Good to know about Ryanair

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Even before the recession and certainly nowadays, people like to find great bargains and no more so than when it comes to flights. Due to the fact that airline tickets often are expensive, finding a better value deal means a lot to most of us. The entering of low-cost carriers to the airline market certainly gave many budget-minded travellers the opportunities to fly more frequently. In Europe, the budget airline Ryanair has proved to have the touch and has conquered this highly competitive marketplace. To some, a great thing but to others, it proved to be the end of and era when the customer was treated with respect.

Ryanair has a clear strategy. They want to be the cheapest airline and frequently advertise flight tickets that cost nearly nothing. This no-frills airline must however make a profit and they have cleverly created several strategies for doing so. Every year they seem to sneak more and more hidden fees and opt-ins in order for them to get paid. They seem to want to be able to say that they have the cheapest ticket but still make a high profit on their flights. This is how it is done.

When Ryanair first launched their business they used to promote their amazingly cheap tickets without showing the cost of taxes and fees. As most of us know, you cannot actually buy airline tickets without these charges so in the end, the Ryanair flight ended up costing a good bit more than the advertised price. After several complaints and investigations by the consumer groups and EU, it was ruled that all airlines need to show these taxes and fees as soon as you tried to find out the price of a ticket.

For Ryanair however, this was not the end. They started promoting flights where they took care of these taxes and fees and consumer was tempted by nearly free flights yet again. In order for them to recoup a profit, other charges were brought in. You now have to pay for luggage to be checked-in, the actual check-in cost you a good deal, even if you do all the work yourself online. In addition to this, they charge hefty fees to pay for these flights. In true Ryanair spirit, they don’t charge per transaction, but per person per flight. You used to be able to avoid these credit card charged by using the VISA Electron but as of January 2010, they have closed this loop-hole. As they need to provide one free way of paying, they have cleverly joined forces with MasterCard and promote their prepaid card as a free alternative. The only trouble is, it doesn’t only cost you money to charge this card, it also cost you a percentage of the transaction price.

Additional way for Ryanair to make money is to have the voluntary opt-in pre-checked. Instead of asking if you would like travel insurance with your flight, Ryanair has ticked the yes box for you and it becomes your responsibility to un-tick if you do not require this insurance. In order for you to get a good seat, you can pay an additional fee to be able to queue in the priority lane. Whether or not this is worth the money is highly debatable as many do pay for this privilege.

As Ryanair seek out the very cheapest alternatives in order for them to keep their flight tickets low, they usually only fly to smaller airports far away from where you really want to go. They do provide transportation for a cost to the main destination, but it could be hours away. The best thing is to go on the Internet and check out transportation prices and times before you book a ticket to a remote location. They also usually fly very early in the mornings or late in the evenings as this are off-peak times.

There have been many rumours about what Ryanair is trying to do next. Charging for toilets on the plane or having the back of the plane remodelled so that you could fit more people in, standing, are only a few of them. One thing to be sure of, Ryanair will not stop trying to find ways of squeezing money of their passengers in sneaky ways.

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No more free VISA Electron on Ryanair purchases

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Ryanair has done it again. In its endless efforts to make budget conscious travellers pay additional fees on top of the flight charge, they have now decided to end its free use of VISA Electron. This move from Ryanair seems to coincide with the fact that more and more travellers opt for an Electron card to avoid the hefty credit card charges. As the additional fees are what Ryanair makes its money on, it was an inevitable move from the Scrooge-like Mr O’Leary.

Even if the VISA Electron wasn’t widely used and could not be obtained in several countries, there were ways for the traveller to use Internet based VISA Electron cards, such as Entropay. As this knowledge spread on the Internet and Ryanair saw the increase of payments with the Electron card, they seemed to have decided to make its move. As they need to have a free option, they quickly established a relationship with MasterCard and are now offering passengers free credit card charges if the use MasterCard’s prepaid credit card. However, the prepaid card itself is not free of charges so in effect, Ryanair has now managed to make all its passengers pay some sort of fee for paying for its flights.

It is very hard to know exactly how much these prepaid MasterCard actually costs as there are different cars and various ways to pay for using them. The most common methods are a card issue fee, a type of loading charge, cash machine withdrawal charges and monthly fees. For example, Ryanair has introduced its own prepaid MasterCard in the UK and it has a £15.89 annual fee and in addition to this, it costs 50p per purchase.

The best way to minimize the fees are to find sites where you can get a free prepaid card and where the transaction charges are low. For example, This is Money have partnered up with FairFX and through This is Money’s webpage you can order your free prepaid card. It is free to load up if you use a debit card or bank transfer, has no monthly or annual fee and has free Euro and Dollar purchases. It charges a 1.5% fee on sterling transactions. More of these sites might be available to the customers.

