails and messages from in-flight Wi-Fi, no need to subject everyone else to your phone calls.

[ruszki]

Could? I flew a month ago on a flight with Starlink. I downloaded 10s of gigabytes of data without hiccups. Calling was not an issue. And it was completely free.

[jonasdegendt]

Quite curious, which route was this on?

Not one time have I had a consistent internet connection whilst flying transatlantic on Delta, KLM or BA airplanes, to the point that I regretted having paid for it every single time.

[hdgvhicv]

I haven’t been to India for 7 years but I distinctly remember a very productive flight from Delhi to Heathrow on wifi while I was sshed into a machine and working on something for hours with no issue - far better than the signal I get on the train from London to Manchester.

[ruszki]

Qatar/Virgin Australia, Sydney->Doha. I’ve never had really good connection either before this, and I tried many-many times. That was the exception when it worked as intended.

[hdgvhicv]

Phones in seats have been a thing for decades, WiFi has been a thing for 10-15 years.

[mdhb]

Do you not own a pair of headphones?

[aiiotnoodle]

Having been trapped on a 2 day flight to Madeira via Madrid, Porto and Porto Santo, eventually your powerbanks and headphones run out of charge.

EU621 comp was denied because the aircraft could not land due to wind.

I did spend about 12 hours in a fancy all inclusive on ryanair's dime (a bus arrived at the airport un-announced to the airport staff or us customers) while some slept in airbnbs and on the floor.

[ruszki]

You can reimburse your costs of unplanned overnight stay, even when it happened because of weather. So those AirBnBs were also free. Even the taxi to and from there. Ryanair was unlawful if they hadn’t given this information.

Btw, there are power banks and headphones which can easily handle 2 days.

[hdgvhicv]

Surely you can recharge them on the ground too. Do Ryanair not provide in seat usb sockets? Wouldn’t surprise me if they saw an opportunity to charge £5 for their use (log into wifi and activate them etc).

[ruszki]

Especially that it’s completely normal to talk with each other on planes.

[AndrewKemendo]

The infrastructure for air travel requires all that for safe travel

As a pilot myself I know why all the holds exist and while not perfect, the majority of complaints aren’t random bullshit they are flight safety issues

The fact that people demand luxury because it went from veblen good to commodity is the problem

[Stevvo]

Different airlines have different policies. e.g. others you don't get stuck waiting on the plane because they don't load passengers while a mechanic is still working on the avionics.

[carlosjobim]

Do you love that bus so much that you want to sit in it for 30 hours?

[latexr]

To me, their general attitude and invasiveness is what puts me off.

https://noyb.eu/en/want-book-ryanair-flight-prepare-face-sca...

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

My one and only experience with Ryanair was that they were rude and hostile even in places where they weren't trying to fleece you. From in-your face rude signs (official, corporate designed ones, not something printed from Word by a random employee), to a UI where you needed to concatenate strings in order to craft a valid input (something like "enter your credit card number, followed by #, followed by the MMYY validity date"). Maybe that was to make people fail checkin and force them to pay for checkin at the counter, but I think it was early in the booking flow, i.e. where they had no incentive to make it hard.

[hs586]

When was this? I have zero recollection of ever doing credit card number formatting anywhere.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

Over 15 years ago, I think, and I have no idea if it was credit card numbers or something else. It was sufficiently crazy UX to stand out as crazy for a consumer-oriented website even in the much less polished web back then.

[Tenoke]

Yes, this sounds made-up/not Ryanair. I've used them for over a decade, paid with many different cards and have never encountered this with them (nor anywhere ever really).

[carlosjobim]

He didn't mean it literally. Read the comment more carefully.

[matsemann]

> And I am also always confused about the non-transparency that people mention about their fees. When you do the checkout, you select the services you want and pay for those.

The lack of transparency is that it's hard to price compare. Your will almost never pay the ticker price at Ryanair, but at others you might.

[cvakiitho]

I don't follow, I never paid more than ticker price?

[kiwijamo]

The issue is sometimes I want to compare flying with x with bags and flexible fares. These days I have to click++++ multiple times to get to the stage when I can add bags, flexibility, etc to the ticket and then repeat with each alriline I want to compare. In the old days this was the price shown upfront -- nowdays it's hidden behind several layers. Not just Ryanair but many airlines do this.

I do appreciate tho it's a bit of a trade off. These days many airline offer choice so if you don't need the extras you do save some money. But the tradeoff is if you do need those extras it's now more expensive and less transparently priced.

