Worried about Ryanair

So basically, me and my family are going on holiday this August to Tenerife. Obviously I am so so so so excited but I am really concerned about the airline as it has a lot of bad publicity and seems to generally be really disliked.

Could anyone reassure me or give me a proper insight into this?

Thanks!!!

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I love Ryanair. Mainly because It's cheap as chips and excellent value for money. You pitch up at the airport shortly before your flight departs because you've already checked in on-line, if you need to check a bag in then slightly before that. You get on the very new aeroplane and go to sleep in the chair for a few hours maximum, wake up and you're there. Admittedly the destination airports aren't the most central ones, but it does mean you get out more quickly than at the larger ones.

I reckon the only people who hate Ryanair are either people who are disorganised and thus suffer from penalty payments, or people who genuinely don't understand what a good deal they're getting and complain about the lack of luxuries or the expensive in-flight. With regard to safety, it's worth remembering that the people running the aircraft aren't just brainless automatons who automatically do as they're told. They care about their own pink fleshy bodies and will take appropriate risk as required.

Personally, my choice of airline is always dictated by quality, rather than price. I'd much rather pay a higher fare to begin with, and not have to worry about bringing £100s with me to the airport.

I'd also much rather fly with an airline who's pilots aren't put under incredible stress to meet extremely tight deadlines/schedules/fuel burn targets. While I acknowledge that Ryanair hasn't, to my knowledge, had a major accident, I'm aware of several near-miss incidents, two of which I've witnessed personally.

Have you heard the joke about Ryanair, about them being the only airline that accelerates after landing, so they get to the gate quicker? While it's obviously a joke, it does accurately represent the company philosophy, and I just won't do business with them, even though it means higher fares, I reckon it works out about the same in the end, once all the extra charges are added-in.

The trumpets make laugh. Once my flight was two hours delayed and the trumpets still blew


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what are the trumpets?

As I said, if you're organised then there's nothing to worry about with regards to 'extra charges'. I'm intrigued to hear about these near-misses, as I'm not sure how Ryanair's fuel policies would affect flight or crew performance.

The first near miss, I witnessed when I was in training as a baggage-handler, and we were being taken on a tour of the airport (the tarmac, runways and taxiways, not the terminal), so we parked up on a small road at the very start of the runway, and there was very strong cross-wind - about 30-40knots. There was a Ryanair plane on approach, and our trainer said to us that this plane would be doing a missed-approach, as the cross-wind component was too strong to make a safe landing. You could really see the pilots struggling to keep the plane aligned, and on the right glideslope, and he ended up landing about half-way down the runway, when they're meant to aim for touchdown at most a quarter of the way down the runway.

The second time, I was working as a dispatcher by that point, and I was doing paperwork in the office. Now the company I worked for was a handling agent, taking care of various airport jobs, including dispatch, that the airlines contract out. There was a big speaker in the office, that was tuned in to Tower Operations of Air Traffic Control. ATC instructed an outbound Ryanair to hold short of a runway it was routed to cross, while another plane did a takeoff. The pilots argued with ATC over the frequency, stating that they had time to cross the runway, and they ended up not-complying with the instruction, causing the departing Virgin 747 to abort its takeoff due to Ryanair's runway incursion.

With regard to fuel policies, again, Ryanair pilots often argue with Air Traffic Control when instructed to go into a holding pattern on approach, increasing the stress level of the controllers, in what is an already highly stressful job, therefore increasing the likelihood of that controller making a mistake, either with the Ryanair its servicing, or another aircraft.

I'm not saying that Ryanair is a dangerous airline, per se, as they, like other airlines, operate dozens, if not hundreds of flights per day, and these are likely isolated incidents. However, they are incidents that, in my opinion, represent the tip of the iceberg, and having met and worked with hundreds of pilots over dozens of airlines, I feel that Ryanair is an airline that is willing to 'chance' skirting around safety laws as and when it can get away with it. For that reason, I will never fly with them.

I hasten to add that I'm not against no-frills airlines per se, I've flown with these airlines, including Monarch, and Flybe, and I would fly with Easyjet if they operated a route I was looking to fly, but Ryanair, I just won't fly with on principle.

Well just to play devil's advocate:

For the first scenario, I don't know what the crosswind limit is for the specific aircraft that was making the approach, but If they had the fuel to have a go then why not if it's legit? If the pilot knows that he doesn't need all the runway to land then there's nothing stopping him landing as far down the runway as he wants. The performance calculations take into account landing in the touchdown zone (first 3000' of the runway) but if you've got bags of performance then that's fine...

The second scenario is not specific to Ryanair, I've seen it happen many times. It's the pilot being self important, nothing to do with the operating authority!

I don't know about the arguing with ATC about holding, it's not like they're going to jump the queue so it seems a bit pointless!

I know that for a 747-400, the crosswind limit is 25-35knots, depending on approach speed, runway length etc. I would imagine that for Ryanair's 737s, it would be 5-10knots less. I understand that obviously we didn't have the measuring equipment that the aircraft and ATC had, but whichever way you cut it, that landing was cutting it pretty fine. The landing in this case was at BHX - hardly the longest of runways.

The 2nd scenario was at MAN, and yes, the pilots are the ones who are there, not the chief exec of the airline, but I know from previous experience, when I'm under pressure from my bosses to achieve very ambitious KPIs, I feel obliged to look to cut corners any way I can, and it's the same in this scenario. If those same pilots were working for an airline that genuinely valued safety (again, I'm not saying that Ryanair don't, exactly) and were in a company culture that prioritised safety over On Time Performance, I'm sure they would be less inclined to argue.

I love Ryanair.

That's awkward, because they hate you and every other customer they deal with.