Ryanair - New Website Woes (Merged)

[Selfloading]

What a load of rubbish, been trying for an hour to book some flights :ugh:

Edit: Ah well got me flights to Madrid eventually :ok:

[LGS6753]

Since being off-line over the weekend, the Ryanair website has not performed properly, and I (and many others) have so far been unable to make any bookings, despite trying for 8 hours or so.

Ryanair is an airline that takes all (97%?) of its bookings online, and it's one of the best-known and most visited sites on the net. This failure is a catastrophic disaster, costing some £7,000,000 per day in lost sales.

I just hope they plan their aircraft maintenance better than this....

[kingair9]

Ah, come on - let's not panic.

The will just introduce a Lavatory Usage Fee on board and the losses will be compensated within days...

:}

[slip and turn]

My goodness you are right - unbelieveable after 48 hours since going live again :hmm:

I tried to book something yesterday and found it was completely abortive all day, but saw enough to note that the web page title included the name "SkySales" on URLs with domain bookryanair.com. Ryanair used to use skylights.com or something similar. Have they changed suppliers?

The website was singularly responsible for their massive growth starting 8 years ago or whenever the style was first used ... they have retained the main "feel" of the booking part of the website ever since and I don't blame them from a business point of view.

Tonight it is just incredibly slow, but the flights available for your dates booking page does appear eventually, but not fast enough to prevent customers posting on PPRuNe while they are waiting :p

The dumb thing is that it seems to be pictures that are causing delayed page downloads e.g. www.bookryanair.com/SkySales/images/Ryanair/b-plane-CB-dn.gif (http://www.bookryanair.com/SkySales/images/Ryanair/b-plane-CB-dn.gif) , which apparently is a necessary part of the Summary of Flights selected page, has been downloading on my machine for half the time I have been working on this post and still is :uhoh: - I'll put it out of its misery very shortly :ok:

If I was MO'L I think I'd make sure my doctor was sat somewhere closeby monitoring my cardiac function through these testing times :eek:

What's the shareprice been doing?

[lexoncd]

Tis true I fear. Not been able to view the new system since it went live.

oops......costly issue I fear.....

[slip and turn]

To be fair, that little plane picture is downloadable again now, and the website is just about usable.

Probably quite busy with the 1p taxes and charges included sale that's on now ...

[greywolf20k]

To be fair to the poor Ryanair tech team whom I am sure will be asked to explain to the board, I think this report where Bill Gate's compared the computer industry to the car industry may be somewhat relevant if he had perhaps done the same with the aviation industry (go General Motors):
http://www.netlingo.com/more/carsandcomputers.cfm

I know you were joking, but the performance of their website should by no means be compared to the performance of their aircraft :)

[MrSoft]

What an odd project - they have just created a replica of their old interface. Leads me to think that they have selected a new supplier for the hosting and told them to 'copy the site', presumably a commercially motivated selection pure and simple. It beggars belief that such lame performance would not have been apparent during final testing and no doubt the old providers are killing themselves laughing now.

Ugly as hell but the old site had immense performance and it just shows the risks of messing with something that works. According to rumour I beileve the old site was built by students for next to nothing.

[sitigeltfel]

Why is it so difficult to find out where and when they fly? Try searching on their Timetable facility to see when they actually travel a route and you are asked what dates you want to fly. What I want to see is a simple timetable for a route so that I can build my travel plans around the dates and times on offer, nowhere can I see this info. At the moment even the useless timetable function is not working, type in a route and dates and it chunters away for a few minutes before proclaiming your request done with no info showing! I suppose I could call their help line at a gouging £1 a minute and be put on hold for 20 minutes, that is probably what they want.

[A2QFI]

Has anybody tried to use this function since the new site was launched? I don't mind not being able to book, for now, but I do want to check in!

[randomair]

http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=59778&d=254&h=260&f=3

:=

[LGS6753]

Eventually got through, made my booking and got confirmatory e-mail. But my surname (and my wife's) have got some spurious extra letters in them.
Despite ageing, I can still spell my own surname, so I suppose the glitch was down to the new system.

Do I need to get the names corrected (I intend to check-in online)?
Will I be denied boarding if I don't?
If I do, who should I contact and how? (And will they be sympathetic?)

Help, please!

