Firenze 2006-2007

Travel Guide Part IV: Ryan Air

Ryan Air is pretty much the South West airlines of Europe, although there are some major pluses and minuses. As far as tickets go, they are dirt cheap (most of the time), and the flight, well its pretty much normal. There are just some oddities with their whole system which makes traveling on Ryan Air something that you have to plan for.
Quite often, they will give away "free" seats on their airline, but you have to read the fine print. The ticket actually does cost one Euro cent or one British pound cent because they can’t technically be given away, but that’s not the problem. The taxes are the problem. There are usually taxes on the ticket (airport tax, EU tax, etc.) that run about fifteen British pounds or twenty to twenty-five Euro. This is always a bit of a surprise the first time you fly Ryan Air because the tax is quite often more than the ticket itself.
Another problem with Ryan Air is some of the weird rules they make. For instance- you can carry as much as fifteen kilos total, seven onboard and then another eight checked. They charge like two British pounds per kilo above, and that tallies up fast. Another rule is that if you don’t check in at least one hour prior to take-off, they can re-sell your ticket and not give you a refund, so you have to be sure to be early. This hasn’t happened to me, but they say it does happen often and that you need to prepare accordingly.
The last, and most problematic part of flying Ryan Air is the airports they use. In Europe in general, it is a hike to get out to most airports, but Ryan Air is kinda outrageous. For example, they advertise Florence as a destination, when in fact, the planes bound for Florence land in Pisa which is an hour train ride from Florence. This is the case with most of their airports- they don’t use major airports, and because the airports are in the middle of nowhere for the most part, they can charge like ten Euro to get into the city. Not only do you have to pay for the ticket into the city or find another way into the city, you have to plan on taking another hour or more in your journey than you originally thought. While this process isn’t impossible to get through, it is fairly tough, especially if you don’t speak the native language so you can figure out what you are doing, where you are, and where you are going.
Having said all this, I still think Ryan Air is a great way to travel. You can get to London, Dublin, Barcelona, Norway and Sweden by Ryan Air, where as, on trains, that is nearly impossible to do in a normal weekend. It just takes a bit more planning than the trains do.

posted by Daniel Williams @ 23:52