Parthemores in Poland

If you have ever flown Southwest Airlines, you are probably shuddering to yourself at the mere thought of the low-budget service, cattle-call boarding cues, and complete lack of personal space.  Ryanair features all of these lovely perks, but with a few different twists.  Our observations:

1. Southwest charges you an actual ticket price which is anywhere from $50 - $250.  Our price to fly on Ryanair for two people, round-trip, non-stop?  Maybe $20.  But they kill you with fees!  Need to check in at the airport because you aren’t an EU citizen?  That’s a fee.  Need to check a bag?  Fee.  Are you flying out of an actual airport?  Fee.  Prefer the wings stay on for the whole flight?  Fee.  I was waiting for them to come around with a collection basket for the de-icing.  And I didn’t want to find out if the oxygen masks had a coin slot.  Don’t get me wrong, it was still very cheap in the end, but 95% of the costs are hidden.
2. On Ryanair, there is less of a chance that you will have an extremely overweight person sit next to you, thus reducing the seat you paid for to roughly 1/3 of a seat (this happened to Eric once on Southwest and he swears on everything holy he will never fly Southwest again!), but the plane quickly becomes a virtual minefield of small children.  It is hard enough to find two seats together, but then you’re trying to figure the odds that child near you will go into radioactive meltdown.  There were LOTS of kids, but we were fortunate on both flights to sit near well-behaved ones.
3. The in-flight magazine featured an article shilling for their charity calendar.  This calendar features actual Ryanair stewardesses in bikinis, who are supposedly volunteers.  This may be a ploy to get people to actually pay attention to the safety demonstrations.  “Ladies and gentlemen, please pay attention as Miss November highlights the numerous safety features of our Ryanair Boeing 737!”  You can read the magazine here:

1. Southwest (and other US Airlines) fly to places every day of the week.  Not Ryanair.  Want to go to Dublin from Poznań?  That’s only on Monday, Wednesday, and every other Thursday.  Want to fly from Poznańto Barcelona?  Only once a week.  And that gets you to an airport that is 60 miles away from the actual city.  Apparently convenience also costs extra.    

Will we fly Ryanair again?  Absolutely.  But you can bet we’ll use the money we save to buy some really stiff drinks at the airport first.