LGS

[A2QFI]

Some airlines will accept up to 4 incorrect letters in a full name on a ticket, as compared with the passport name. Bet your life that M O'L won't! Try and get them changed is my suggestion

[jack_essex]

Well after nearly screaming at the Ryanair website yesterday I managed to FINALLY book some flights for pennies with no taxes, fees or credit card extras. I was on the site again this evening and was pleased to see it was much quicker. That was until I tried to book something. You can get through to the final booking stage in literally a few seconds and then it just hangs whilst trying to book. After clicking 'Book Now' it took around HALF AN HOUR and then just came back saying ERROR. After telling lot's of my friends about this offer pretty much all of them have just given up completely trying to book with them. My auntie has booked to fly with BA to BCN instead of FR to GRO because like everyone else she couldn't even get passed the homepage (it wasn't even a penny flight). I hope they get this sorted out soon.

Just had another look and you can not search for ANY flights at all (might just be me but I don't think so) The rest of the site is quick but you search for a flight and it just brings a blank page.

[slip and turn]

This is worrying actually ... the booking page is again impossible right now. Late last night I could get in eventually but gone is the trademark "slickness" of being able to use the Back button and expect instant responses ...

It does very much look they may have changed website desgners and or server host, but I cannot believe that they intended to make so few changes this weekend and to continue to stick up two fingers to the OFT ...

I reckon when they went back up live they must surely have already reverted to this wobbly Plan B due to some even more horrendous changeover glitch? ...

The revenue lost to EasyJet and others for a weekend and two whole days worth of chunky DIY summer holiday bookings must be enormous.

What do others reckon?

I reckon they've accidentally slit the throat of their Golden Goose ...

[beamender99]

Ryanair's Head of Communications, Peter Sherrard said the company expects further bedding down problems 'over the next day or two'.

http://www.easier.com/view/Travel/Flights/Ryanair/article-164801.html

also

Ryanair last night appealed for passengers' "patience" as the airline's newly revamped website continues to endure "bedding-down problems" in the coming days.

The low-cost carrier's plea came as customers and industry insiders alike slammed the website's often snail-like pace in dealing with bookings.
Ryanair unveiled the new site on Monday, boasting that it had come back online one day ahead of schedule.
The new ryanair.com, however, was plagued with glitches on launch day and again yesterday as customers reported "frozen screens" for upwards of 10 minutes.
Ryanair last night claimed the website had handled as many as 20,000 bookings per hour during the day's peak.
The airline admitted, however, that bookings had tapered off to a rate of less than 5,000 per hour at some points, "when internet access on ryanair.com was temporarily reduced".
Progress
"We are continuing to make significant progress with the cut over to the New Skies system," said a spokesman.
"However, we expect further bedding-down problems over the next day or two and we ask all passengers to be patient with us, as we complete the largest-ever software changeover undertaken by any airline, anywhere in the world."
Industry insiders, however, were heavily critical of Ryanair's handling of the system changeover.
"What they've tried to do is change their server and front-end system in one fell swoop, those are two things you just don't do together because it's too risky," said one.
Ryanair declined to comment on whether the decision to swap both systems together had exacerbated the situation, with a spokeswoman citing a policy of "not commenting on rumour or speculation".
Industry sources were also surprised by Ryanair's decision to shut its website completely for three days (later reduced to two) to completion the website changeover.
The turbulent day on ryanair.com came as stockbrokers Davy noted that the new website had paved the way for Ryanair to ultimately handle 100 million passengers a year.
- Laura Noonan

[slip and turn]

Pssst!! ... In true RYR fashion, those in the know can circumvent the frozen screen queues behind the "Book Now" button, and instead book the seats they want by hacking straight to http://www.bookryanair.com/SkySales/FRSearch.aspx (http://www.bookryanair.com/SkySales/FRSearch.aspx?culture=EN-GB)

But don't tell anyone or that'll probably freeze solid too :p

Edit: Now I have found that shortcut I have had the chance for a reasonably troublefree browse at the new site functionality - the flight selection page is actually improved for OFT purposes and dare I say is halfway as compliant as EZ's site now. You do get something approaching an immediate fare+tax+charges total when you select each flight sector or click your mouse from one to another. The only charges that get left until last are the priority boarding and airport checkin charges, insurance if you want it and credit card charges (RYR CC fee is per person cf EZs one off CC fee).

EZ's site has its own annoyances - for example you might normally remove insurance but the slightest variation in your booking will add it back again - I'd say that is easier to miss and to end up buying by default than it is with Ryanair.

