Day 99 - Ryanair

One of the great things about the UK is Ryanair. I know I've mentioned it a few times already, but I think it deserves its own post. Sure, some people hate Ryanair with a passion. But it's one of those things that you either love or hate, and I love it. I'd wear an "I love Ryanair" t-shirt if I could find one.

There's nothing quite like it in America, so I'll explain the typical Ryanair experience. You go to their web site and see a bunch of "Free" or insanely low priced flights (like £0.01) to exotic destinations all over Europe. All you have to pay for is the taxes & fees, which they promise do not exceed a certain amount (usually it's £10-15, depending on the aiports). The first time you see it you're sure it's some kind of scam. The web site looks very amateurish as if it was something you got a link to in a spam email.

It sounds too good to be true. It is too good to be true. But it's true. There are a few catches though, which I find amusing. First, there's a 10kg weight limit for the bag you can check on (and you can only check one), otherwise there's a fee which is probably more than the flight itself. Yeah, 10 kg. Haha! My little backpack full of clothes and a Europe travel book weighs in at about 7kg. It's enough for me, but if anyone wants to bring more than that they're out of luck. And you're only allowed on (small) carry-on bag. My camera bag is just barely under the size limit. Perfect.

Then after you're in the air, they don't bring you anything but a menu with food and drinks for sale. Good for them!! I think that's the way it should be done. It's better than paying an extra $5 or $10 for your ticket just for that little plastic cup of soda and tiny bag of pretzels. They also sell toys and other things. Right on! Maybe they should also try to sell used cars or have slot machines onboard. I don't care.. anything that makes them a profit besides ticket prices sounds good to me.

Then when you land, your next adventure begins. They usually fly to tiny rinky-dink airports in towns that you never thought would've had an airport at all. They're usually 1-2 hours away from the city they're advertised as. For example, the "Oslo" Torp airport, 2 hours away. The "Frankfurt" Hahn airport, nowhere near Frankfurt. The two "Barcelona" airports they fly to are about 200 miles apart, with the real Barcelona right in the middle. And the "Vienna" airport is in Slovakia, not even the same country as Vienna. Hillarious! I love it, because I get to see more of the country on the long ride from the airport to the city I'm going to.

To put this in perspective, imaging getting a flight to San Jose and landing at the Los Banos airport, or a flight to Oklahoma City and landing at the Altus airport. It's no joke. In "Oslo Torp Airport", Torp is not the name of the airport as in "Chicago O'Hare". Torp is the town where the airport is located. Oslo isn't actually in the name. It's like saying "Oklahoma City Altus Airport".

Another funny thing is that they're either late or very early. So far I've bought 7 flights with them and actually flew on 5 of those. The first one was over an hour late. Another was right on time. And the other three were 20+ minutes early! I think they know they don't have a very good track record of being on time, so they advertise an arrival time that's a lot later than what it would be if they left on time -- so when they do leave on time they arrive very early. One of my flights was 40 minutes early!

I said this recent trip would be my last big one, but I'm already looking into flights to other places. I was thinking of a crazy 1-day London to Sweden (or Finland) to Latvia and back to London trip. It can be done. Not sure if I will do it though.

posted by Matt @ 11:59 PM