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Avoid Ryanair's credit card fee by paying with Electropay

Anyone who has ever booked flights with Ryanair knows the frustration of the added fees that will increase the price substantially. I wrote a blog post about how to avoid Ryanairs credit card fees here and have now tried it. Even if it isn’t a completely free way of getting around the credit card fee, it is a highly recommended approach. The satisfaction of not paying the Euro 5 per passenger, per flight is extraordinary.

To avoid paying the hefty credit card fee that Ryanair imposes, you need to do the following.

Step 1 : Go to Entropays website, click here.

Step 2 : Sign up for Entropay by filling out a simple form. Please note, choose GBP as the account currency. This is the only way if you want Ryanair to recognise this virtual credit card as VISA Electron.

Step 3 : Give them the details of your standard credit card that you want to use to pay Electropay with.

Step 4: load your new virtual credit card with an amount, at least 10 GBP. The best way is to load the card with the exact amount that the flight cost.

You are now set to go. The signing-up only takes a few minutes. And once done, you can use it as many times as you want.

This is not a completely free service. They will charge you 4.95% of the amount you load the card with. For example, if you load Entropay with 10GBP, they will charge you 0.45 GBP. So of course, there is going to be a point where it will cost the same with Entropay as with Ryanair. This will be when you book a single journey for 1 passenger for EUR 101.01. So, if the fare is less than this, it will be cheaper with Entropay. How much cheaper will be depends on the price of the flight. The cheaper the flight, the higher the benefits of using Entropay.

When you book your flight on the Ryanair website, choose the VISA Electron option for paying. This is currently the only option there that is free. Of course, if you live in a country that offers a VISA Electron, you might opt for that one instead of the virtual way.

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Where to find cheap flights

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Cheap flights are available from many vendors and there are a few options to search for these. We all want a bargain flight and with a lot of research on the Internet, you might just be lucky.

So, one of the first things to do after you have decided that it is time to take that next trip is to book your flight. As this often is one of the more expensive parts of travelling, it is important to find a good deal. Where would you buy your tickets? Do shop around but more often than not the following conclusions are worth taking into consideration so that you don't have to spend too long finding that bargain.

1. If you are travelling within Europe andRyanair will take you to your destination, it is without a doubt the cheapest option to book with them directly. That is if you buy your ticket well in advance, mind you not too far away though as that can prove expensive too, don't travel with baggage and hold a VISA Electron. Travelling with Ryanair deserves a few blogs on its own so I will return to the subject.

2. If you are planning a trip further afield, then it will be cheaper to go trough brokers or travel agents rather than buying directly with the airlines. Shop around little but as there aren't that many good cheap sites out there, it won't be too much work. The standard brokers that I would use are Expedia, Ebookers, Lastminute and Gohop. There is one Irish agent however that always come up trumps for me and that is Travelpaths. I have booked many of my flights with them simply because they offer me value for money.

3. There is a 3rd option to consider if you don't mind being kept in the dark about the flight operator etc and that is to go and check out Hotwire. Hotwire provides flights, hotels and car rentals cheap but the snag is that you don't find out all the details until you have actually paid. I haven't yet tried it for flights but the hotel option works brilliantly.

Do you have any other recommendations? I would love to find out...

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• How to avoid paying Ryanair's credit card fees.
• Why only one piece of hand lugguage?

How to avoid paying Ryanair’s credit card fees

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Ryanair is one of the world’s cheapest airlines. This low-cost airlines offers amazing value tickets for flights within Europe, starting at € 0. However, as always there is a snag. You will have to fork out substantially more than the flight price to actually be able to book the ticket. If you do decide that you don’t need much luggage and that the handbag allowance of one bag is sufficient, you will still need to pay to check-in. On top of that, you will have to pay a credit card fee unless you are the lucky holder of a VISA Electron. In the end, the free ticket could cost you a good bit more than you expected.

So, is there a way of getting around this? Well, if you could get your hands on a VISA Electron card which Ryanair doesn’t charge for using, I’d say; go for it. However, that seems to get increasingly hard to do so, especially if you are an adult. There is another option that I have heard about but not yet tried . It won’t be free, but it will cost you less than the €5 single fare credit card fee that Ryanair charge you if the ticket price is low.

Entropay is a company that offers virtual credit cards for a small fee. This fee is currently 4.95% of the amount you load your virtual card with. If you only load it with €10, the fee will be €0.495. As I haven’t used it myself, I can’t vouch for it to actually work but plenty of people swears by it. There is a snag though. When you choose your account currency, you need to pick GBP. That is the only way at the moment to get Ryanair to pick up on this card as a VISA Electron. So, once you have signed up to Entropay and created your virtual credit card, you need to pick VISA Electron when you are paying Ryanair and they credit card fee should be € 0.

Has anyone heard of this before or tried it?

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• Where to find cheap flights.
• Why only one piece of hand luggage