Ryanair help needed

Yorkman

Trying to book a flight with them and take my bike with me.

I try to pre book my bike on, and it won't let me, saying there is restricted inventory space - I assume this means the plane is full for luggage?

Has anyone experienced this? If so, and you book your flight without prebooking your luggage, I assume there's every chance they won't allow your bike on with you?

Any help/tips urgently needed!

cee

Hey Yorkman

I have just flown to Rome and back with RyanAir.

Not too sure about the bikes, but for luggage, we checked in online and did not register luggage.

When we arrived, my bag was literally 2mm bigger than the guide-rack so they told me I had to check it (after getting onto the flight, there were loads of folks with bags bigger than mine and I took it in the cabin on the way home!)

They then wanted to charge me 12 pounds to check the bag, plus another fee (a fiver I think) for re-checking me in.

I will say that many people on the flight did not check luggage into the hold, so it was probably half empty.

With this experience, I would always make sure that it was sorted before arriving at the airport. Can you phone them and try to sort it before you pitch up?

Yorkman

cee wrote:

Hey Yorkman

I have just flown to Rome and back with RyanAir.

Not too sure about the bikes, but for luggage, we checked in online and did not register luggage.

When we arrived, my bag was literally 2mm bigger than the guide-rack so they told me I had to check it (after getting onto the flight, there were loads of folks with bags bigger than mine and I took it in the cabin on the way home!)

They then wanted to charge me 12 pounds to check the bag, plus another fee (a fiver I think) for re-checking me in.

I will say that many people on the flight did not check luggage into the hold, so it was probably half empty.

With this experience, I would always make sure that it was sorted before arriving at the airport. Can you phone them and try to sort it before you pitch up?

Cheers for that, you can't ring Ryan air, that's one of the downsodes for the b*stards.

I've paid a bit more, and booked with flybe who seem more upfront, organised, and cheaper for luggage.

Lyingair wanted £50 to put the bike in the hold, in a hardcase obviously.

ricadus

Yorkman wrote:

I try to pre book my bike on, and it won't let me, saying there is restricted inventory space - I assume this means the plane is full for luggage?

It means the space they allow for sports equipment or other outsized baggage on that flight is already taken by earlier-booking customers.

My experience with FlyBe is that their sports equipment charge was lower than RyanAir or EasyJet, but a bit more awkward since FlyBe didn't have a way of paying for it through their website, so the extra fee had to be paid at check in (meant queueing twice: once at the check-in desk, once somewhere else where they had a till).

oldwelshman

Couple of things for ryan air.
They have a limit for number of bikes on a plane so if it is full it will tell you when you try to book it, that happened to me for return flight from treviso for the pinarello fondo.

Another thing, they either have a bug on their website or some clever fxxxer who designs it.
I tried to book two singles, one flight out with no sports equipment (£25 saved) then another single back with sports equipmen.
When I hit confirm on the single from Treviso to stanstead, it confirmed the outward flight with sprts equipment !!! Not the return flight so I had to do another return flight so they got their money from me for both directions.
Be very careful with hand luggage, if it is over hand luggage weight or size you will be requested to pay £12 or empty some stuff out!!!
Then you have to pay to check in also.
On net, flight cost is £0.99 each way and it ends up £135 by the time i added everything such as bike, check in tax baggage etc.
Not so cheap eventually!!
They are only cheap if you check in onlne and have no baggage at all.

xio

as a general rule I'd consider doing paris-roubaix with a spike for a saddle a more comforting experience than flying ryanair with or without luggage

andy_wrx

Read the website for what Ryanair define as handluggage- it's considerably smaller than that for other airlines.
I reckon that if you turn-up at the desk, they'll measure and weigh it, tell you it's too big and make you check it in as hold luggage.

I suspect the people taking the ludicrously big bags onboard (after they've made you pay to put your smaller bag in the hold) are saying no hold bags and checking-in online, not going near the desk, just turning-up at the gate and going-through with their online check-in docs and 'hand-luggage'.

The people checking your boarding pass going through to departures are the airport security, not Ryanair, so they don't care about how big your hand luggage is, then when you get to the gate and onto the plane it's a bit too late to be checking how big your bag is, trying to get you to put it in the hold and charge you for it.

So if you're off to your Spanish Costa holiday villa, you do this and take some bloody massive suitcase on wheels as 'handluggage'.
But checking a bike in, you're going to have to go to the desk with it and so can't get away with it.


I hate Ryanair, O'Leary seems a complete tw*t, but I'm flying to Rimini at the end of the month and they're the only budget airline flying in there from the UK so I'm going with them and dreading it.

I've flown Easyjet a couple of times and whilst they're the same sort of no-frills budget airline, theres such a contrast between them and Ryanair.

Pirahna

andy_wrx wrote:

I hate Ryanair, O'Leary seems a complete tw*t

I had the pleasure of sitting next to him on a flight from Dublin last year, so at least he uses his own airline.

pedylan

Their CEO never tires of explaining to journalists that if his customers pay peanuts they'll get correspondingly low rate service. If anything goes wrong it's tough.

And whether it's charging for a wheelchair or banning staff from charging phones in the office they don't seem to give a stuff about staff or customers. They correctly guage that if the product's cheap enough most people will overlook just about anything.

I wouldn't touch them for business or pleasure and although they fly to Pau I'm not letting my bike into their clutches or leave my Etape at their cancellation whim. Eurostar and TGV it is.