Ryanair

Fortyfoot

peterbaker wrote: »

Hell yes :rotfl:

If you have never booked before with Ryanair, then to save yourself £5 per person per flight you will need a Mastercard Prepaid card before you book. You can find various suggestions for which is the best in the forum.

Then it is probably best to tell us what route you might use as your first Ryanair flight..................................................

Thanks for replies.
I have just got the Caxton euro card.
I am looking at Leeds/Bradford to Malaga, begining of October.

Fortyfoot

Bob_the_Saver

spiff wrote: »

flew to Dublin last month and they were great, even cocked the booking up by using a shortened first name rather than my full first name on my passport and they changed it for free

Please can you change your comments to "they were terrible , I will never fly with them again", we don't want the great un-washed knowing how good they are, we might not get the cheap flights. Many of the people on this forum go to great lengths and spend lots of time to putting people off flying with Ryanair so we get the good deals, please don't spoil it for them.;)

luci

Fortyfoot wrote: »

Thanks for replies.
I have just got the Caxton euro card.
I am looking at Leeds/Bradford to Malaga, begining of October.

Fortyfoot

I think you would be better with a Caxton Global Traveller card if you are buying the flights in sterling. There is a £1.50 fee per transaction.

I have flown with Ryanair twice and had no problems. The above is good advice.

Read, read and read again their T&C's.

Make sure you weigh and measure your luggage and don't guess at it.

Make sure you check in online from 15 days before flying. Checking in at the desk costs £40 per person each way.

peterbaker

Fortyfoot wrote: »

Thanks for replies.
I have just got the Caxton euro card.
I am looking at Leeds/Bradford to Malaga, begining of October.
Fortyfoot

I don't know anything about the Caxton Euro card. I use Neteller.

OK, so if you can travel midweek, looks like the best you can do on Ryanair at the moment without any hold baggage is about £85 per person. Will you take hold baggage?

I don't know if you've already seen that price, but one especially good thing that has always marked Ryanair way above the rest is that their website is absolutely bombproof. It is also very fast updating and you can chop and change the dates and dodge backwards and forwards with no care in the world until you get a flight combination you like. There is no fear of commiting yourself to any flights until right at the end after you've entered all your card details when you finally get a "Purchase Now" button.

Have you flown from LBA or Malaga before? Depending on whether or not you book hold baggage, you'll then perhaps like to know typically how much time to allow to get through the airports at each end if you aren't familiar with them.

And as Bob says, if it all works out, you absolutely must come back and tell us how terrible that is ... I sometimes forget thesedays ... I almost always had something terrible to say about my last Ryanair flight ... it's a tradition and Ryanair expect it, but I am finding it harder ... I think I am mellowing in my old age <----That's a grinning leprachaun I think

Fortyfoot

Thanks for that. I have had a look at the Ryanair site and it works well. It looks as if I have to pay in GBP, so could not use Caxton Euro card, although prices in Euros are shown and the price is the same, eg £5 or 5e for booking in! Can you opt to pay in Euros?

I am familiar with both airports. The flights are 15.25 out, and that is too late for me on this occasion.

The price was fine £70.

I will certainly look at the for my flights next time. It looks like Monarch from Manchester is my next best option.

Fortyfoot

peterbaker

The only time you will see a the lower Euro fees in the quoted price is when you book a flight out of a Eurozone country e.g. if you booked the return flight separately in this case, it would be quoted in Euros. Try it - just select a one way Malaga - LBA flight or Malaga-LBA-Malaga return .... both will be quoted in Euros.

If your Caxton Euro card is a Mastercard Prepaid card then you will avoid the card payment fee but will still be quoted the GBP scale of other fees, e.g. 5GBP per person per flight check-in fee, if you choose to book the LBA outbound and Malaga return leg together.

You might need to investigate how GBP amounts billed to your particular card are converted to EUR on your card. Neteller does cards in several curencies and I have heard that their cross currency exchange rates are perfectly reasonable - might be the same with Caxton.

What is also worth looking out for when paying with a card in a currency different to the Ryanair website quote currency is whether Ryanair try to do the foreign exchange themselves i.e. charge your card directly in Euros because their system will recognise that your normal card currency is in Euros and see an opportunity perhaps to skim a little more profit. I have only ever seen it the other way round i.e. EUR webpage quotes suddenly converted to GBP on the fly and charged directly to a GBP card in pound sterling. It is called Dynamic Currency Exchange and when I have seen it, it has been universally bad for the customer.

So if you do decide to use your Euro card to buy flights quoted in GBP, and you notice an inconspicuous link that says "More info" on the page with the Purchase Now button, do first click the link and make sure you are being charged in GBP - It is effectively hidden which is sneaky, but I believe it allows you a choice (as it must under banking rules) if this link appears. As Bob said, READ EVERYTHING on each page and that means READ BEHIND EVERY LINK. If you notice that it is trying to charge you directly in Euros then that almost certainly would NOT be good for you because it would not be altering the fees to the lower Euro scale you have pointed out. Hell no, it would merely convert the whole GBP price at a not so good exchange rate set by Ryanair and their bank, denying you a possibly better FOREX through Caxton themselves.

Fortyfoot

HAVE A LAUGH HERE

Thanks for all the advice, it looks like I will be trying Ryanair as my friends now have offered to pick me up from the tea time flight to Malaga. Just waiting for my Caxton Global card now.

Fortyfoot

mikeeboy

I have both a Fairfx sterling card and a Caxton Euro card.

You may have noticed that the price of flights quoted in Euros are exactly the same as when quoted in pounds. So I now book my return flight seperately. Flight out paid with Fairfx card at 1.5% (if you want to be really thorough also have a Caxton global card so if 1.5% > £1.50 use that instead). Then book the return flight with your Caxton Euro card for free.

The Caxton Euro card will then also be used as my main source of money while away with cashpoint withdrawals free.