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Low Cost Flights - are they dangerous?

Food can vary hugely across airlines, and not always in direct correlation to the seat class you are flying in. The facilities on the aircraft vary a lot - I've had economy food on an A380 that was miles ahead of the swill that MAB serve in business class on a 737. Oh, and to answer the OP I agree that LCC's and ULCC's are generally no riskier to fly on than flag carriers. They have small modern aircraft and highly efficient crews in order to turn them around so quickly.
 
Another one bites the dust.

From the BBC:

"A budget airline that began offering long-haul flights from UK airports including Stansted to the US earlier this year has collapsed.
Primera Air said it was ceasing all operations at midnight on Monday after 14 years of operations.
Two flights to Washington and New York due to leave Stansted on Monday night have been grounded.
The Civil Aviation Authority confirmed that Primera had ceased operations."

So, even in their dire financial position, they were still safe.
 
Even the best airlines are under profit pressure (you can certainly tell from the food/wine): something to do with less genuine (ie full price) business class customers. There are probably only a handful of top class airlines now ie Singapore Airlines.
 
This afternoon I was in the garden when a Ryanair plane flew low overhead in the general direction of Liverpool. Oddly, most flights directly over us tend to turn out to be heading to Manchester which is 30+ miles away, whereas Liverpool airport is roughly half of that. So.. quick look at Flightradar 24 ID'd the plane as Ryanair FR 2477 from Chania to Leeds. It had clearly done a big circle around Leeds and then headed to Liverpool, where I tracked it to a safe landing via Flightradar 24.

So.. putting myself in the position of someone expecting to pick up a passenger from Leeds, or just having a loved one on the fight.. I started searching for info:

Sticking the flight No' into Google brought up the usual 'flight tracker' sites, who were all still showing the flight as 'on the way', despite it having landed. Some still had it only halfway through its journey.

Liverpool Airport was showing it as an arrival... with a landing time.

Leeds was showing it as 're-directed' to Liverpool and after some blurb about harmless reasons for re-directs, said that it was 'possible', that this flight could actually land at Liverpool. Leeds also suggested contacting Ryanair for further info.
This was where it got tricky. I'm not exactly a novice at searchin the 'interwebs', but I ould not find a single site, owned by Ryanair or anyone else, which could give me any information about the flight.

Just a few questions an interested party might ask:

Has the aircraft landed safely?

Where has the aircraft landed?

Will the passengers be flown to Leeds.. their expected destination?

Will the passengers be brought to Leeds by other means?

I was able to work out the plane had landed safely at Liverpool, which would be a great relief were I interested that much. But other info? Sod all!! ..especialy from Ryanair.

OK, today was difficult. A numbner of flights were 're-directed' from Leeds and EMA due to weather conditions.. but Ryanair's online presence re: its 'active flights' is far below acceptable.
 
Several flights, Jet2 included, couldn’t land at Leeds due to weather conditions and were redirected to Manchester.

Passengers won’t be flown back to Leeds, they’llgo by charabanc.
 
Well yes. I worked that out. And as I said.. it was a difficult day. But I have searched a number of alleged 'Ryanair Official Sites', and they are all
totally sales oriented. They offer no obvious way to check 'live flight status'. Their only 'live' communication is their 'live chat', which basically operates during office hours and is the last thing you find on their site. This as just crap.
 
How does it compare to any other airline with regards to information regarding diverted flights?

I fly regularly using Ryanair using their iOS app.

That has a section called flight information.

It says; “Please enter your flight details below to check on the latest status of your flight. If your flight has been affected by any disruption you will receive an email & SMS notification from Ryanair.”


Got to say Mull you are going to make yourself ill.

Not only do you get wound up about all sorts of real stuff that affects you, you now are getting wound up about hypothetical situations as far as you are concerned!
 
wacko said:
Even the best airlines are under profit pressure, something to do with less genuine (ie full price) business class customers. There are probably only a handful of top class airlines now ie Singapore Airlines.
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PanAm had a wayyyy too generous frequent flyers programme. Card holders were more often than not upgraded. So guess what.........ultimately not enough people bothered paying full fare 1st class fares, & they collapsed.
A free upgrade, turning left at the aircraft door etc is the holy grail of passengers. Most airlines have loyalty card systems, but if/when it leads to a collapse in premium fares coming in, cutting back on service quality is an inevitable consequence.
Several of the middle eastern airlines don’t have to make a massive profit to survive, as they are seen as flag waivers for their country.
 
Bob McC said:
How does it compare to any other airline with regards to information regarding diverted flights?

Got to say Mull you are going to make yourself ill.

Not only do you get wound up about all sorts of real stuff that affects you, you now are getting wound up about hypothetical situations as far as you are concerned!
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Don't worry Bob. I'm not as highly strung as I seem. I'm just interested. I have no idea how Ryanair compare to others in this respect, but if they are representative, I'd say they all need to up their act.
 
Google is as good as any when tracking flights. I get the impression that a lot of tracking sites use the same source and are often inaccurate.
Leeds is the highest commercial airport in the uk and seems to be the windiest place in earth, even on a relatively calm day.
Yesterday, it was very windy in Leeds and I’m not surprised flights were diverted.
Ryanair also have a twitter feed which answers any flight queries. It’s automated and I have found it fairly useless in the past.
 
Just to be fair to RyanAir, almost every customer service system I've used has fallen down when I've really needed it.
 
Years ago Ryanair herded their passengers around like cattle, now they all do it- the problem being airport infrastructure. BA is every bit as bad now, EasyJet and FlyBe a bad joke with the “Britain’s favourite low cost airline” nonsense. Two cattle herders who will gouge outrageously where they monopolise routes. £500 Glasgow Bham return (FlyBe monopoly) or £300 one way in Europe on EasyJet? Ryanair trounce them on price and choice. I wouldn’t be surprised if FlyBe went down in the next year.
 
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The loss of Monarch meant that Jet2 and Ryanair monopolise the ‘low cost’ flights out of Leeds. Their prices have soared in the last year as a result, so much so that I reported them to the MMC earlier in the year because they were both asking for equally ridiculous prices for out of season return flights from Palma.
 
TheDecameron said:
Years ago Ryanair herded their passengers around like cattle, now they all do it- the problem being airport infrastructure. BA is every bit as bad now, EasyJet and FlyBe a bad joke with the “Britain’s favourite low cost airline” nonsense. Two cattle herders who will gouge outrageously where they monopolise routes. £500 Glasgow Bham return or £300 one way in Europe on EasyJet? Ryanair trounce them on price and choice. I wouldn’t be surprised if FlyBe went down in the next year.
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They will charge like that if you want a ticket on short notice. Just like rail companies.

Plan ahead and Easyjet are ludicrously cheap.

I am off to Palma next month for £30 return and Venice in February for £60 return, tickets bought on the day they were released.
 
doctorf said:
The loss of Monarch meant that Jet2 and Ryanair monopolise the ‘low cost’ flights out of Leeds. Their prices have soared in the last year as a result, so much so that I reported them to the MMC earlier in the year because they were both asking for equally ridiculous prices for out of season return flights from Palma.
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Fly from Manchester then.
See my post above.
 
Bob McC said:
Fly from Manchester then.
See my post above.
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Two of my recent return flights have been to Manchester for that reason.
£35 compared to around £160, one way.
And don't always think that booking early is the answer.
The algorithms they use take all that into consideration.
There is an optimum time to buy tickets and it's much nearer departure date than you would think.
 
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