Ryanair

[F*ck The Poor & Fat]

I find the Ryanair website very easy to use. It clearly explains that if you do not reserve seats you can only check in two days before the flight.
However if you do reserve seats you are able to check in online and print your tickets up to 60 days before flights.
They have a fleet of modern aircraft with an efficient and courteous cabin crew and have the best punctuality record of any airline in Europe.
I fly over for Orient matches, arriving Monday for the Crewe game and will be returning on Sunday after the Colchester match.
The return fare, including seat reservations is £36. The cheapest alternative airline is £148.
If that's what dOh Nut calls a cynical p*ss take then i'm happy to be the victim.

The website fine? Really. I went on and paid for out and return, entered card etc only to find the return had not registered, despite ticking the payment box. The system don’t seem to like doing out and back in one cycle. No problem, So went through again and did the return again. All the way to the end, paid, got timed out.

No problem, waited 15 minutes as told and started again. Got right through to the end, card details, payment checking etc and timed out again despite being pretty quick second time. Now I’m wondering if the system is taking my money before timing out. Have I paid 2 times?

Another wait, another keying in card details, another payment processing check, another time out. Card details now entered three times. So wait an hour, same cycle, fast input, timed out. Getting the picture.

So now I’ve entered my card 4 times, been through the checking payment bit 4 times and the system still tells me I need to check in. And what has been taken from my card? Expensive seats? Claims?

Each cycle results in an itinerary email, fortunately I went through theses worked out no money appears to have been taken. But I’ll be checking my credit card statement for sure.

Fifth time I used their chat process, typed in details requested, they then booked the seats and passed me to the payment screen again, which worked. Wow, two hours entered card details 5 times and I’ve got my seats. Wonderful system.

Had it have worked it would have been simple, not complex, other than getting timed out, without the option to continue with more time if needed. Smart programming. No, crap programming they need to look at other time-based ordering systems.

The first time out was probably due to entering API stuff and ploughing through all the offers for cars, insurance and hotels. Having timed out once, the system just repeated it again and again and again. I ain’t slow on a keyboard. A glitch.

So repeated goes and two plus hours. The help line couldn’t give me the seats I wanted, so gave us different ones, no problem. By now I’d take anything at any price just to check in. But when we later checked the ones we wanted were still available. Seems he couldn’t get them either. A little allocation system glitch methinks. When is an available sear not available. On Ryanair. I suspect that having tried to book them 2 hours earlier their system had them pending allocation so they looked available but were flagged as in the process of being allocated. Which couldn’t be completed due to the time out glitch.

There is also a bug when you auto fill the billing name and address. The town disappears when you check the tick box accepting terms, so has to be re-entered. Post code is fine though. Poor programming. But a minor irritation.

It is also not clear about booking in return flights. Some airlines have the time limit for checking in outbound, often 2 days like Ryanair, however once ready your are then allowed to do both at the same time. You can only do this with Ryanair if you reserve your seat, 60 days. That is certainly not clear. If like me the seats allocation didn’t matter, then you cannot do the return flight, in my case until away, inconvenient. Hence why we paid, see the cycle above.

Basically if you pay to reserves seats both ways, sweet, if you don’t then expect to go through the check in process twice. A subtle difference which is not clear. Not made any clearer by the preflight email which tells you it’s free to check in your flights up to two hours before or pay £55 at the airport. Only clear once you know. Not clear if you don’t.

Interestingly not being bothered about seat allocation on a short flight didn’t bother reserving at first. So despite being far from full plane their allocation system ensured me and my partner were about as far away from each other as possible. That’ll learn me. Never experienced that before.

As for price. with booking £170 return per ticket to Lanzarote. If I was paying £50 each I’d be less critical as well. That price is nothing special.

I could have flown to Lanzarote in the time it has taken me to read this post.

Imagine how tedious it was checking in.

[F*ck The Poor & Fat]

Puzzling when you consider his extensive IT background.

Which of course also allows me to spot glitches in software.

[Dunners]

Good job you’re on hand to point this out. All of the many times I’ve booked via the Ryanair website, I’d never noticed these glitches.

[F*ck The Poor & Fat]

Good job you’re on hand to point this out. All of the many times I’ve booked via the Ryanair website, I’d never noticed these glitches.

Its a gift Dunners. years of working on IT systems. Like so many things, when they work as they should these sorts of things don't get noticed. But when they go wrong, as it did for me, they become more obvious. and irritating. and time wasting. I was just lucky I guess. Had the system not failed I would have paid, got my passes and not given it another thought.

But if you research issues as I then did, I am far from alone when experiencing problems. 99.9% of the time its probably fine. The other 0.1% is a lot of people.

[Frogger]

I would rather fly with Ryanair than most other operators. Stansted is easy to get to, least delays, cheap as chips (especially if you don't have a bag) and if you really want to sit next to someone claim they need assistance which I do with my dad who can't get down stairs too easily. When I travel alone on less full flights I often get moved to the seats with more legroom in the middle.

Made a number of day and overnight trips to Dublin in recent years with them. OK, it is nicer to travel out of City Airport, but it costs a bit more. As for Heathrow and Gatwick, I avoid like the plague. Spend more time going through security and the shopping centre than on the flight. Used to fly from City to Frankfurt or Amsterdam rather than deal with Heathrow and Gatwick. And a 90 minute each way taxi journey to each.

100% agree with this post. I use Ryanair at lot to travel for work from Stansted to Dublin. We all know what Ryanair are like (crap but cheapish) and to expect anything else is a little naive. You do pay a few pound more if you want(speedy boarding, priority seats etc) but still way cheaper than BA. The only thing I find annoying is on landing they often play some fanfair which is annoys the hell out of me (no idea why) but find it cringing.

[F*ck The Poor & Fat]

I would rather fly with Ryanair than most other operators. Stansted is easy to get to, least delays, cheap as chips (especially if you don't have a bag) and if you really want to sit next to someone claim they need assistance which I do with my dad who can't get down stairs too easily. When I travel alone on less full flights I often get moved to the seats with more legroom in the middle.

Made a number of day and overnight trips to Dublin in recent years with them. OK, it is nicer to travel out of City Airport, but it costs a bit more. As for Heathrow and Gatwick, I avoid like the plague. Spend more time going through security and the shopping centre than on the flight. Used to fly from City to Frankfurt or Amsterdam rather than deal with Heathrow and Gatwick. And a 90 minute each way taxi journey to each.

100% agree with this post. I use Ryanair at lot to travel for work from Stansted to Dublin. We all know what Ryanair are like (crap but cheapish) and to expect anything else is a little naive. You do pay a few pound more if you want(speedy boarding, priority seats etc) but still way cheaper than BA. The only thing I find annoying is on landing they often play some fanfair which is annoys the hell out of me (no idea why) but find it cringing.

1st time for me. Don't think the flight is cheap as chips at £170 per ticket to Lanzarote, but the selected airline with the package. I'm flying from Luton, not been there for years but again the package deal. Personally I don't get excited by this or that airline especially on short flights. Don't expect much on short haul. 4 hours, I'll sleep most of the way. Different on long haul.

Heathrow and Gatwick. My preference, always. Takes all sorts I guess.

[F*ck The Poor & Fat]

Would like to say to those who had a dig at me regarding my comments over the quality of the Ryanair website.

Ryanair have apologised for the system failures that caused thousands of people problems checking in and even finding their flight details, resulting in massive queues at some airports and worries by many who feared they would pick up the £55 charge for not booking in. It has been described by many as shambolic.

So it seems my assessment of the quality and robustness of their site being questionable was absolutely spot on. Just saying.

My life in IT did teach me something it seems.