Hey Nick...
to clarify your concerns, what passengers often refer to "bad landings" or "hard landings" are not very pleasent, but 100% safe.
Firstly, the boeing 737-800's landing gear was designed to withstand landings with no flare at all... hence there is no structural problem to worry about, and if a landing does go over a certain limit in terms of "hardness" (measured in terms of number of g's) it is reported by the crew and at the same time registered in what is called OFDM which is basically an on board parameter reader... the aircraft needs to then be inspected by an engineer.
Secondly, boeing reccomends "positive" landings for a variety of reason ie. the spoilers deploy faster, the aircraft is firmly on the ground and braking action occurs faster. This is especially important in a situation with a wet or short runway or with tailwind.
The moment you gotta start worrying is when the aircraft you are flying in starts "floating" on a short runway... hence sometimes it's better to do a "bad landing" (ie not pleasent for the paxes) but you've touchdown in the right spot of the runway.
Furthermore, Stansted is a big training base for newly trained first officers, hence when flying to or from stansted there's a possibility that you are flying in a training flight.
Often the new FO will be flying the aeroplane under the supervision of a training captain, and obviously the first landings he will do will be unpleasent. But again, safe.
Flights are usually divided between first officer flying (taking off & landing) and captain flying... obviously the captain will be flying the sectors that are more demanding in terms of weather/performance/runway etc.
All airlines have young pilots. Ryanair is a very big company that is expanding very rapidly, hence they require alot of pilots some of which are new and come directly from flight school and sometimes very young (18,19...).
Hope this clarifies your concerns, hope it wasn't me landing the aeroplane u were on
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Alex.