Hacker News Reader

Comment by nixass | Hacker News Reader

Right now Ryanair has almost 200 737-800MAX on order, significant amount of these were added during MAX grounding as the prices went down a lot. Bold looking move again, but still shitiest airliner out there

View on HN

Ryan are terrible and I do not fly with them because of it, but they are far from the worst. Chinese budget airlines like Spring Air have the hostesses talking through a megaphone trying to sell you shit for the entire flight. When the cockpit door opens at the destination, you can smell the cigarette smoke.

You are not Ryanair's customer. I don't think that bothers them.

The route I fly most often is served by both British Airways and Ryanair. After adding baggage and the extra cost of getting to London from Stansted instead of Heathrow, it consistently costs more to fly Ryanair.

It should bother them that their direct competitor is a better option for their target customer (budget conscious flyers), even if I am not that customer.

Ryanair today is not what it was even five years ago -- they did transition to a much more customer friendly airline crowned in 2018 by a new baggage and boarding policy https://corporate.ryanair.com/news/new-bag-policy-from-novem... Just buy priority, it's 6 EUR , it's nothing.

Their app is well designed and easy to use. You can contact them via chat and it's free.

Ryanair is OK. Yes, you need to understand they will often be very strict with the rules but that's why they are rules and be aware of the airports they use and you'll be just fine.

I used to be a "strict no" to Ryanair but the last few years I've flown with them. It's OK.

There's not a lot to go wrong in the space of few hour and objective as simple as getting A to B in terms of customer experience.

Somehow, some companies still mess it up.

The short time does not matter that much, really. The biggest problems are IRROPS and what happens then. Here managing expectations, I feel, matters most.

My biggest beef with European companies were some of them insisting on not allowing two bags onboard even for money. By now this has simply disappeared and everyone allows a large and a small bag as they should. I think Transavia might have been the last.

I'm guessing they had exhausted the pool of people willing to put up with poor customer service and needed to offer a bit more to keep expanding.

Nope, Brussels ran out of patience and basically read the riot act to them. They had the choice of EU wide legislation making a bad dent in their profits or get their ... together.

> still shitiest airliner out there

Yet Ryanair is rated as a seven-star airline for safety; it has a fatality-free record since it was started.

https://www.airlineratings.com/news/ryanair-soars-seven-star...

The shitiest airline is measured on many axes. Preventable injuries are certainly one axis (hello ValuJet), but scoring well on that doesn't mean it's a good experience.

You've clearly never flown with them.

Right, because only those why fly them can possibly know how often they fall from the sky?

You can not crash and still be shitty.

Your ticket purchasing process can be an immensely frustrating experience, dodging a horde of dark patterns coming at you from every direction.

Your check-in process may be a horrible user trap (you must check-in from home, and print a boarding pass there. Said check-in closes 4 hours before takeoff, and there's a 40 Eur fee if you do it at the airport) which the EU had to explicitly ban.

Your refund/rebooking process may be outright illegal, planning on passengers being unaware of their full rights.

In the end, your safety record may not come into play at all: I don't care if your planes crash or not, because I'm never, ever, boarding one again, and neither will anyone who listens to me.

You must not have a smartphone if you need to print your boarding pass. It's fairly painless process both check-in & boarding and it's a cost-savings airline so there is no surprise that you're not getting mollycoddled through the airport.

Their cabin comfort, I will admit, leaves a lot to be desire. One gets what one pays for in that respect.

I do have a smartphone. Their web based check-in used to close 3 or 4 hours before flight. By that time, your only option was a hefty fee at the airport.

> but still shitiest airliner out there

By what metric? Just because of the technical issues?

Statistically speaking it will likely end up being the safest variant of the 737 family simply because we live in an era where death in a commercial airline accident is approaching the level of a statistical anomaly. There are many reasons for this that are external to the actual nuts, bolts, and bits of the airplane.

Now if you're arguing all 737 variants are the shitiest airliner out there for passenger comfort, well I'll jump on board that argument!

They meant to write airline. Ryanair charge for cabin bags, charge for water, charge for printing a boarding pass.

But, you can see the price of a flight: https://www.ryanair.com/

I am still waiting for refunds from Ryanair for cancelled flights in March.

I'm guessing they won't come unless you chase it. Nothing happened to my refund for May flights until I called, after which the money came within a week.

You should probably either take them to whatever your local equivalent of small claims court is, or use one of the "we enforce your rights but take 30%" portals.

If it’s any help, I eventually got mine. Just followed their online process. I’m in Canada. Didn’t get my refund from Air Transat (only a credit) and as long as the Canadian government allows this, I’ll probably be waiting at least another year to use the credit.

I've still got an open dispute from KLM back in 2018! Every month I get a brief update to say it is still ongoing:

> We’re contacting you about your claim for compensation for your KLM-Royal Dutch Airlines flight to Helsinki on 2018-09-11.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com