Ryanair - New reserved seating structure(s)

Mr rebel

I doubt it as 99% of the time, Ryanair are still considerably cheaper than Aer Lingus

Bob24

Mr rebel wrote: »

I doubt it as 99% of the time, Ryanair are still considerably cheaper than Aer Lingus

It must depend on the destinations and booking times but for my regular journey it definitely isn't the case. If I was picking purely based on which one is cheaper I would go with Ryanair maybe 65-70% of the time. And if I take into account the willingness to pay a premium of maybe 20% for Aerlingus because of the better service the ratio is reversed and I end-up using them more than Ryanair.

Living Off The Splash

I often fly out with Ryanair and back with Aer Lingus or vice versa. For me it's about the flight schedule, followed by price. I have found both airlines excellent and both airlines crap.
I always purchase my seat and I always board the aircraft early. Why do I board the aircraft early? Because I want to secure the locker over my seat.
I have seen people who sit at the back of the plane put the luggage in the lockers at the front of the plane. I have seen people put their cases in sideways. I have seen Duty Free bottles scattered along the locker so nobody can put their cases in. There are a lot of arse holes out there and they are breeding very fast.

Fred Swanson

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munchkin_utd

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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for my summer spin for the days I wanted, Lufthansa with a double daily flight (and ryanair not even offering a daily connection) was about 200 euro cheaper for a family of 4 than Ryanair, and thats ignoring the fact that Ryanair flies from the arse end of nowhere.

This legend that Ryanair is some charity that has always the cheapest fares is really a myth.

They do discount their off peak low demand fares way more than anyone else and to incredible levels, and if you're unemployed or a pensioner or have heaps of holidays to use up can be brilliant, but for someone following the herd and booking on busy days I have found them to be no better than Aer Lingus or Lufthansa.

Sure one flight last year I ended up flying business class on Lufthansa (including 64kg of luggage, fast track security and lounge use) for the same price as Aer Lingus and cheaper than Ryanair. Unfortunately I only learnt about Lufthansa business class rotating fine wine selection after the flight, but the next time I end up flying business class on Lufthansa thanks to the myth that Ryanair are cheaper 99% of the time, I will report back on how the lovely complementary wine tasted.

VG31

When I looked at the BA flights from Dublin to Ibiza when they were announced, you could fly business return for about €150 which was cheaper than Ryanair!

Living Off The Splash

What other airlines besides Ryanair and Aer Lingus fly DIRECT from Dublin to other European destinations.

I was interested in VG31's post above about BA flying from Dublin to Ibiza.

VG31

Living Off The Splash wrote: »

What other airlines besides Ryanair and Aer Lingus fly DIRECT from Dublin to other European destinations.

I was interested in VG31's post above about BA flying from Dublin to Ibiza.

Have a look at the (accurate) Dublin Airport destination list on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Airport#Airlines_and_destinations

A lot of the flights listed as charter can often be booked as flights only, although they can be fairly pricey. However it means that you can book flights to destinations such as Madeira that you wouldn't be able to fly to direct otherwise.

Aer Lingus and Ryanair practically have a monopoly on flights to Spain and France and have a total monopoly to Italy and Portugal but to places like Scandinavia and Germany there is a good range of airlines.

BA CityFlyer from Dublin to Ibiza is only a weekly service (out on Fridays and back on Sundays) as London-City Airport is partially closed at the weekends. It was very good value in economy class as well.

You can get some great value on some of these new routes. Cobalt Air to Cyprus was very cheap when the flights first went on sale.

Mr rebel

Bob24 wrote: »

It must depend on the destinations and booking times but for my regular journey it definitely isn't the case. If I was picking purely based on which one is cheaper I would go with Ryanair maybe 65-70% of the time. And if I take into account the willingness to pay a premium of maybe 20% for Aerlingus because of the better service the ratio is reversed and I end-up using them more than Ryanair.

Well yeah for my most frequent destination (Berlin) it is always considerably cheaper to fly with Ryanair (and they fly to the better airport too in Schonefeld, and not that awful Tiegel dump that Aer Lingus are tied to).
So indeed I guess it just depends on particular destinations.

joeysoap

Mr rebel wrote: »

Well yeah for my most frequent destination (Berlin) it is always considerably cheaper to fly with Ryanair (and they fly to the better airport too in Schonefeld, and not that awful Tiegel dump that Aer Lingus are tied to).
So indeed I guess it just depends on particular destinations.

