The Airline Everyone Loves To Hate... But Why

Ryanair seems to be an airline a lot of people like to hate. Strangely the same people keep flying them, perhaps because they are so cheap? I've flown with Ryanair on and off for years and have never really had a problem with them.

That doesn't say a great deal though, when all goes to plan satisfying the customer should be easy. Give me the cheapest tickets, take me from A to B (roughly on time) and don't lose my luggage. That is pretty much what I am looking for on a short haul flight. But what about when things go wrong? That is the real test of customer service.

When flying to Poland during the recent bad weather, my flight took off according to plan but things started going astray when we reached Krakow, which was shrouded in freezing fog. Our pilot kept us informed. Landing conditions were unsafe, the plan was to circle Krakow for half an hour in the hope the morning sun would clear the fog. If visibility did not improve in that time our pilot may have to divert the flight.

Sadly the fog did not clear and we needed to land elsewhere. Unlike the idiots on the Paris Beauvais flight last month who decided to stage a sit in when their flight was diverted to Belgium, the passengers on my flight alighted at Katowice when asked to. The untimely end of the President of Poland earlier this year showed us all what happens when pilots try and land in freezing fog. Its just not a good idea.

Our pilot made the right call in the circumstances, and Ryanair kept on looking after us once on the ground. As soon as we were through passport control, before we even had our bags, the announcements started. We knew where to meet our bus and when to expect it. There were updates every 5 to 10 minutes so at every stage we were kept informed.

Incredibly, given that the decision to divert was only taken around ten minutes before we landed, within less than an hour from wheels down we were back under way, now by bus, on our way to Krakow.

We reached our destination around 2.5 hours late and I was left very satisfied by the service. Sadly not everyone felt the same way. As we arrived in Krakow I overheard a girl commenting to her friend: "yeah, well what do you expect? Ryanair are shit." I was left at a loss to explain her attitude. Diverting the flight and having the aircraft at one airport while a whole plane load of passengers was waiting at another was hardly in the airline's game plan. I dread to think of the trouble and expense this diversion caused them, yet in the interests of passenger safety they did it anyway. They then went on to organise our onward travel seamlessly, I have actually waited longer for scheduled transfers.

I wouldn't like you to think I am a militant Ryanair fan either. I don't love it when I find a fare that I'm happy with only to see it shoot up by 30 quid if I want to take a bag. I don't like paying a fiver a flight to pay with my debit card either, and the £40 charge if you forget to check in online seems unreasonable at best.

Would you like to know something though? Even after all that, on my last two European trips they still worked out more than £100 cheaper than their nearest competitors when my wife and I travelled together.

You might not like the charges, but as long as you play the game you can still save money. Do you need to check luggage for a weekend trip? Travel with carry-on only and save yourself a few quid. Even on a longer trip, think about whether you could share one bag between two? Yes luggage is included as standard on many airlines, but the fact is you are paying for that in the fare.

The fee for paying for your ticket with a credit or a debit card is also easily avoided. I have a prepaid mastercard which saves me money on overseas currency transactions, handily enough this is also the only fee free form of payment on the Ryanair website, result there is another tenner per person saved on return flights.

As for the charge for not checking in online, well that is the easiest of all to avoid... check in online.

I wonder, when it comes to booking her next set of flights what the complaining girl will decide to do. Stump up the extra cash to fly another airline? Or spend her money on her holiday, instead of the flight? I suspect I will see her on Ryanair again.