Ryanair is an Irish private sector airline that services 460 destinations in 25 countries at extremely competitive prices. This no frills carrier is symbolized by the Irish harp(national musical instrument) which can also be seen as the flying figurine.
Michael O’Leary the CEO has been in the news very often with regard to their bid to take over Aer Lingus the official Irish airline. Aer Lingus rejected the bid as being controversial in terms of staff welfare.
Most people who are familiar with Ryanair perceive it only as a low cost airline although in reality Ryanair is a whole low cost travel solution which includes not only flights but an entire portfolio of travel related services like:
Car Hire, Hotel/ Bed and Breakfast Deals, Ryanair Credit Cards, Airport Coaches/ Trains, Airport Parking Services, Bingo gaming in flight, Travel Insuarance, Buy as you fly, Activity Breaks, Travel guides and Ryanair Gift Vouchers*
Providing all the above services is essential to them in order to generate revenue and maintain profitability despite the extremely low flight tickets. As a result Ryanair is an* extremely successful airline and has become Europe’s largest low cost airline whilst maintaining remarkable profit margins in the whole airline industry.
Being a very profitable airline, most of their aircrafts are new all of them have an open seating plan( no seat numbers are allotted) so the earlier you board the plane, more choice of seats you have. However you can pay to get priority boarding and thus you get in the plane before others and have a better choice of seats.
We’ve all heard of times when low cost airlines offer free flights and passengers need to pay just tax, Ryanair has surpassed that and done promotions where people had to pay just two cents for flight INCLUDING taxes i.e. Ryanair paid the taxes but people didn’t - obviously that was a limited period offer which was booked out in minutes.
Ryanair is one of the first few airlines that will be offering mobile phone services in their flights, calls will be charged at normal international roaming rates within the European union.
Baggage and Checkin rules
Having said that they are a low cost airline, it is important to note that they do not miss any opportunity to extract more money from passengers. Only one item of hand baggage can be carried on board free, any checked in luggage has to be paid for – per bag. They are also very strict on baggage weight limits any additional weight needs to be paid for on top of the fee per checked in bag. If you arrive even a minute later than check in is scheduled to close they slap late check in fees which is usually more than the total cost of flight.
They are a fairly punctual online with a good track record of arrival and departure timings.
To keep costs low- everything happens through their own website you can not purchase Ryanair flights on any other website or any travel agents, all customer service and queries are dealt with through the website only.
I am not too sure how true it is but I have heard that cost cutting is prevalent to such an extent in the organization that Ryanair staff are not allowed to charge their mobile phones at work in order to keep electricity bills low.
Ryanair’s USP is price only, often you would find this slogan on their website:
*“Find a lower fare than ryanair and we will refund you double the difference"
All of their flights are short haul and obviously include no food and beverages very often Ryanair flights are cheaper than traveling by train.
Ryanair are often criticized for some of their policies which are nothing but a way to charge the customers more, often they fly to the city’s minor airports(much far from city) for tax reasons and then passengers may have to spend a lot of money on transfers from those airports.
The service provided is not great but for this price one can’t complain. Ryanair staff is well known for its reluctance to help, instances of rude behavior with customers are not rare or isolated.
Overall, it’s a punctual, cheap and cheerful airline do not expect first class service but if all you care about is getting from A to B, go for it.
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