Tegel; not just Aer Lingus using it. 21m passengers last year.
Looks old but I don't know if I'd call it a dump.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Tegel_Airport


Schonefeld; 12 m passengers, Ryanair and EasyJet base

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Sch%C3%B6nefeld_Airport

Fred Swanson

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Mr rebel

joeysoap wrote: »

Tegel; not just Aer Lingus using it. 21m passengers last year.
Looks old but I don't know if I'd call it a dump.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Tegel_Airport


Schonefeld; 12 m passengers, Ryanair and EasyJet base

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Sch%C3%B6nefeld_Airport

Tegel is the main airport but it's horribly overcrowded and cramped, and has the longest queues I've experienced. It is closer to the city centre but isn't connected by rail.
Schonefeld is a bit of a maze to navigate but at least it doesn't suffer from overcrowding and is connected by rail to the city.

Fred Swanson wrote: »

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Yes for an amazing city like Berlin, it's sad it doesn't have the airport to reflect that yet like Schiphol does for Amsterdam, Heathrow for London, etc.
It seems like Brandenburg has been put on indefinite hold.

VG31

Mr rebel wrote: »

Tegel is the main airport but it's horribly overcrowded and cramped, and has the longest queues I've experienced. It is closer to the city centre but isn't connected by rail.
Schonefeld is a bit of a maze to navigate but at least it doesn't suffer from overcrowding and is connected by rail to the city.

That's far from my experience of it. When I was there there were people sitting on the floor everywhere it was so busy. It wasn't even a peak time. It was also very stuffy, had very little places to eat and there was only a handful of filthy toilets.

I find it hard to imagine Tegel can be worse.

Fred Swanson

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grogi

VG31 wrote: »

That's far from my experience of it. When I was there there were people sitting on the floor everywhere it was so busy. It wasn't even a peak time. It was also very stuffy, had very little places to eat and has only a handful of filthy toilets.

I find it hard to imagine Tegel can be worse.

Schönefeld is a dump.

Tegel is an old airport in the heart of West Berlin. With no room for expansion it is extremely busy and overcrowded.

Bob24

Mr rebel wrote: »

Well yeah for my most frequent destination (Berlin) it is always considerably cheaper to fly with Ryanair (and they fly to the better airport too in Schonefeld, and not that awful Tiegel dump that Aer Lingus are tied to).
So indeed I guess it just depends on particular destinations.

*very* rare for Ryanair to fly to a better airport than Aer Lingus. Also one thing I forgot another poster mentioned is that on average Ryanair tends to have slots at less convenient times, I guess because they are cheaper (thinking about it that's another reason I sometimes favour Aer Lingus).

As for that specific exemple never been to Tiegel so I can't comment, but if it is significantly worse than Schonefeld it must indeed be a dump. Schonefeld really is something Germans should be ashamed of for their capital city!

miamee

VG31 wrote: »

That's far from my experience of it. When I was there there were people sitting on the floor everywhere it was so busy. It wasn't even a peak time. It was also very stuffy, had very little places to eat and there was only a handful of filthy toilets.

I find it hard to imagine Tegel can be worse.

I actually thought this was describing Tegel, was there in March, an awful hole of a place, very crowded, very few facilities/places to eat and I had the feeling we were in a converted hangar, it's bleak.

km79

Flew from Dublin to tenerife yday as I did this time last year
Absolute shambles from start to finish
Few empty seats here and there but lots and lots of families seperated which lead to swapping before and after take off and again before landing
And then the messing with bags at the original seats they were sitting in
And then there was the 3 seats behind me all occupied by kids .............it was without doubt the worst flight I'd been on and it's a backward step for Ryan air

Also didn't get to check in one 10kg back with the 20kg bag purchased
Again a backward step

joeysoap

km79 wrote: »

Flew from Dublin to tenerife yday as I did this time last year


Also didn't get to check in one 10kg back with the 20kg bag purchased
Again a backward step

Bad form all right, seeing as they are taking bags off passengers at the gate. Maybe it was in the mistaken belief that they didn't have to pay compensation if the bag went missing etc?

munchkin_utd

km79 wrote: »

Flew from Dublin to tenerife yday as I did this time last year
Absolute shambles from start to finish
Few empty seats here and there but lots and lots of families seperated which lead to swapping before and after take off and again before landing
And then the messing with bags at the original seats they were sitting in
And then there was the 3 seats behind me all occupied by kids .............it was without doubt the worst flight I'd been on and it's a backward step for Ryan air

its not a permanent issue though. Its with families who bought pre last October checking in now, and looking for that for free.
If you bought a Ryanair flight since October you'd have been forced to give a few euro at time of booking, and get kids seats free.

Once this batch of pre October 2016 family bookings have flow there'll no longer be an issue

km79

munchkin_utd wrote: »

its not a permanent issue though. Its with families who bought pre last October checking in now, and looking for that for free.
If you bought a Ryanair flight since October you'd have been forced to give a few euro at time of booking, and get kids seats free.

