Experience with budget airlines in Europe

Tamara,

In my experience (and that inludes RyanAir), the budget airlines are all quite reliable, but of course any of them can be subject to problems at times. Be sure to budget a bit extra, as the cheap price will likely become higher once all the fees and charges are tallied up.

I generally try to avoid RyanAir unless ABSOLUTELY necessary. My preferred budget airline in Europe is EasyJet, but I've had good service on others as well. For travel from Dublin to Edinburgh, your only two options will likely be RyanAir or Aer Lingus. In order to avoid RyanAir I'd probably take a train to Belfast and use EasyJet, but if you're comfortable using RyanAir that would be the quickest option. RyanAir seems to be aware of their "reputation" and are now trying to improve their customer service so we'll see where that ends up. I haven't heard any rumours recently about them charging passengers £1 to use the washroom in flight.

Happy travels!

Hi Tamara, I can't quite tell .. your husband has already purchased the tickets, or is just considering the purchase?

I've made several flights on Aer Lingus and that's worked well for me. I found a price I liked for BOS-EDI one time but didn't hit the buy button immediately and it was gone next time I looked, but then I did a check for BOS-EDI/GLA-BOS and there was the lower fare - hit that buy button! Sticking with one airline all the way means not worrying about the connection. If the first flight is late, the airline still has to get you to the final destination. Dublin now has Terminal 2 and that's nice. Whether there are flights like Heathrow where you have to consider the commute time between the two terminals if coming in to one and leaving from the other, I don't know how that'd work, but would be something to consider.

I've not flown Ryanair, but the enormous amount of online criticism that I've seen has been enough to make me cringe to just read the airline's name. They'd have to be my only option to try it, and I'd work hard to follow all the rules, that's for sure.

Thank you both so much for your reply! And sorry about the typos in my question, this is why I shouldn't try to type on my tablet. I was concerned about flying two separate airlines as well in case of delays, so we have decided to just pay a bit more for peace of mind and fly one airline the entire way. I will keep EasyJet in mind for our next trip to Europe. Thanks again!

Old joke: "Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore because it's too busy." Same thing with Ryanair, lots of negative comments and yet it has become, and remains, Europe's busiest airline. They may not be pleasant about it, but they satisfy many, many people.
If your husband wants to connect in Dublin from another airline, he should know that Ryanair and most of the other no-frills lines offer no connections with any other carrier. He will have to collect his bags, go through the entry formalities, and check in with Ryanair. That may not be necessary with Aer Lingus which flies trans-Atlantic and has check-through arrangements with some other airlines.

It is a bit of an assumption based on the information provided, but for the sake of others that may see this post....If your thought was to fly to Dublin on a US carrier, then immediately catch a RyanAir (or any budget or second carrier); then you did the right thing by booking with a single carrier.

The problem with using two unconnected carriers is that a delay in your flight from the US, delays in going through immigration, and schedule changes with your second flight, all make it risky to assure that you will get where you are going. Beyond that, if something does go wrong, you lose your second ticket usually, and a last minute flight will cost you dearly or the ferry/train combo to Edinburgh both costly and time consuming.

Budget flights work great, and if you were spending a night or two in Dublin, the plan would work great. At the least, you need to plan a multihour buffer. You do need to consider luggage, limits are much less on RyanAir and really just about any Budget and even most Domestic European flights. As a result, I usually plan on paying to check a bag on a budget flight, but even with that added cost, the total cost is still a good deal.

I was reading the other day about RyanAir, and they know their reputation is hurting sales. It sounds as if they're going to be making an effort to be a little more customer friendly in the future. That doesn't help today, as they're going to have to make serious changes and earn customers trust.

I've only flown EasyJet.com from Gatwick to Pisa. We had no problems with EasyJet, but Gatwick was about as bad an airport as I've ever been in.

Just be aware of all the posted rules and regulations of any budget airline. Don't take anything granted, like you can carry a purse on in addition to a carry on bag. Nope. They stick to their rules.

And give yourself some leeway, like staying in the city for a day or two before your scheduled flight on another airline (than what you flew in on.)

And as always, pack very light.

