The perseption of Ryanair is very selective and many will have their own personal opinions on whether to avoid totally, fly with reluctance or believe FR is the best thing to have happened in recent aviation history. As these are personal opinions they could be argued until the cows come home.
However on the comment about bashing FR compared to the other low cost carriers, personally I feel FR have brought this on themselves. Michael O'Leary (and thus FR) often act in a controversial, arrogant and obnoxious manner, whether justified or not, so this stirs tensions and emotions. If Ryanair's public relations were a little more sophisticated and professional, I think people would not have the opinion of an arrogant company putting itself on a pedestal, and thus want to knock it down.
Easyjet et al mostly just seem to bubble away, doing what they do fairly quietly and contently and so not drawing much attention. But with FR constantly in the media, controversial advertising, out spoken about this and that, etc, only gives the wider public (and those with aviation knowledge) more of a reason to speak back and I suppose bash. Over the past number of years it has now got so commonplace, that the militant FR now have an equally militant public bashlash going on. Some of this may be purely unfounded as blueplatinum mentioned, however this culture I feel has grown out of FR own actions and public relations.
Nail, Hit, Head.
I'm not an FR basher, I don't particularly like them but I can appreciate the success story that MOL has created and I will not discredit them at any given opportunity just because they aren't my favourite airline or represent what I believe the industry is about.
However, it's
PR does tend to stick two fingers up at anyone whether that by competition, the authorities and even passengers. There are one or two out spoken views of MOL that i agree with (i.e ash cloud disruption/provision) but he is generally a bit too outspoken. Also, the constant cost cutting exercises hit a chord with many passengers regardless of whether they are
PR stunts or not. It's amazing how many passengers truly believe they have to pay to use the toilet. I think we're at a point now where we have reached the bottom of what people think is acceptable. Buy on board, pay for hold bags and pay for priority boarding is widely accepted now but I don't think there is an appeitite for anything else and so when these ideas are put out into the open arena, like BFS101 has said, it can turn passengers against them.
I work for EZY and there are ways that they can do things better but (and I maybe biased) the orange brigade have always had the onboard crews to make up for any short fallings. Easyjet crews are by and large widely complimented on their customer service and personality. Plus on an anecdotal level, we quite often get the "way ahead of Ryanair" comments.
There will always be this argument about Ryanair. Those who don't like them will always go OTT whilst those who do always seek to defend them all the way. I don't particularly like Ryanair but I recognise their success and what they're good at but there is a whole host of other issues that I don't agree with.