Ryanair - Low Cost Carrier - What you need to know about cutting costs of budget flights

Ryanair, love it or hate it, is a great success and a popular low cost carrier. As Ryanair destinations continue to multiply, so do their customers and their cheap fares and reliable flights are enabling not only those on modest incomes, but the positively impecunious, to travel to new, and previously undiscovered regions.

Limousin, in S W France, is one of those new Ryanair destinations and Limoges Airport has doubled in size since I arrived here about eight years ago. It has opened this previously hidden rural heartland of France to the average traveller and has enabled a tourist industry to establish itself in this relatively poor, agrarian backwater. You can now visit the beautiful countryside, the lakes and rivers, the medieval towns and fabulous, fairy tale castles for a very reasonable fee. Sometimes, if you can catch the offers, you can bag a real bargain.

Check out Ryanair flights here! Ryanair.com

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No such thing as a free lunch? For lunch read flight. Well, Ryanair have, in the past, released free tickets. I've flown from Limoges to England for 1 centime - yes 0.01 euros. Have a look at the interview below with Michael O'Leary. He is right, there's no really big catch but there are many additional charges and they are really not obvious until you start the booking process, so don't be fooled by the price of 9.99 euros that jumps out at you initially. I for one find that booking on line is a minefield, so here are my tips for getting those excellently priced tickets without falling into any of the Ryanair 'traps for the unaware and unworldly' - ie ME!

I know, it doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, and booking your ticket is much trickier. Here goes:

Getting the bargains

1. No secret here. Check the site regularly and often. Be flexible about times
2. You'll see that certain periods are cheaper than others
3. Certain days are cheaper than others
4. Some flights are seasonal - Leeds Bradford, for example, doesn't start until 27th March 2011

Booking the ticket online

1. Ask a friend to help you book your ticket - two heads are better than one
2. Allow plenty of time to read everything and make your booking
3. Be aware when looking at the prices that there is a 6 euro online booking charge each way and probably an additional £5 or 5€ charge. See below for other add-ons and charges
4. Read all the rules and regulations carefully
5. Especially read the Ryanair baggage allowance rules and regulations
6. My advice for a really budget-friendly holiday is to travel light and take only hand luggage
7. Read all the tiresome anti-terrorist information
8. My tip - don't take any liquids, make-up etc. If you take make-up, take the minimum and organise the special, seal-able plastic bags in advance
9. Remember that your handbag counts as a bag. Make sure it fits into your other hand luggage bag and that this bag is still within size and weight limits
10. Make sure that you UNCHECK all offers that you don't want
11. Uncheck insurance if you don't want it. This is hard to do. The NO INSURANCE option is hidden in the middle of a pull-down list
12. When you get to the part when you have to fill in your details, have all your information ready. Type it in a Word Document first as I find that I get timed out while I dither over filling in the form
13. Make sure that all your details are correctly filled in and are the same as in your passport and other documents - you'll get stung for any changes, (see below)
14. Make up your mind before booking as to times, dates and who is going as changes will be mega-costly. On the other hand, I wonder if there is anything to stop you just ditching the tickets and re-booking? Much cheaper. (Please let me know if you've done this).

Ryanair Checkin

1. You have to carry out an on-line check in between 15 days and 4 hours before your flight
2. If you don't do this you'll be stung! I had to pay a 15 euro 'fine' or 'penalty' when the rules first changed and I missed this on-line check in
3. The checking in is straightforward, just follow instructions.
4. Print out your card and take it with you

Hang on to your cash on the flight

1. Don't cheat with luggage. Measure and weigh your luggage carefully so that you're not caught out at the airport
2. Take your own food. You can take an empty water bottle through to the lounge and fill up there
3. Don't take the priority boarding option, I can't see any advantage myself
4. Don't be tempted by scratch cards, duty-free and other sales ploys, of which there are many
5. Be careful about buying tickets for buses or journeys after the flight through Ryanair. I'm not saying these are a bad thing, and they may be to your advantage. Check out prices of transport from the airport before you arrive at the airport so you can spot a bargain or a trap in advance

The rules, flights, airports, charges etc change frequently. Make sure you check every time. General Terms and Conditions

Travel cheap and travel light; why carry all those books when you can take your favourite literary friend - Kindle? I belong to a reading group in Limousin, and our members love, love, love their 'reading devices'. Not like reading from a screen at all, so no eye-ache. If you're a voracious reader, what do you do with all those paper books? Where do you store them all and how green are they? Think of all those trees.

I worried about how much it was going to cost me for the books, but so many are free: all those published long enough ago to be out of copyright, so you'll have a world of Classics at the touch of a key.

New books though, are not all that cheap, but this seems to be an anomaly which sould be rectified, but even so, you're not losing anything, are you?

Obligatory charges which they may as well have added to the price!

1. As mentioned above there is a on-line booking fee
2. As also mentioned above, there is an administrative charge of £4 or 4€ unless you pay with Mastercard Prepaid card.

Other charges

1. After that, unless you walk onto the plane with your tiny hand luggage bag and nothing else there are charges which are many and various. Baggage charges are the most obvious, but there are special charges for unusual or valuable baggage such as musical instruments
2. There are charges for babies, and all manner of services
3. There are charges for changes to your flight and killer charges of £150 for a change in your name

When you select your flights, Ryanair will calculate the price and you will find a link just underneath the Total price saying "Click here for Further details" This will bring up the page illustrated (if you are in France). Do please read it!

Ryanair passengers will be charged the £6 administration fee per person per journey from November 2011. The only way to avoid the fee is to sign up for the new Ryanair pre-paid Cash Passport card which will be available from 4 October 2011.

More cost

• You buy the card for £6, although each customer will be given a £6 Ryanair travel voucher.
• You pay £4 charge for withdrawing cash from the card over the counter at a bank
• You pay £2 fee for using the card at an ATM
• You pay 50p charge for all transactions, other than Ryanair bookings, from April 2012
• You pay a rolling fee of £2.50 if a card is not used for six months (no charge for topping up the card though).

The card will be out in other European countries soon;

For more information see the original BBC News article.

Since moving to France from England eight years ago, I've flown fairly regularly with Ryanair to London Stanstead, Liverpool and Leeds Bradford. I've found the Ryanair flights themselves to be:

• Perfectly acceptable and business-like
• The staff to be pleasant and helpful
• The planes to be clean
• Flights to be punctual and often early
• The price to be good and even absolutely marvellous

In the chart below I have only listed flights from Britain to the airports around us in S W France. Please check the Ryanair web site for other destinations. Please be ware, also, that some of these are seasonal only.

Don't be put off - just be forewarned and take your time to make your booking - especially the first one;

This article is to help people who want to book tickets. Please don't harangue me about the politics of Ryanair, (the link to the BBC Panorama programme exposes all their various sins), or to the un-greeness (excuse the expression) of air travel - I've included links to some sites dealing with all of that.

Without Ryanair I simply would not be able to see my family more than perhaps once a year, let alone take my son to see his Gran, Aunt and cousins. Whatever their faults, Ryanair and the other low cost carriers have done much to democratise air travel.

If you have any comments about your experience as a passenger, for better or worse, please do share with us in the comments box below.

Words of Warning: I'm an ordinary passenger, not an expert. These are my own observations and are intended only to draw your attention to parts of the on-line booking process that I have found difficult. Ryanair also change their procedure, rules and regulations so please do make sure that you are clear about what you are booking. I can't take any responsibility.

Having said that, if you find discrepencies or notice gaps in this advice, please do leave a comment below so that we can help other people to take advantage of what really are genuinely brilliant offers.