Your favourite budget airline

[Goring Gull]

Which one is your carrier of choice when it comes to cheapo breaks abroad?

 

[Badger]

I've only flown EasyJet and Ryan Air and the latter made the former seem like first class luxury.

 

[strings]

innit.

 

[Springal]

Only used easyjet out of that lot, never had a problem

 

[Safeway]

I bloody love Easyjet, never had a major problem with them in about thirty flights.

Conversely, I despise Ryanair. Not so much for the actual flying experience but all the extra charges. £6 each way for ONLINE check-in (and if you don't print your own boarding pass they will charge you £40 at the airport for a new one), £30 for baggage and £10 to pay by credit or debit card. A 50 quid flight ends up costing double that. Used them once and never again.

 

[Vicar!]

Fly BE. Routing Gatwick to Dusseldorf perfect for Schalke

 

[Dr. Notthenineo'clocknews]

I bloody love Easyjet, never had a major problem with them in about thirty flights.

Conversely, I despise Ryanair. Not so much for the actual flying experience but all the extra charges. £6 each way for ONLINE check-in (and if you don't print your own boarding pass they will charge you £40 at the airport for a new one), £30 for baggage and £10 to pay by credit or debit card. A 50 quid flight ends up costing double that. Used them once and never again.

Ditto, almost word for word

 

[Commander]

Easyjet are OK. Ryanair on the other hand are the worst company I have every come across in any industry. How they get away with it I have no idea. If I went to the supermarket and then just as I was about to pay for my shopping they informed me that, actually, I had to pay another £10 for the privilage of paying, I would walk out. How do they get away with it? And their whole attitude generally, for example walking up and down the queue trying to catch people out with their little box thing that they put over your bag to see if you are 1cm over the baggage allowance, and then tell you you have to check it in and pay them another £50. And it always looks like it's really made their day when they catch someone.

C.nts. Hate them.

 

[VAL1850]

I bloody love Easyjet, never had a major problem with them in about thirty flights.

Conversely, I despise Ryanair. Not so much for the actual flying experience but all the extra charges. £6 each way for ONLINE check-in (and if you don't print your own boarding pass they will charge you £40 at the airport for a new one), £30 for baggage and £10 to pay by credit or debit card. A 50 quid flight ends up costing double that. Used them once and never again.

Again Ditto - Word for word - but obviously destination is a controlling influence

 

[sten_super]

Ditto what everyone else has said for Ryanair. Would never now fly with them if I had any baggage I wanted to check in, it just isn't worth it.

I have also flown Easyjet and German Wings; Germany Wings have the edge purely because they tend to have slightly more modern planes, but both are perfectly fine.

 

[Shropshire Seagull]

Conversely, I despise Ryanair. Not so much for the actual flying experience but all the extra charges. £6 each way for ONLINE check-in (and if you don't print your own boarding pass they will charge you £40 at the airport for a new one), £30 for baggage and £10 to pay by credit or debit card. A 50 quid flight ends up costing double that. Used them once and never again.

Heard a great story [hope it was true] of Michael O'Leary [boss of Ryan air] asking for a drink in a bar - went something like this?

MO "Pint of larger barman"
Barman "That'll be £3 sir"
MO "Cheers mate"
Barman "Will you be wanting a glass with that?"

 

[MJsGhost]

Another vote here for EasyJet as the cheapo airline of choice - I've had a dozen or so flights with them and had no more problems than with non-budget airlines...

I also can't agree more with the comments about Ryanair. I would rather pay double or triple the fare and go with someone else rather than give those pikey bastards another penny. Customer service is non-existent and the way they squeeze every last penny out of you after drawing you in with an apparently low fare is a disgrace (though they're not the only ones, they certainly seem to be the worst for it).

 

[Hotchilidog]

Only used EasyJet out of that lot but I find them cheap and convenient so haven't felt the need to go with any of the others. My only gripe is that the return flights in the evening tend be delayed by anything up to an hour but I factor this into my expectations anyway. Also after last year's chaos with snow delays and cancellations they paid up in full for my replacement flight with BA to Zurich without so much as squeak. Pretty good customer service considering how many thousands of people they would have been dealing with.

 

[bhaexpress]

With all these CHECK THE SMALL PRINT. However when you see people getting upset because they have missed their flight by being late are you sorry for them ? I'm not as a rule as how hard is it to be on time for a flight ?

 

[MJsGhost]

Heard a great story [hope it was true] of Michael O'Leary [boss of Ryan air] asking for a drink in a bar - went something like this?

MO "Pint of larger barman"
Barman "That'll be £3 sir"
MO "Cheers mate"
Barman "Will you be wanting a glass with that?"

Awesome! I hope they charged him to go for a piss too!

 

[fire&skill]

Eddie's Airways from:

 

[Grendel]

I've done loads of flights with easyjet and been fine every time, however the one flight I've made with Flybe was better for two reasons: allocated seating and free beer.

 

[HseagullsH]

What about Thomson? Is it alright or another RyanAir type?

I'm going on a Thomson flight later in the year, but have never been on a budget airline before

 

[sully]

I'm generally a happy flier and have used FlyBe, EasyJet and Monarch out of those listed. All of them provided me with exactly what I was expecting on each occasion I used them, and for a good price.

I've only ever booked once with Ryanair, though I've never flown with them. The booking was for a family holiday to Hungary for 4 people. They cancelled our flights some months later because they decided not to start that particular route for another couple of months. As they were the only company who flew from the UK to the area of Hungary we were going to, we ended up flying EasyJet to Budapest, hiring a car and driving to our resort, then getting a train back. We extended our holiday by a few days into the bargain and had probably the best trip with my kids ever! It was somewhat more expensive than the original plan, though, and I've never been tempted to book Ryanair ever again. It wasn't so much that they decided not to honour our booking, it was the total lack of care and the fact that their "standard" correspondence kept referring to me having cancelled the flights!

 

[Badger]

A guy I work with has put together a site called "Dark Patterns" which names and shames companies that use sneaky tricks on their websites to try and get customers to buy extra things. Ryan Air get singled out with their method for trying to get you to buy insurance:

http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Trick_questions#Example:_Ryan_Air_trick_insurance_opt-out_trick_question._.28August_2010.29

Very sneaky indeed.