The following review has been posted on carsurvey.org/air. It's self explanatory. Most Belfast travellers have had little experience of Ryanair. I've flown with them a couple of times from Dublin and this doesn't surprise me at all.
Of course passengers should be on time for their flights but an hour and a half to check in for the short flight to London should be perfectly adequate at an airport as compact as BHD.
Airport management take note. Chances are most of these passengers use BHD every time they fly within the UK.
All the Ryanair destinations currently on offer are also available from BFS with other 'loco' airlines and in the case of Glasgow the airport it uses is actually just outside the city as opposed to just outside Ayr.
Mr. Ambrose should make it clear to Mr. O'Leary he does not like users of his airport being treated this way.
Otherwise people travelling to Glasgow, Stansted and Liverpool might just find the trip to Aldergrove much 'easier' (The 300 bus is very frequent now) than queuing for an hour at BHD only to be told they're too late for their flight.
People travelling to East Midlands may also find bmibaby a safer bet while people travelling to Scotland may still opt to use BHD but will got there in a Dash 8 400 rather than a Boeing 737-800
'What a disastrous experience that I will not be repeating as long as I have air in my lungs.
I live in Spain and was visiting my family back in Ireland. I had taken an Aer Lingus flight to Dublin, which was excellent and was returning Ryanair on their new route from Belfast. I was relaxed that they flew from Belfast to London where I could connect onto a flight to Jerez, my local airport near my house in Spain.
I arrived at Belfast city airport for my flight with Ryanair an hour and a half before the 12.40 flight. I was astonished to see that the queue for check in was past the main terminal doors. I soon discovered that they only had one check in desk opened for three flights, potentially 3 full 737’s. I had about over 100 passengers in front of me waiting to check in. Over an hour later I was tenth from the front when I heard the check – in agent tell the customer in front of me they were late and check in was now closed. You could imagine the scene. I wasn’t the only customer going to London in this slow moving line.
The options Ryanair gave me were, get a refund for my baggage fee, but not the ticket as they blamed me on arriving late, or pay £138 for a later flight, that would mean I would miss my connection to Spain. I explained that I was early for check in and that there was no way I could of checked-in within their allocated time given that one check desk was open for three flights. I was told there was nothing they could do about accommodating me on a later flight to Spain,, even if I had paid for a new flight to London.
No airline should be allowed to operate like this, it is the worst customer service I have even encountered in my lifetime. To me it was theft as there is little chance you could have checked in on time even if you got to the airport two hours beforehand. I dislike everything that Ryanair stand for and I hope the new routes from Belfast fail. This will save people the heartache of this sub-standard airline.
I ended up leaving from Belfast international airport with Easyjet who fly to Malaga, about 200 miles from my house, who’s fare was high as it was last minute, but still lower than the fare Ryanair wanted in order to re book me on two new flights. To add insult to injury Ryanair have not refunded my two baggage fees to my credit card, due to lost paperwork.'