Ex-EU departure: protecting myself against Ryanair delay

Voyager2002

I am planning a long-haul journey. The best way to begin it is with a cheap Ryanair flight from my local airport to Malaga, scheduled to arrive just over five hours before my long-haul departure. This should work well, but.. 

Ryanair do not fly this route very frequently. Another airline has a flight to Malaga that would arrive in time for my connection, but it leaves just 25 minutes after the Ryanair departure time (and costs more than ten times as much). In the event of serious delay to the Ryanair flight, is it likely that I would know what was happening and be able to arrange re-routing before the departure of that flight? Are there any other ways I could protect myself from disaster? (Insurance presumably would only pay for losses after cancellation of the holiday rather than intervene to solve problems.)

born_again

Fly a day earlier if possible, other airports you can go from?

While there is the other flight from your airport. Could you transfer to that flight at short notice? 

comeandgo

What is the history of this Ryanair flight?  Is it often cancelled or late?  We did use a cheap flight company while in Australia and found out that it cancelled that flight regularly .  Yup, at 4.00 am we got the message flight cancelled but we already had our plan B ready.  Could you do similar?  Otherwise I would fly a day earlier.

bagand96

It would depend on when you found out the Ryanair flight was delayed/cancelled whether the alternative would be possible.  Will depend on the other airline and when they stop selling tickets (as an example Ryanair themselves stop selling tickets online 2.5 hours before departure).

You'll be able to check on the day of the flight using things like Flightradar24 to track the aircraft and see if it's flights earlier in the day are on time.  The biggest risk is something going wrong at the last minute (ie aircraft is at the gate on time being prepared for departure when it has a tech issue).  That would be game over.

Voyager2002

Thanks to all for the comments.

I have now booked and will be staying overnight in Malaga, but my long-haul departure is 6.45 the following morning. So if my initial Ryanair flight gets into trouble I shall need to act promptly. 

In the event that the flight is delayed without firm information and Ryanair cannot be contacted, would I be reimbursed for a taxi to Bristol airport (from Exeter), or even Heathrow?

bagand96

Voyager2002 said:

Thanks to all for the comments.

I have now booked and will be staying overnight in Malaga, but my long-haul departure is 6.45 the following morning. So if my initial Ryanair flight gets into trouble I shall need to act promptly. 

In the event that the flight is delayed without firm information and Ryanair cannot be contacted, would I be reimbursed for a taxi to Bristol airport (from Exeter), or even Heathrow?

If Ryanair cancel the flight you'd be entitled to your choice of refund or re-routing.  So if the only reasonable flight to get you to Malaga that day were Bristol/Heathrow then you'd be entitled to book one of those.  I think the airline would be liable for your costs to get from Exeter to Bristol/Heathrow but these would be expected to be reasonable - i.e. if a train was available it might not be considered reasonable to take a private taxi.  However as you say it may be time critical.

I believe that if the flight is delayed by 5 hours you have the right not to travel, and I think trigger the same rights as cancellation.  Difficulty would be if it is delayed indefinitely where 2 hours becomes 3, 4 etc without a firm answer from the airline.

The priority will be getting to Malaga, if it does start to unravel you'll have to act and worry about who's paying for everything later.  I think with such a self-connecting itinerary you have to accept there is risk.

Hopefully none of this will be an issue though.  Personally I've found Ryanair to be about the most reliable airline I've flown with.

Westin

That RyanAir aircraft seems to start and route up from AGP/Malaga doing AGP/EXT before your EXT/AGP service.  AGP/EXT seems to be the first flight of the day with a night stop in AGP prior.  All are positive and hopefully less likely for knock on flight disruption.