The perils of travelling with Ryanair

From travel books and well-travelled friends, I had heard of many European discount airline myths. Fly for a mere pound. Could this be true? Apparently it was, which was a concept hard to grasp as a person that hadn't even managed to take the Megabus for $1. At the heart of these myths was one name: Ryanair. And one year, a representative from Ryanair was on television, proudly announcing that it had made a decent annual profit. Cheap flights, but still making profits... it sounded too good to be true.

When I got to come to Europe for myself, I was finally exposed to real people that used this airline to travel. The most recent of these people was a friend of mine that I will refer to as "Neo". Neo is a seasoned traveller, having spent time in a large number of cities in three continents over the past year. However, even he was not prepared for Ryanair's little quirks when the time came to leave after visiting me for a day in Edinburgh...

1. Boarding pass

We had to fit in as much of Scotland as possible in a mere 24 hours, so naturally we forgot about printing Neo's boarding pass beforehand. Luckily, for most airlines, there's always the option of printing off the boarding pass at the airport. Ryanair is no exception... just with a catch.

"It will cost £40."

That's right, 40 pounds, spelt f-o-r-t-y, for a single sheet of paper. That's over $70, for you North Americans. The only sheet of paper I've seen that's more expensive than that is a university diploma. Being his student self, Neo wasn't just going to give into that. And the search for a printer in/near the airport began, so we could get Neo off to Frankfurt on his 11.15 flight.

Edinburgh Turnhouse airport does not have any printers available to the public, and our best bet was to go to the nearby Hilton Hotel, a 10 minute walk away. We took the courtesy shuttle, posing at first as travellers "flying in from Frankfurt", then as travellers "flying back to Frankfurt". In retrospect, it must have sounded mildly fishy, given that I wasn't even carrying any luggage on the way there. But that aside, the hotel trip did the job, and Neo walked away with a $5 boarding pass. A much more reasonable price to pay.

2. Check-in luggage

Before going off to search for printers, we had also asked about luggage policies. Neo had one backpack, a laptop bag, and a mini duffel bag of sorts, and was planning to check two items in. The initial assumption went along the lines of: 'I could probably check the first item in for free, and either pay for the second or haggle to get that in free too.' But who are we fooling. This assumption was far off what was actually demanded:

"£35 for the first checked baggage, £70 for the second."

This meant that Neo would have to pay a whopping £105 (around $180-190 CAD) with his luggage the way it was. As he aptly put it, "it would be cheaper to buy a second seat or a new ticket elsewhere". There was no way Neo was going to fit everything in his hand luggage anyways (especially not with a bottle of whiskey), so there were two options: a) buy a small suitcase that would fit the contents of two of Neo's current bags, or b) "wear, like, 8 shirts".

Upon returning from the Hilton Hotel, Neo frantically rearranged his bags for a good half an hour, and ended up wearing 5 shirts and his newly purchased Scottish hat.

3. Delay

And as we thought everything was finally fine, we learned that there were problems, and that more details would be announced at 11h. At the airport, it sounded like the problems were due to inclement weather - the people at the desk didn't really know. Yet when Neo got on the plane, apparently a different reason was provided by the pilot, which had to do with air traffic, rather than bad weather.



In the end, Neo was able to reach his destination at a reasonable time, but only after hours of unnecessary hassle right before his flight. Nothing we can do about different reasons given by different sources for the same delay, but save yourselves any additional trouble by printing your boarding pass beforehand and minimizing the number of bags you travel with!