Flying with Ryan Air

I started writing an entry about my recent holiday to Austria, but I’ve decided to break it down as it was getting convoluted.

Ellmau is in the Austrian Tirol, close to Salzburg and not too far from Munich. Those are the two airports you are best placed to fly to. This year I was unable to find reasonably priced flights there and there were no direct flights to Salzburg from Manchester at all, so I extended the holiday by flying to Frankfurt. We stayed overnight and then got a train from Frankfurt to Kufstein, which is about twenty minutes from Ellmau by car. While this worked out cheaper, it was only cheaper because we flew with Ryan air to Frankfurt Hahn.

In theory my travel arrangements were great because they saved us about £200 and we got to see some of Germany, thus I thought, an extended vacation. OK, Frankfurt isn’t a the new Prague, but I enjoy looking around cities. And yes, that’s a great idea if you don’t mind flying on what feels like the airplane equivalent of a magic bus in Manchester, sans tramp. In practice, once you land in “Frankfurt” Hahn you have a one hour and forty five minute journey to Frankfurt on a cramped bus that costs 12 euros each way. So don’t forget your 24 euro bus journey tax on the flight, because Hahn isn’t near anything apart from somewhere farmers might need to travel to. Don’t get me wrong, it looks like a nice enough place, although I only really saw it in the dark. The important thing here is it isn’t anywhere near to Frankfurt, so don’t be fooled into thinking it is.

I’ve flown with Ryan air before to Salzburg and Alghero, and it wasn’t so bad. The airports were where they said they were. However, this is definitely the last time I’ll be flying the cut price way. I accept it is cheap and I selected this travel option because it saved me money. And that’s fine. I’d rather pay extra and avoid all of the extra hassle you get with low cost flying. While I’m sure that some people might enjoy all of the additional perks and excitement that come with a so-called £5 flight, I do not. First of all there’s the booking process. What starts of as £5 ends up being about £45. This is because of your take luggage with you tax, your paying for your ticket tax, the get on the plane first to avoid the scrum for seats tax and then the just normal tax that you normally associate with buying a normal air ticket. Don’t forget that you’ll have to pay a further £10 to get to a city that anyone has ever heard of and add a couple of hours onto your journey. So now you are at £60, and that’s just one way. But if you enjoy a challenge, then this way of flying is most definitely for you, most especially if you like to look at German motorways in the dark. Don’t forget that you have to find some way of printing your boarding passes out. And you can’t print them out before 15 days of your flight. Which means that if you are away for more than fifteen days, which we were, then there’s the find someone who’ll print this out for me challenge. Most fun of course is the “Can I take some books with my pants luggage weight guess in” Where you spend several hours carefully selecting your most lightweight clothing and books so that the items don’t weight too much and you don’t have to pay more to get your knickers safely back home.

The airport that we flew to was reminiscent of Glossop indoor market, except without the charm or the ice cream van. The people on the desks looked like they’d just finished the decorating before leaving for work and then forgotten to change. Either that or the cleaning staff were standing in for the usual counter staff. Whatever the reason something had annoyed them because they were mightily pissed off at something. Fortunately my ability to speak English and German meant I didn’t get a massive bollocking for standing in the wrong que, unlike some other Spanish speaking travelers on the flight to Dublin.

The flight was really not that bad at all, if you can ignore the constant encouragement to buy any manner of scratch card or panini from voice overs and any spare wall space. The garish Ryan air colours are there I think to remind you are experiencing bargain basement travel. And this is not such a bad thing as you can ignore it and the flight is fairly short, but it makes the plane feel cheap, which is a feeling I don’t relish at thirty thousand feet, especially sitting next to my airplane hating husband. I’m not a nervous flyer at all, but the whole low-cost flight experience made me feel uneasy.

Next time I am able to convince him indoors of the need to travel out of the UK, we’ll be going by sea/tunnel and train. It’s expensive but bring it on.