Flight Watch

Well I did rip mine Andrew but Bernard left his and they didn't say owt to him. I think a lot of it is talk for talks sake or should I say whinge for whinge sake. Abide by the rules and you will be fine. BTW the food and drinks are really expensive on board compared to Monarch, €5.95 for a small 187ml bottle of wine, €3 for a cuppa, €3 for water, €4.50 for 330ml can of Heinekin. (All bar & food prices etc are priced in euros) If you do buy anything pay in euros otherwise you will lose out again on the inflated rate they use to exchange euros into pounds.

Fair enough.. We haven't yet flown with them so I hope your experiences are what we will experience... But these other experiences...where do they come from then?

Just come back, Ryanair both ways - 2 hrs 50 mins from Manchester and 2 hrs 50 mins from Faro.  Longest it has ever taken us as normally 2 hrs 30 mins with Easyjet and have done it in 2 hrs 15 mins with Monarch.  I noticed on the confirmation though that the flight time was 3 hrs compared to the usual advertised time of 2 hrs 50 mins with all other airlines from the North West.  I think by doing this Ryanair can blow their trumpet when you arrive early when really you haven't as they are taking advantage of that extra 10 mins on flight time.  Obviously flying slower to save on fuel.

Jayjan wrote: Well we flew Ryanair for the first time mid Sept, and I must say they were the best two flights we have had in a while, on time and very pleasant Portuguese aircrew.  Read Horror stories on size of cabin baggage, so stuck to the rules, very difficult when used to using Monarch & Jet2 who's sizes are bigger. I couldn't believe the amount of people with oversize bags who were never stopped, they even had extra bags with airport shopping in them which is supposed to go within the one bag. Same thing coming back from Faro, loads of oversize cases and shopping bags, no one stopped them.We have booked flights with Ryanair again for November but will stick to the rule sizes as it would just be our luck if we took oversize we would be stopped and charged.  All in all on Sept flights we saved £250 on Monarch prices and a whopping £450 on Jet2 prices.  Our November flights with Ryanair are saving us approx £150 on Monarch prices from Manchester.

Jayjan We are flying Nov 20th from Manchester to Faro returning 27th with Monarch.For the two of us with 1 hold bag it was £166.96.We flew with Ryanair last Oct the outbound flight was fine but the return was horrendous.Saying that there were 5 adults and three kids and we did say we would never fly with them again.

Jayjan.We booked the Nov flights in Sept so obviously earlier the better.My cousin and his wife have just booked to come with us and have booked Ryanair .What date are you going as we are staying at Pedras dos bicos and may well pop in Rockline.

Never mind when there is only the two of us we always stay around there.No doubt we will see you again.Have a good time.

I flew with Ryanair last November to Liverpool. The flight times were altered about 4 weeks before we flew. We were due to go out at 2pm on Wednesday and it was changed to 2.30pm. Not too bad, can live with that but we were supposed to fly back on Saturday at 4.50pm and this was changed to 7am on Saturday morning. Definitely not happy about that as we were over for a family gathering for the weekend to celebrate my parents' diamond wedding anniversary. On the way back we checked in our hold luggage. Because we had a little wait after checking in we had something to eat and a wander around the airport. When the flights were put up on the board for going through to the gate I put my hubby's jacket in his hand baggage. They decided that they would weigh all the hand luggage at the departure gate. Mine was just under the 10kg but hubby's was 10.8kg. I knew immediately it was the jacket and took it out of the bag. The attendant was very curt and told us in no uncertain terms NOT to put the jacket back into the bag and to wear it! The overall effect would be exactly the same as it going back into the bag ( which it did just before it was put into the overhead  lockers). I wasn't impressed with Ryanair and unless it is more than totally unavoidable, I won't fly with them again particularly after last week's item in the paper of them flying with the minimum amount of fuel and three planes in one week having to make "emergency" landings because they were running low on fuel.

We will all have stories to tell about various cheap airlines we have used. They are what they are, or they were what they were for they are no longer cheap! I can see a return to the package holiday for a lot of folks. I popped into a shopping centre to collect a few brochures for a particular type of holiday I want to do the other day and without exception they were all packed. Every member of staff at every travel agent we went into was occupied and that was on a Sunday!