Ryanair is the discount airline that everyone loves to hate.  Yet, they fly more international passengers than Lufthansa. Staggeringly they carry more international passengers than British Airways  and Air France combined. They operate   250 Boeing 737-800 aircraft on over 1,100 routes across Europe.

While, my experiences with Ryanair have been okay. I rate them only 3 out of 5 which makes them my eighth most disliked airline! Tripadviser earlier in 2010 declared Ryanair to be the worst for amenities (4th year in a row). Reasons why Ryanair is disliked:

1. Ryanair charge very low fares and then add extras like luggage and credit card fees (see my article: Discount Airline Ripoffs). Holiday Which?, said Ryanair is the “worst offender” for charging for optional extras. Check out this very very funny spoof of Ryanair’s practices by Fascinating Aida (NB naughty language!).
2. Many of the airports they claim to fly to are nowhere near their destinations e.g. “Hamburg Lübeck”, Germany is an hour by bus from Hamburg. Their Paris airport is Beauvais-Tillé, 85 km from Paris.
3. They have been fined by Advertising Authorities several times
4. They have been accused of abandoning passengers at the wrong airports
5. Covalence’s 2010 annual ranking of the overall ethical performance of multinational corporations put Ryanair at the bottom 12
6. Passengers arriving at an airport without a pre-printed online check-in have to pay €40 for their boarding pass to be re-issued
7. Customer complaints can only be made via a premium rate phone line, by fax or by post

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