Ryanair, our problems with them and why I don’t recommend them as an airline.

My boyfriend and I had disappointing experience with Ryanair a few days ago, I think is wort to share the story with you. 

As everyone, in Europe, know Ryanair is a called a cheap airlines. But is it true, are they really cheap? 

Yes, you may be lucky and get a ticket in the attractive price, but usually ticket isn’t everything. 

Are you traveling with someone else and you want to sit next to each other? You have to pay for it! It’s not that easy either. They probably will show you in the graph that there are people already placed next to you two and,to sit together, you have to replace both of you and pay for two chairs, because it would be too easy and too cheap if they would allow you to move just one person.

Another thing. 

Do you want hand luggage only, because you are in rush after landing in your destination, and you would prefer to have the bag with you on the board? Of course you can do it, if you will pay for it. You have to buy “priority boarding”, other way they will take your bag under the plane, free from charge- of course. 

If you would think about it and add all those little things you have to pay for,  you will see that Ryanair isn’t as cheap as it used to be. What will you get back? Flights’ attendant smile. 

I had the privilege to fly with them 4 times during two weeks (wanted to save some money) on the beginning of this month and every single flight was delayed. Half an hour, hour, over three hours. They don’t really care that you arranged someone to pic you up, you are in the rush or that you may fly further and this flight is just a start of your journey and any delay will put you in a situation when you may lose next flight or two. 

That is what happened to us. We just started our big trip. First flight. Ryanair London Stansted-Sofia in Bulgaria. In the first place they let us on the plane without pilot, who would take us to our destination airport, then they locked us on the plane and refused to sell any drinks or food before the start, then they finally sent us a pilot (hour an half later), on the end of it we lost our ‘airspace’ and we had to wait almost an hour on the runaway for the permission to start. Summarising: over three hours delay and not one word of apologie. They just let us get off the plane without saying anything about compensation for the problems.

Talking about problems, the consequences of this delay was terrible for us. We missed next fligh (we had almost three hours gap between landing and departure which has been taken by the delay) to Dubai and we had to re-arrange everything. Our flight should be nice and easy but wasn’t anymore. From Sofia to Istanbul, then to Bucharest (where we stayed overnight) to take the earliest flight to Dubai where we should fly to Philippines. This situation effected also our holiday plans. We couldn’t go to our first destination because we missed another flight and our hotel reservation so we had to book something different, in the place we didn’t want to stay. 

In total we lose 3 flights and one hotel reservation. The cheap trip becomes to be way more expensive than we planned. Flights London-Sofia-Dubai-Manila cost us only £366 in first place but because of the delay we had to book a new ticket do Philippines, with Cebu Pacific, for a next day what cost us over £700!!

 Not so cheap Ryanair hmm?

Did any of you had similar situation? What have you done with it? Is there any opportunity for us to get our money back? Help, please.