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Over the years I have joined in with criticism of Ryanair, especially recently with the well-publicised forced disembarkation of several blind passengers. However, having never actually flown on the airline, I felt it time to do so - to perhaos give my opinions some vague credence.
EDI-DUB is a straightforward route - no need to deal with airports that are located 50km+ from their 'named' city!
Online check-in worked well.. therefore was able to avoid the check-in scrum at EDI, and head straight for security and the departure lounge.
Allocated Gate 1C - the smallest most cramped broom-cupboard in the airport, with around 30 seats for the combined pax of Ryanair and Aer Lingus (simultaneous) departures.
And as usual with LCCs, 80% of the pax tightly congregate at the door to the ramp, for the bizarre perceived benefit of getting on the plane ASAP. I STILL don't understand this...
Boarded (and departed) over 30 minutes late.
Cabin crew all eastern european, but from what I could see, appeared to be following normal safety protocols/demos/check.
Service began about 10 seconds after take-off (a small exaggeration) - choices included coffee (1.90) beer (4) pizza (4). Service was insanely rapid, not surprising given the short flight-time of 40 minutes!
Seats - rather hard and very uncomfortable (even for just 40 minutes!)
Carpet - old, tatty, stained and smelly.
Safety card - very tatty, torn, and almost illegible in places
In-flight mag - average. Few readable bits.
Landing rather bumpy, but relatively quick drive to a gate.
INSANELY pushy-shovy scrum to disembark and get up the ramp. I saw people actually elbow others out the way, and tug on jackets etc.
ARGH!!!
We had hand-baggage only, so bypassed the baggage carousel and wandered through passport control. Well I say passport control. There was a man in a booth, who was reading his newspaper.. and grimaced at me when I tried to show him my passport... made no attempt to look at it, but went back to his paper. Ho hum.
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Return flight much the same experience. The departure gates at DUB are even worse.. being a portacabin about 20 minutes walk from the terminal... and with a queueing system that defied logic as well as the crowd/scrum behaviour.
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So, I guess for 20 return inc taxes, each, we got to DUB for a weekend and back without significant event or challenge. The gate scrums are not unique to this airline, but were the worst I have yet seen. And the aircraft interior was very much in need of a re-fit.