[hdgvhicv]

Flying in the pre “no frills” days was far more expensive. This was good from an environmental point of view but bad from allowing mass transport

[hexbin010]

Ryanair weren't just a bystander in this race to the bottom, they were primary drivers of creating it, along with Easyjet, undercutting competition and forcing everyone else to become a low cost carrier.

They're a total success commercially you can't deny it, but my god what a horrible experience for everyone involved, passengers and staff alike

[Satam]

I disliked them a bit, but then they stopped flying to a certain destination. I quickly realized that the other airlines were 3x more expensive. I realized I actually cared about price much more than any possible extra leg room or other perks, and that their super cheap flights are quality by itself.

[testing22321]

Like the comment you are replying to said - if you don’t want super cheap prices and super cheap service, fly with a more expensive carrier. Qantas, emirates, etc etc.

You get what you pay for .

[Kwpolska]

Legacy carriers run a hub-and-spoke model. Ryanair specialises in direct flights. If I can choose between a direct flight with Ryanair, or a connecting flight with a legacy airline, I'm going to choose the former to limit time spent in airports.

[notahacker]

You can get point-to-point connections with legacy airlines all over Europe (the hub and spoke model means you can also get onward connections including to non-European destinations). Might not be exactly the same airport pair (and there are sometimes good reasons to prefer the second tier airport Ryanair flies too rather than the main city airport), but there aren't many city pairs you're forced to use Ryanair or a connection, provided you're happy paying more money and flying at a different time.

But yeah, you're not going to be flying Qantas or Emirates, you're going to be flying BA or Aer Lingus or Air France or even another LCC

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

With the expensive carriers, you nowadays get super cheap service but not the price...

[hexbin010]

Firstly Ryanair don't fly the routes Qantas and Emirates do, so you have no idea what you're on about comparing them

Second, Ryanair et al have dragged all the previous decent airlines down with them into the gutter and even paying more doesn't really get you service of years gone by. The only way they could compete was by slashing costs and prices to appear near the same ranking in the search results. You don't really get what you pay for flying short haul in Europe. Even business is mostly "low cost economy plus" rather than true business class in Europe

[dmaa]

If by 'the gutter' you mean cheaper - thanks Ryanair! I don't like the experience of flying either, but there is no denying that it is accessible to anybody today, 20 yrs ago it was still a luxury.

Regarding the destinations, yes, Emirates does not fly from Memmingen to Stanstead. But why would anybody, unless they live in the village next to either.

[expedition32]

I mean if you really have money there are companies that can get you on a private jet. No customs, no luggage check in, no Heathrow/JFK.

[sokoloff]

You still have the customs/immigration step; it’s just often done planeside.

[lotsofpulp]

>Second, Ryanair et al have dragged all the previous decent airlines down with them into the gutter

Ryanair didn't drag anyone into the gutter. Buyers preferring to spend less did that, which could be for a variety of reasons, one of them being increased wealth gaps in society.

[testing22321]

Yes, you are 100% correct. The routes that Ryanair flies are only serviced by the ultra budget airlines. The expensive airlines can’t make it work.

So again, if you don’t want to fly with ultra budget service, don’t.

Train, drive, bus.

[ghaff]

Within Europe, I'm usually not in a big hurry or tight on budget within reason. But I understand that many are and it encourages race to the bottom budget airlines. Personally, I mostly do train within Europe even when it involves an overnight sleeper where they exist.

[hexbin010]

I see you're doing Reddit level discourse. I'm out

[amrocha]

You can just pay more to have the old experience. Economy plus is what you used to get 20 years ago, and business is way more affordable than it used to be.

I’d rather have a cheap flight and spend my money at my destination though.

[eru]

> The times when flying was luxury is over.

No, the times are now. You just have to pay.

[dewey]

You are misreading it. It’s not luxury any more (many people can afford it) but of course you can pay for a luxury experience if you want / can.

[scottyah]

It is something odd about their branding or something, because people's perceptions do not match the reality. Somehow everyone knows Temu is going to be highly likely to sell you very cheap stuff, and it's ok because the expectations are managed. Lots of people still expect Ryanair to not be a cheap airline. I don't get it.

[yunohn]

Your devils advocate position appears to be in direct opposition to multiple court rulings that forced RyanAir to acknowledge and remove dark patterns. And thus, may not be an opinion that others share for pretty obvious reasons?