Someone mourned the passing of the Find Cheapest Flights option - I liked that too ... instead there is now a tick box for "My dates are Flexible" which gives a much more limited week at a view ... I don't recall seeing it before anyway.


So, Ryanair's site is still limping along, but it is usable via the above link (which is actually the "New Search" link used when you've done one search and want to try another, so it's not really a hack, just a shortcut :p)

Incidentally, the cause of the "freezing" reported by many today seems to be as a result of some kind of redirection when you click the front page button that is trying to go to dubyadubyadubya.bookryanair(etc etc)Redirect.aspx....

I originally hacked out the 'Redirect' bit to discover the other link :E

Anyway, hopefully they are now over the worst and they'll fix that pronto ....

[Gwidal]

I visited the site on Friday evening to book some flights that I found on Wednesday, for over the easter period.
I saw that the site was going to be down until Monday, so I waited until then.

I visited the site on Tuesday to find that the site wasn't working or it was extremely slow, or just wouldn't load pages.

I tried to find and book flights earlier today with no luck, the pages just wouldn't load or took forever and then I gave up.

The main thing I don't like is that the "Find lowest fares" option has gone!? why? this was a great feature, I could easily search for lowest fares (because I am flexible with dates) over a 2 week period. Now all I can find is the "my dates are flexible" option, which is not as good. It only shows you 5 days of flights... and you have to load a new page to search later days. (20 mins ago, for some reason this option had disappeared?)

I much prefered the old site.

I'm having to book with easyjet now (also changing airports) because the new Ryanair site is just useless to me right now. I refused to book with easyjet before because they were more expensive... but that doesn't seem the case now, Ryanair seem just as pricey.

[AdamC]

FR's site is now working normally.

It was very very slow on Tuesday afternoon causing me to book 3 of the same flight thinking the system wasn't processing them.. They must think I'm a right idiot, I'm flying from London Stansted to Shannon, London Luton to Shannon and Liverpool to Shannon all in the space of 2 hours... Hmm!! I'll just use the Liverpool to Shannon one please!

Good job it was only 1p for my flight and £1 debit card fee!

[MrSoft]

I see Skytrax is still full of disgruntled passengers, for whom the FR website fell apart mid booking, and who are unable to verify whether their bookings were completed.

I would normally just decamp to Aer Lingus but they're not daft, and prices are sky high on Man-Dub no doubt partly in response to loss of customer confidence in the Ryanair site.

Question, has anyone managed to successfully make a booking in the last week or two, with the Ryanair site? At the moment I daren't even try it.

[al446]

Just tried it, got booking to just short of paying.

[Selfloading]

Yeah I made a booking on the day after the new site went live, £28 total for two return flights to Madrid including one checked in piece of luggage each way :)

[slip and turn]

.... I've booked a number of sectors just fine now, and I have to say I quite like bits of it, but the summer prices are becoming awfully steep :uhoh: ... I have lost the destinations map though ... anyone seen it?

[A2QFI]

No recent troubles with the site but, yesterday at Stansted the security scanner couldn't read my on line check in document and I had to rush back to the check-in desk and re-check in there. If I hadn't been ahead of schedule I could well have missed my flight. Peripherally I suppose this could be regarded as a site problem.

[AdamC]

On Monday all web check-in passengers had to return to check-in and get a boarding card because of "a techincal fault with FR's online check-in system".

Returning on Tuesday from Reus was fine, no problems with using our printed boarding cards.

[MrSoft]

OK, just used it for the first time since the "change".

2 failed attempts where it just timed out before getting to payment page.

3rd time, gave me the payment page - but the screen not displaying correctly (certain drop-down boxes not formatting).

Swallowed hard and pressed "Pay". Fully aware that if it times out here, Ryanair will leave you in the dark for ever, according to customer testimony.

It worked. But it does not inspire confidence. If only Lingus hadn't suddenly upped their Man-Dub fares to £102 per leg they could have all my business.

[Seat62K]

An earlier poster said that his/her OLCI printed boarding pass could not be read at Stansted. I've had the problem of my boarding pass being accidentally scanned twice. This meant, of course, that the system thought that someone else had already entered airside and I, too, was sent to the Ryanair check in desks. Since then I've paid particularly close attention to what the security staff do when I hand over my printed A4 sheet.

[Contacttower]

Online booking doesn't seem to be working.