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RyanAir question
I'm just in the process of getting my boarding pass and they're asking for £20 for checked luggage up to 15kg and thats just for each way, is this an extra? As I thought the luggage would be all in with the price. I wasn't expecting having to pay any more.
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Yes, it's extra!
When you first book online though, it does ask if you have a bag to check, and when you click yes it tells you how much it is. It's ridiculously expensive I know, that's why I'm only taking hand luggage (that's another thread though!)
Oh bugger must have missed that.
Thanks anyway.
However they are only airline that gives you the option of buying a suitcase while purchasing your ticket:D - one of the 25 or so pages you have to get through to actually purchase your flight. And it gets worse and worse.
Plus, with Ryanair, you'll pay for every extra you use - just pray the plane doesn't have to make an emergency landing, as they'll want to charge for the life jackets and oxygen.
The Ryanair website is a minefield. And when you think you've made it, you now have to repeat it all over again when printing boarding passes. Which of course you do the night before your early morning flight, and your HP printer refuses to print (saying the cartridge is empty, and only giving an option to 'shop online' for a new one! Yet can still manage to print endless 'alignment' pages! But that's another rant...).
Can't really blame Ryanair for Glasgow airport being built 40 miles outside of Glasgow, Paris airport being build outside of Paris etc. Plus, nobody would ever expect an airport to be built in a city centre - that's the thing about them, they are massive and therefore have to be built out of town.
The distance from any one city centre makes little difference anyway. Nobody walks to an airport - you get a lift, you take your own car, you get a bus, you get a taxi or you get a train. From that point of view, the distant to a particular city centre is irrelevent. Get a lift to the airport from wherever you are travelling from, saves you having to travel into the city centre. Brilliant!
Ryanair fly from Manchester Airport (about three quid from Manchester Picadilly city centre railway station) to Tenerife Sud Airport (about four Euros on the bus from Playa de las Americas and Los Cristianos). Nothing like fifty quid each way...
Ryanair has had a habit of using airports which are quite a way from the headline destination, despite there being a much nearer (and more expensive, for them) airport.
Examples are Reus and Girona for Barcelona, each an hour or two away (while El Prat is just outside the city). Bergamo for Milan (an hour away, while the city already has two established airports). Treviso for Venice instead of Marco Polo (although Ryanair uses both). Etc.
However this is not always bad; sometimes you aren't actually going to that advertised destination; the provincial airport might be nearer, more convenient, smaller, quicker and more informal. (Eg. compare Bergerac I think it was, which looked like an airfield, with the monstrosity that is Heathrow.)
You can blame them for 'London Stansted'!
That's my point. The smaller provincial airport in the UK is likely to be nearer where people live than the one nearer to the city centre - so easier to get to. And the one in the foreign country may actually be nearer the traveller's required final destination - i.e. if a beach holiday, may well be much nearer than one based within ten miles or so of the capital city centre.
To be fair-ish to Ryanair, none of the "London" airports are all that close to London really, except for City airport which is only small unfortunately.
The only "London" airport other than City that is actually anywhere near London is Heathrow and I'm guessing the slots there are too expensive for Ryanair.
I don't mind really as I live in east London and for me Stansted is actually quicker and easier for me to get to compared to Heathrow, Gatwick, City, or Luton.
If you're leaving it til the night before to print out the boarding pass I have no sympathy, they give you 15 days to do it.
To be fair I have flown to Edinburgh for £2.99 (return inc taxes) and Palma (return inc taxes) for £35 (this was only last month). Both from Bournemouth (10/15 minutes tops from the town centre) and Palma and Edinburgh was also very east to get into the city centres.
Nasty flights though and the cabin crew seem like rejects from 'proper' airlines!
15 days before your outward flight. Depending on how long you're away, you might not be able to print your return boarding pass until close to departure [of outward flight].
And it used to be only within 5 days that you could print these things (making it awkward to be away for longer than five days).
But that fact is that people do leave things until the day before (sometimes so they can do outward and return at the same time), or do you pack your bags a fortnight in advance too?
They have no choice , there is only one airport in Dublin .
To be fair, you can print off your boarding cards for the return flight even if it is a lot more than 15 days in the future, as long as the outward flight is 15 days or less. Last time we flew with Ryanair - which was a fortnight in Majorca last year - we printed the boarding cards for both flights 14 days before we left the country, so a month before the flight home took place.
It would only cause a problem if you were flying out of the country with a different airline, but flying back home with Ryanair, because under those circumstances you would only be able to print off the return boarding cards 15 days before you were due to fly home - and its possible that you will be out of the country for more than fifteen days. Fortunately there are very few countries which don't have access to the internet now - and I'm sure all countries that Ryanair flies to/from has - so whichever country you have flown to, you should still be able to print out the return boarding cards some time in the fifteen days prior to your return.
I think it's been posted below anyway but you can do both now 15 days before, I did it for my aunt last week.
I do mine as soon as it hits 15 days then print them about 3-4 days before.
And 'London Luton' the worst airport in the world. Just landed there last night, still awful.
Lisbon airport is literally in the middle of the city, it was quiite scary the first time I went there.
Sure, everywhere has internet. The problem is getting access to it! There are fewer internet cafes now, so if you can't find one, how to get a printed boarding pass, even if you've got some gadget that has internet access? There are plenty of wifi areas in airports etc (with a hefty fee attached usually), but what about a printer?
This used to give me endless trouble when it was only possible to print these things five days in advance. Enough to spoil a holiday.
What's wrong with LTN?
Isn't Luton EasyJet headquarters?
Glasgow Airport (GLA) is only about 10 miles from Glasgow City. Prestwick Airport (PIK), which Ryanair use, is much further (though has its own train station and you get half price train travel with a boarding pass).
I travel with Ryanair more often than I'd like, only hand luggage no extras, and they're certainly cheap in that situation.