Once this batch of pre October 2016 family bookings have flow there'll no longer be an issue

It's not only those with kids
But yes it will be less of an issue

It's still a backward step and a step away from the new family friendly airline they had tried to move toward !

MOH

Not sure separating parents from kids is always a bad idea.
Last Ryanair flight I was on there were two kids about 5 sitting with three adults in the the row in front of me (two aisle seats and a middle).
For most of the flight they played a fun game of standing on the aisle armrests, leaning across the aisle to scream into each other's faces.

This continued long after the seatbelt sign had come on for turbulence, until eventually cabin crew had to ask them to sit down for their own safety. Can't imagine they'd have been so "brave" if they weren't sitting with their moronic parents, and would probably have actually been safer.

Living Off The Splash

I was on a flight to Amsterdam last Wednesday. There was a crowd of about 7 toerags on board. Late 30's to 40 year old drunk scumbags.

The safety demonstration was stopped 3 times because of them. On landing the cabin staff were constantly asking them to sit down and keep their seat belts on.

Throughout the flight they spent their time queuing to go to the toilets, even when the seat belt sign was switched on, screaming and shouting at each other and passing comments to other passengers who wanted to use the toilets. Females were leered at.

These yobs were seated in different seats about the plane. Shouting across the aisles at each other etc.

It was awful. The random seating issue affected everyone on the plane because of them.

I had hoped that a police van would have been waiting at Amsterdam airport.

MOH

Living Off The Splash wrote: »

I was on a flight to Amsterdam last Wednesday. There was a crowd of about 7 toerags on board. Late 30's to 40 year old drunk scumbags.

The safety demonstration was stopped 3 times because of them. On landing the cabin staff were constantly asking them to sit down and keep their seat belts on.

Throughout the flight they spent their time queuing to go to the toilets, even when the seat belt sign was switched on, screaming and shouting at each other and passing comments to other passengers who wanted to use the toilets. Females were leered at.

These yobs were seated in different seats about the plane. Shouting across the aisles at each other etc.

It was awful. The random seating issue affected everyone on the plane because of them.

I had hoped that a police van would have been waiting at Amsterdam airport.

Most of that isn't in any way related to random seating.
And even before the change in seat assignment, a group of 7 would have been pretty unlikely to be all sitting together anyway if the didn't book seats.

I feel your pain though, I spent 3+ hours on a flight to Riga opposite a similar bunch (though not quite as bad as yours sounded). Bunching them together just makes them louder. One of their mates came down from wherever he was sitting and wanted me and my OH to move across one seat so he could take the empty aisle seat opposite his mates. If they hadn't been such tossers I obviously happily would have, but I didn't want to add to the noise level.

Fred Swanson

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Living Off The Splash

On the scumbag flight we were delayed for about 30 minutes before take off. Then as we began our taxiing a passenger became ill and the plane had to return to it's spot and an ambulance called to take the sick person off the plane. This caused a further delay of 30 minutes.
The staff had to find the sick person's hand luggage. They identified a bag and asked everyone on the plane if they owned it. Nobody did. They asked again. Then just before they were to remove it some idiot at the back of the plane woke up and said it was his. This caused another 30 minute delay.
Maybe the captain felt everyone was delayed enough and pressed on.

Wheety

They're talking about this on Watchdog in a few minutes. Have a manager on from Ryanair. I'm sure he'll just say people can pay for seats together.

A Dub in Glasgo

He lied and stated that there is no change and they have been allocating 'random' seats since 2014 thus totally ignoring the evidence

embraer170

Someone needs to find a proper platform to challenge such lies.

-=al=-

Total nonsense. It's totally changed and the website/app has changed to suit it too.

I've probably been on about 20 Ryanair flights in the last 2 years and used to check in late and got great seats almost all of the time. If I was travelling with someone else on the same booking or not, a seat beside me would almost always be allocated once checked in at the same time. I've boarding passes saved on my phone for most of the flights and after a quick look through them the pattern has definitely changed since April or so.

I've been on a few flights since the change with no change to my check in time and yep, sure enough I've been split up with different seats. The last 2 flights (which were this week) have been seats that were allocated with a middle seat located way back from the other.

On the outbound flight this week I was sitting in an aisle seat next to a girl in the middle with a spare window seat beside her. She looked pretty nervous and kept looking around for her friend or whatever so i swapped seats with them to let her chill out.

The cabin crew seem to be flapping about/ignoring lots of people chopping and changing. On the return flight I also noticed some folks waiting in the stairwell after they got their boarding card scanned but before they go to the stairs on the plane... maybe to scope the situation out and take a chance on seating?

Bit of a different vibe on the plane anyways with everyone sitting on their own looking around for their mates

Maybe I'd pay to to sit together on a longer flight but if it's an our or less I don't really care