Ryanair airline review: advantages and disadvantages
Ryanair, whose original trade name is Ryanair Ltd., is a low cost airline of Irish origin whose headquarters are located in Swords, Dublin (Ireland). Since it was founded in 1985, Ryanair has experienced unprecedented expansion throughout Europe, revolutionizing air traffic thanks to its business model based on the sale of cheap airline tickets.
Advantages
There are six great advantages of flying with this low cost flight company:
- Although this is a common advantage in all low cost airlines, it is true that Ryanair tends to stand out in terms of extraordinarily low prices.
- Despite the fact that today there is no longer the need to buy the plane ticket in advance, we can see a decrease in flight prices if we buy our ticket with at least three or four months in advance.
- It operates routes from Spain to the main cities of Europe and also to Morocco. Within Europe, we can find destinations such as Germany, France, Italy, Malta, Slovakia, Lithuania, Poland, Norway, Spain, Sweden, etc. You can check the article Ryanair destinations from Spain for more detailed information about it.
- Ryanair does not operate connecting routes, so passenger comfort increases by not having to make stopovers.
- The company offers the service Ryanair Family Extra, which facilitates traveling as a family: if this service is contracted in its entirety, the family will acquire a 50% discount on checked luggage, assigned seats and boarding priority, in addition to including travel insurance for minors 16 years old.
- Ryanair flights usually respect arrival and departure times, so it is considered a very punctual airline, with some exceptions.
In addition, if during the booking of your flight you make a spelling mistake in your personal data or have chosen the wrong date or destination of your flight, Ryanair considers these as minor bugs And it has a special period of 24 hours from when you make the purchase in which you can correct all these errors.
Disadvantages
These are the disadvantages that users who have ever traveled with the Irish airline often refer to:
- Other fees are added to the low initial price of the flight as you progress through the reservation process: administrative charges and payment by credit card, surcharges for baggage check-in, etc. During the online purchase process, ads appear that offer extra services (car hire, priority boarding ...) to which you must be very attentive or otherwise you may hire them unintentionally because the option to reject these services usually appears in print small or confusing.
- We have to print the boarding pass from home, so if the day of departure arrives and we show up at the airport without it, we will be charged an extra fee or we will not be able to fly.
- Ryanair aircraft have little space between seats, which are often uncomfortable for many travelers.
- The most common is that the price of the flight increases as the departure date approaches. Therefore, it is not recommended to go to Ryanair in case of having to make an urgent flight.
- Ryanair usually operates in secondary airports and only at some major airports. Therefore, the passenger has to choose to travel to the airport by another means of transport, such as taxi, car or train, which can make the trip more expensive. In this way, it is possible that the cheap price we have paid for our plane ticket ends up being very high because of this journey.
- It is highly recommended to carry the National Identity Document (DNI) with us to board: otherwise, we may suffer a denied boarding. In any case, for some time, the company has sent an email to passengers a few days before the flight departure to remind them of this rule.
- The company allows one piece of hand luggage, which, in addition, must have specific measurements (maximum 10 kg and dimensions of 55 cm x 40 cm x 20 cm). Since December 2013, Ryanair has allowed a second carry-on bag smaller than the first (not larger than 35 x 20 x 20).
It should be noted that, although there is now the seat assignment, there is no possibility to choose; For this purpose, an extra fee must be paid. In any case, Ryanair reserves the right to reassign seats at any time for security or operational reasons, even if we have already passed the boarding gate.
Checked baggage
The airline has specific regulations regarding checked baggage. The passenger has the right to check in a suitcase during the purchase of his ticket, for which he must pay the corresponding fee depending on whether he hires 15 or 20 kg of weight.
You can add a second to this first suitcase once you have purchased the ticket, from the option Manage my reservation on the airline's website. For more details about checked baggage at Ryanair, we invite you to consult our article dedicated to it Features of checked baggage on Ryanair.
Another disadvantage is that extra rate For each extra kilo of checked luggage it is very high: for each extra kilo, € 10 extra, that is, if we spend for example 2 kg we would have to pay € 20, which is almost the same as checking another 15 kg suitcase.