Paul, that was what swayed our decision - it would cost a lot more if we were to miss a connecting flight. It sounds like a better idea to use the budget airlines to maybe change cities when there isn't a real pressing time crunch or when you aren't trying to connect with a flight back home. I feel a lot better about our decision now, even if it did cost more. Thank you all for your replies.

I once had a flight from Varna, Bulgaria to Budapest on a budget airline. The night before I was notified of a "schedule change" a quick look indicated the time had changed by something reasonable (don't remember exactly how much), a second longer look revealed that the city of departure had also changed. WHAT! how can that be a "schedule change" we had no way to get to Burgas (the new departure city) and I wasn't about to try and figure it out late in the evening prior to a morning departure. I rebooked on Bulgarian Air for a small fortune and never got a refund from the budget carrier.

That having been said we have used the same and other budget airlines for a number of trips within Europe and in general I detested the experience but it did allow us to bring our kids on trips that we otherwise could not afford.

Finally, on splitting airlines We only do it when there is a significant lay over. We go to Budapest a lot and on a few occasions we have flown into London on a major carrier, visited for a few days and then done the London to Budapest leg on another carrier. We have traveled fairly efficiently this way. Rates in Europe can be very good even on major carriers. We base in Budapest a lot and take major carriers to Moscow, Israel, Istanbul, Frankfurt, etc all for about $300 rt. After spending over a thousand to get across the Atlantic the $300 always seems like a bargain; the true cost of the discount carriers for the same sort of trips might be 25% less.

Tamara,

Any airline can leave you high and dry.

so far in my 2 years of travel, for myself, Ive only been delayed 2x and that was a fight where i had PLANNED a 3 hour layover before my connecting flight out. My flight out of home was late 2 hours and i had to rebook my second flight which cost me 400 USD and to top it off, the connecting flight was 1~2 hours late too.

So, If depending on how you booked your flights, you may end up paying more if there is a delay.

I plan for the worse and hope for the best on my trips. Padding my connection times cost me time on the ground seeing things, but its the way i do things until the industry gets better (yeah, right, when pigs fly and then they would probably be on schedule more so)

just for your info, they have to get you to where you booked to, its just that there isnt any timeline stated.

good luck and happy trails.

The Ryanair flights I have taken (most recently in August from Glasgow to Barcelona) were on time leaving, and arrived a few minutes early. Ryanair also has one of the best safety records out there. As long as you follow their rules, there is no problem with them.

These days, I don't think low cost and "legacy" airlines differ that much in terms of reliability, and I'm sure stringent EU safety regulations are thoroughly applied. Flying on developed areas of the World has become an incredible safe thing to do, probably the safest activity than any other including taking a shower on your hotel room or walking anywhere (falls injury and kill more people than commercial air accidents by far and large, for instance).

The major caveat, in particular, with Ryanair (and to a lesser degree with any "low cost" airline) is that it is ruthless in enforcing regulations that come with a price tag. So it is just a buyer beware situation in regards of luggage size, count and weight and also stuff like advance online check-in with boarding pass printed, "be-on-your-gate-x-minutes-before-departure-no-matter-what" policies etc.

As long as you are informed and aware of these caveats, you shall be good to go.

If I'm reading this right: flying into Dublin on one airline and then changing to Ryan Air to get to Edinburgh, then it's a bad idea. It's a bad idea to do this with any airline unless it's an official connection and you've bought the ticket as one ticket. When the ticket is one ticket: NYC to Edinburgh with a change Dublin then you should have no additional charges if your first leg is late and you miss your connection. This has happened to me many times and it's happened with partner airlines and I've never been charged. I've not always gotten to my exact location--Northwest Airlines, bad New Year's week blizzard connecting through Detroit from WI to Orlandao. Northwest got me to Tampa and told me to to rent a car at my expense. Just last week, had a flight scheduled from Fort Lauderdale to LaGuardia and we were diverted to Newark. $100 cab rides at midnight. (Yes, I know we could have done the train, but we were already four hours late and had all day meetings the next day.) So, I'm not saying that everything is rosy. But, you shouldn't have to pay additional money to get to your original destination (or a close facsimile) if you've booked one ticket to that destination. (My company may have gone after Northwest, but I had nothing to do with it. There were about 20 of us caught up in the mess.)

Pam