Improvements at Ryanair

So had to book a few tickets with Ryanair a few days ago and while the website has improved, it still has a long way to go:

- A major disimprovement is that you can't check-in more then 7 days prior to departure, unless you opt to buy a seat. This is a real pain as previously you could check-in 30 days in advance and have your ticket with you while abroad and not go struggle to find a printer.

I really hope they reverse this decision, I suppose if they introduce e-tickets, it won't be such a major issue.

- Managing bookings (checking in, printing boarding passes) is still a pain. Even if you create an account and buy the tickets when logged in, it doesn't display your bookings. You still have to retrieve your bookings the old way, using the booking reference, email address, etc.

Really if you buy a ticket while logged in, it should display all upcoming tickets automatically when you log in and allow you to view, check-in, print your ticket without so many steps.

- Also even if you have an account created, you still have to enter all your passport details, etc. when checking in, for every flight!

It should at least allow you to save your own passport details and ideally also allow you to save (and thus reuse) your family/friends details (basically an address book for passport details with create, edit and delete).

- It still forces you to select (No Insurance Cover) when buying a ticket.

- I don't like that you have to scroll down to the end of each page to continue when buying a ticket. The Easyjet site, has the continue button right at the top of the page on the right hand side, just above the ticket cart window. Much easier to use.

- The Easyjet site also allows you to buy multiple tickets for different flights at the same time, much nicer and easier then the Ryanair site.

- The Easyjet site allows you to do things like enter "London (All Airports)" while the Ryanair site forces you to enter a specific airport, which is a pain if you are just looking for the cheapest flight and not too bothered about which airport you are going to.

- The Easyjet site has a much better results view, giving you alternative options across a 3 day, 3 week or a year view. Far, far easier to find alternative flights.

- The Ryanair site flight finder isn't very good, for instance entering Crete won't find anything (you have to first enter Greece and then select Chania), where the Easyjet site has no problem handling this (enter Crete and it lists the two airports there).

- Every time you buy a ticket with Ryanair, you have to specifically opt-out of getting further communications from them. Forget to check this button just once and you will start getting spam from them, but then the next time you buy a ticket, if you do check the button, you continue to get spam from them. Instead you have to specifically unsubscribe from the emails. All very sneaky and underhand.

So while the new site is an improvement, they still have a long way to go to make it easy and quick to use.

BTW www.google.com/flights now supports Ryanair and is awesome at finding flights that might suit you better. For instance I never spotted the flight I actually booked on the Ryanair site, Google specifically recommended it to me.