Is Ryanair really the cheapest airline around???

Ryanair are an Irish budget airline that have for an awfully long time have claimed to be the cheapest airline around, now having booked and tried to book flights with Ryanair in the past, I personally struggle to believe this claim, especially when you add on all the extra fees and account for the additional traveling costs based on the airports they travel to.

So I am putting this to the test, I am imagining that I want to fly on a quick visit to Barcelona, my starting point will be Victoria Station in London. I am choosing London as it has a wide choice of airports and airlines to use, and specifically Victoria as it has extremely good transport links to the airports.

I will be comparing Ryanair against two of its competitors, Easyjet, and the worlds favourite airline, British Airways, I will be taking into account time to get to the airport, cost of getting to the airport, cost of the flight and any charges and the cost of getting from the airport in Spain to Barcelona city centre. I am assuming that I am one person, with one bag, traveling on the 26th August and returning on the 28th, I will also be paying by Mastercard. I will want to spend the maximum time in Barcelona, so I will always chose the latest available flight and the earliest available flight. I won’t be getting any addition extras, so no early boarding and no SMS notifications or anything like that, and especially no insurance!

Lets have a look at what comes out then.

Ryanair

Ok so flights first, well the flights alone will cost £63.20, flying from Stansted, I have chosen Stansted as there is only one flight per day between Gatwick and Barcelona and these are in the afternoon, so it will not allow me to maximise my time in the city. The flights will actually fly to Girona airport, not Barcelona.

The flight departs Stansted at 07:55, arriving at Girona at 10:55. For the return leg, I will be departing Girona at 22:00, arriving back at Stansted at 23:10.

Ryanair charge £5 for the pleasure of printing off your own boarding card, for each leg of the trip, per person. Luckily the outbound leg of my trip is on special offer so this £5 fee is waived, however it is not for the return leg. They also charge £5 per person, per flight as a card processing fee, this is free if you use a Visa Electron card, but these are rare, so I can’t avoid it here, so that’s £10 to add on. Now to get my luggage on board I will have to pay £10 for each flight, so that’s £20 in total and its only 15Kg I can take on board.

So with the £35 of fees added on, my Ryanair flight comes to £98.20.

Now to get to the airport, we can use Easybus, I am going to assume I want to be at the airport 2 hours prior to departure, so my Easybus will depart from Victoria 04:30 and arrive at Stansted at 05:55. Upon my return the last bus leaves Stansted at 23:35 and arrives a Victoria at 01:05 on the 29th. Now the cost is not too bad at all and comes out at a total of £12.98, so my Ryanair flight is up to  £111.18.

Now Girona airport is nearly 60 miles away from Barcelona, but I suppose its no worse than Stansted, right? Well the big problem is that getting the info on the fares is not easy, Ryanair does link to a coach operator that services the route, but the site is Spanish and I can’t find mention of the fare anywhere, so I had to depend upon Wikitravel, not the best source, but its all I have. Now that says the fare is €21 for a return and the trip is about 1 hour and 10 minutes. So that’s £17.86, at least according to Expedia’s currency convertor on the 2nd July 2009. So The Ryanair flight comes to a total of, drum roll please.

£129.04

So what about the competition.

British Airways

Well the worlds favourite airline are hardly about to be the cheapest are they, so lets see what they can do.

Well the flight depart from Heathrow, the outbound leg leaves at 07:05 and arrives at Barcelona at 10:10. The return leg departs Barcelona at 18:50 and arrives at Heathrow at 20:10. In total the flights are £210.30. So much dearer than the total cost of the Ryanair flight.

However getting to Heathrow is about a hour on the Tube and costs £4 each way as a cash fare, (Much cheaper if you have an Oyster card though), so that’s a total of £8. And as you arrive in Barcelona airport rather than Girona, you can get the RENFE C-10 suburban train into the city centre, and that takes about 30 minutes and costs €1.35 each way, or £1.15, giving a total of £2.30 to add to the total cost. So the total for British Airways is

£220.60

So that’s around £90 more expensive, but getting to and from the airports is much easier, you get a meal and your baggage allowance is 23Kg.

But what about Ryanair’s nearest competitor.

Easyjet

Right so our Easyjet flight will be leaving from London Gatwick at 06:55 and arriving at Barcelona at 10:05. The return leg will depart at 22:50 and arrive back at Gatwick at 00:05 on the 29th.

Now the flights themselves are £82.84, as well as £8 per person, per flight for my bag, which can weigh up to 20kg. I am also paying a credit card fee of £6.25 giving a total of £105.79, the card fees can be reduced down by paying with a debit card, and they are free if paying with Visa Electron.

Now to get to Gatwick I can’t take the Easybus as they don’t run early enough or late enough for this trip, so lets try the train, checking thetrainline, I can, if I book it now, get an advance single from Victoria at 04:00 arriving at Gatwick at 04:45 for £5.00, and a return Off-Peak Day Single for 10.90 for the return leg, departing Gatwick at 01:05 on the 29th and arriving at Victoria at 01:49, giving a total cost of £15:90.

As Easyjet fly to Barcelona itself, you can also get the train for £2.30, which gives us a grand total of

£123.99

So that’s around a fiver cheaper than Ryanair.

Comparison

So lets compare them side by side on cost and time, and the time you get to spend in Barcelona. where I don’t have timetable I am adding 30 minutes to the trip to account for getting bags and waiting for train/bus etc, so the times may be a little fuzzy.

Newcastle Airport – Ryanair

£113.72

Newcastle Airport – Easyjet

£124.89

So that’s around £11 more than Ryanair.

Conclusion

Ok so Ryanair, once you add on all of the hidden fees are a pretty cheap airline and are competitive with Easyjet, however, as they often fly to out of the way airports compared to the destination you want to go to they can work out more expensive, and when you add on the extra time it takes to get from the airport to the city, well, Ryanair do start to look less and less good value. Using the Newcastle example there, its £11 or so more expensive to fly with Easyjet but you get much more time in Barcelona, as well as the more generous baggage allowances.

I wonder if Ryanair would be so competitive if they flew to Barcelona Airport proper???

Have Fun

Michael

Extra

I am not going to completely write off Ryanair, from time to time they do have some pretty good deals on, for example, I recently booked some tickets for me and the wife to go to Dublin for a total of £4, yes that right £4.

If you want to get these cheap tickets then I have a few tips

• Fly Midweek, the best deals are never on a weekend or a Monday or Friday, for cheap flights fly on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday
• Try and manage on 10Kg of hand luggage, there are no limits on your weight, perhaps you can wear all your clothes for the trip on for the journey
• Register and pay with Entopay, its a prepaid virtual Visa Electron card, costs 50p per £10 you add to the card roughly but much cheaper than paying the Ryanair card processing fee

So try out those tips and maybe you can get some cheap flights, keep an eye out for the £1/£5/£10 flight offers, they also tend not to charge a check-in fee either so they can work out really good.