Checking in with Ryanair at Stansted - Beware the Uninitiated!
Steve Potter from Suffolk finds that checking in with Ryanair is not altogether a calm experience.
On a number of occasions whilst at Stansted Airport my wife and I had remarked that there were always last minute calls for passengers travelling with Ryanair to proceed quickly to the gate as the plane was due to leave. Accepting that they are one of the biggest carriers at the airport might have been a simple and logical answer.
Now I am not so sure.
Having now been through the ‘experience’ of flying with them I think I may have identified a few reasons why unprepared passengers may run the risk of missing their flights.
We booked up for a week in Vienna via the Internet. The travel company were efficient and even had the courtesy to call us and say that the flight was actually to the Slovakian capital of Bratislava but it was only about an hour between the two cities and there were various ways of completing the transit. What they did not say was that they book the flight only, and by that I mean we were never asked if we were taking any bags, and thus the assumption was that we were not.
So having established that each bag would cost £10 if booked via the Ryanair website I then used the supplied flight reference to try and book in our bags. But that was not possible, because the credit card used to book the flights was the travel company’s not mine, and I needed to enter the number to bring up the details.
So what now? I contacted Ryanair who said that this could all be sorted out at the airport on the day of departure. Excellent. Sorted.
Well not quite.
You see if you book your bags in at the airport and not via the official website it costs you a basic £16 per bag, plus £4 per bag for the airport fee. So now we have incurred a bill of £40 and we haven’t even got through to security. There’s more. It will cost the same again when we come home.
But that is not all, because if you are not careful you may well have to dip into your pockets again before getting into the duty free zone, that is on the assumption that by the time you get there you will have any English pounds left to spend.
The check-in bag can be up to 15kg. For every kilo over that they charge you £12. However if you have the strength to lift it into the overhead locker you can take a whopping 10kg in your hand luggage. The suspicion here is that this increase in cabin allowance is intended to reduce the items in the hold and thus allow Ryanair to justify their claim of being able to turn flights around in 35 minutes, the quickest of any airline.
On the plus side (sort of) I did find a link on the Ryanair website to the shuttle bus which takes you from Bratislava airport to Vienna city centre for €8 each. So that was a further €32 (about £25) for our transits.
It is 4:30am and Stansted is heaving. We are in the queue and after 20 minutes we get to the front. We are then told that we need to purchase a ticket for our bags and are sent off to the ticket booth, which by now has already got at least ten people in the queue. Fifteen minutes later we return, with tickets, directly to the front of the queue as directed only to find that check-in girl had been replaced by one who knows nothing about us. Fortunately the man on the adjacent check-in offers to help and finally we get our boarding cards.
It was a good job we used the bathroom scales to verify the weight because one was 14.1kg and the other 14.8kg. Others were not so lucky and this explains the number of open suitcases littered all over the concourse with owners rummaging around for anything that may be heavy enough to be transferred to hand luggage and thus avoid extra costs.
So finally we are checked in and we get through security and head for the Ryanair gates. Unless you have been there before then you will not know takes a good ten minutes to walk to the gates. So after the day’s activity so far it is time for a coffee.
I think not.
Having joined the back of long snaking queue for a coffee (one person serving, about twenty people queuing) the flight was called. Off we go again and get to the gate where the queue for the flight has already formed. We only just made it.
According to the in-flight magazine fifty eight million people travelled with Ryanair in 2007 so the system must work, but for the uninitiated it is full of little obstacles that can cause delays, and may explain some of the reasons why the tannoy is forever seeking those elusive final passengers.
Frequent flyers with the budget airlines may well be conditioned to the ‘experience’ but the first time traveller should take time out for a few pre-flight checks in order to save any undue aggravation on the day.
Now I am not so sure.
Having now been through the ‘experience’ of flying with them I think I may have identified a few reasons why unprepared passengers may run the risk of missing their flights.
We booked up for a week in Vienna via the Internet. The travel company were efficient and even had the courtesy to call us and say that the flight was actually to the Slovakian capital of Bratislava but it was only about an hour between the two cities and there were various ways of completing the transit. What they did not say was that they book the flight only, and by that I mean we were never asked if we were taking any bags, and thus the assumption was that we were not.
So having established that each bag would cost £10 if booked via the Ryanair website I then used the supplied flight reference to try and book in our bags. But that was not possible, because the credit card used to book the flights was the travel company’s not mine, and I needed to enter the number to bring up the details.
So what now? I contacted Ryanair who said that this could all be sorted out at the airport on the day of departure. Excellent. Sorted.
Well not quite.
You see if you book your bags in at the airport and not via the official website it costs you a basic £16 per bag, plus £4 per bag for the airport fee. So now we have incurred a bill of £40 and we haven’t even got through to security. There’s more. It will cost the same again when we come home.
But that is not all, because if you are not careful you may well have to dip into your pockets again before getting into the duty free zone, that is on the assumption that by the time you get there you will have any English pounds left to spend.
The check-in bag can be up to 15kg. For every kilo over that they charge you £12. However if you have the strength to lift it into the overhead locker you can take a whopping 10kg in your hand luggage. The suspicion here is that this increase in cabin allowance is intended to reduce the items in the hold and thus allow Ryanair to justify their claim of being able to turn flights around in 35 minutes, the quickest of any airline.
On the plus side (sort of) I did find a link on the Ryanair website to the shuttle bus which takes you from Bratislava airport to Vienna city centre for €8 each. So that was a further €32 (about £25) for our transits.
It is 4:30am and Stansted is heaving. We are in the queue and after 20 minutes we get to the front. We are then told that we need to purchase a ticket for our bags and are sent off to the ticket booth, which by now has already got at least ten people in the queue. Fifteen minutes later we return, with tickets, directly to the front of the queue as directed only to find that check-in girl had been replaced by one who knows nothing about us. Fortunately the man on the adjacent check-in offers to help and finally we get our boarding cards.
It was a good job we used the bathroom scales to verify the weight because one was 14.1kg and the other 14.8kg. Others were not so lucky and this explains the number of open suitcases littered all over the concourse with owners rummaging around for anything that may be heavy enough to be transferred to hand luggage and thus avoid extra costs.
So finally we are checked in and we get through security and head for the Ryanair gates. Unless you have been there before then you will not know takes a good ten minutes to walk to the gates. So after the day’s activity so far it is time for a coffee.
I think not.
Having joined the back of long snaking queue for a coffee (one person serving, about twenty people queuing) the flight was called. Off we go again and get to the gate where the queue for the flight has already formed. We only just made it.
According to the in-flight magazine fifty eight million people travelled with Ryanair in 2007 so the system must work, but for the uninitiated it is full of little obstacles that can cause delays, and may explain some of the reasons why the tannoy is forever seeking those elusive final passengers.
Frequent flyers with the budget airlines may well be conditioned to the ‘experience’ but the first time traveller should take time out for a few pre-flight checks in order to save any undue aggravation on the day.
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