TRIP REPORT: Ryanair, London Stansted - Zagreb

TRIP REPORT

I took an early morning flight from Stansted to Zagreb priced at an incredible £12.99. I decided to part with an additional £4 in order to reserve seat 22F. For those that haven’t booked a particular seat, check-in for Ryanair’s services, including those operated by Buzz, Lauda Europe and Malta Air, opens 24 hours prior to departure. Those failing to do this and ending up checking in at the airport are slammed with Ryanair’s controversial £/€55 check-in fee.

I found Stansted to be incredibly busy and rather chaotic. Following a quick stop at a disgustingly filthy block of toilets, with nothing to check-in I made a beeline for security. Other than its distance from London, one of the main reasons for Stansted’s poor image amongst passengers is its infamously long security queues. As expected, given the many passengers in the check-in hall, once I had scanned my boarding pass on the automated gates, I was greeted by the sight of a long and snaking queue and was soon barked at by a shouty security staff member who directed me towards the end of the hall. After almost half an hour of queuing, I reached one of the open checkpoints and after some more shouting on the part of the security staff, I passed through this and was free to explore the delights of Stansted Airport’s airside area.

At 0730, Airbus A320-214 9H-LOA could be seen making a gentle touchdown at the end of its two hour early morning flight over from the Croatian capital. Several minutes later, it pulled into stand 44R where an army of ground crew could be seen springing into action. As tends to be the norm with those services operated by their Ryanair and their subsidiaries, and at Stansted in general, once the Airbus came to a halt, no jetbridge would be connected up to the aircraft. Instead, two pairs of airstairs were wheeled up to the Airbus’ front and rear door, with disembarkation commencing a short time later. At 0750, an announcement was made by the gate agent inviting those passengers with Priority Boarding to make their way to the gate. With few appearing to have Priority Boarding that morning, boarding for the masses commenced no more than a couple of minutes later at which point I joined the queue leading up to the gate podium. A short time after joining the back of the queue, I reached the gate podium where two Ryanair agents could be seen scanning passengers’ boarding passes and checking their passports. After receiving a lukewarm greeting from one of these agents, my boarding pass was scanned and passport checked before I was free to head down the stairs to ground floor level. Unsurprisingly given the fact that the Airbus had only pulled into the stand a few minutes arlier, the actual commencement of boarding was yet to begin, with passengers required to wait for several more minutes whilst the aircraft was cleaned in preparation for its next flight.

I climbed up the stairs and joined a short queue before I was greeted by a flight attendant donned in Lauda Europe’s distinctive bright red uniform. Once onboard, I turned left and journeyed into the Airbus’ boiling hot cabin.

Inside, Lauda Europe’s Airbus A320s feature a typically low cost all-economy configuration capable of seating up to 180 passengers. As I journeyed the short distance to my seat, I overheard several of my fellow passengers noting their surprise not to be greeted by the sight of the brash yellow and blue tones that fill the cabins of Ryanair’s more well known Boeing 737s. Instead, Lauda Europe’s Airbus A320s sport more subdued and mature tones, with each seat covered in a faux grey leather cover, whilst no advertisements could be seen stuck to the seat backs on the overhead bins and the safety card rested in the seatback pocket as opposed to being stuck onto seat backs to prevent their disappearance. Given the age of this particular Airbus A320, this featured the older cabin panelling and PSUs which, in spite of the relatively new seats, made the interior appear to be slightly dated. One advantage of Ryanair’s restrictive luggage policy is that unlike on other carriers, there was not too much jostling for space in overhead lockers, nor long queues in the aisle whilst passengers played overhead locker Tetris as they attempted to squeeze their large bags into spaces that they will not fit. With this considered, I made it to seat 22F in almost no time and squeezed into my seat. Fortunately at that time I was yet to be joined by a seatmate and so sliding into my seat was a quick and easy process.

With each seat being noticeably thin in appearance, it did not come of much of a surprise to find that once seated these proved to be relatively firm whilst the legroom was rather dire. Moreover, the seat cushion appeared not to be properly fixed to the seat and kept sliding about for the duration of my flight. In addition, the area around my seat sported a fair few marks and scratches, including pen scribblings. The only positive I had to report on at this stage of the flight was that the area around my seat appeared to be clean and tidy. As on mainline Ryanair, upbeat music accompanied the boarding process which I assume is in place in an attempt to speed passengers up as they make their way to their seats.

At 0816, the captain performed a brief welcome announcement during which they thanked all passengers for flying with Lauda Europe and Ryanair, informing us that we could expect good weather for the duration of the flight. Whilst all passengers had made it to the aircraft in good time, the captain ended this by mentioning that we would not be able to pushback until our scheduled departure time of 0830. At 0822, the words ‘boarding complete’ rang out through the cabin and as expected, the flight appeared to be almost entirely full. That morning, most passengers seemed to be Croatian, with plenty of families travelling presumably to visit relatives. A short time later, the purser performed a welcome announcement which featured the usual welcomes and warnings, during which a dispatcher could be seen leaving the cockpit and making their way out of the aircraft before the cabin door was closed.

The safety demonstration was performed with three crew members undertaking a demonstration in the aisle whilst the purser announced the safety instructions. Unlike Ryanair, all announcements throughout the flight were performed manually. On this note, all announcements throughout the flight were performed in English only and judging by their accents, it appeared as if two crew members hailed from Spain, and the other from perhaps Austria or Germany.

After take off, an announcement was made advertising options of the buy-on-board service. Once this had been done, two crew members rolled an Air Berlin branded trolley to the front of the cabin and then worked their way rearward. With most passengers either asleep or simply uninterested in making any purchases, the cabin crew passed through the cabin rather quickly. Around ten minutes after the bar and snack service had reached the rear of the aircraft, an announcement was made regarding the flight’s duty free service; however, as with the food and beverage options, few passengers appeared to buy anything.

The rest of the flight was rather uneventful. Upon landing, the purser welcomed all to Zagreb and a short time later the aircraft came to a halt at stand E8L. That morning, a good number of passengers seemed to be in a rush to exit and fortunately for those already standing up, disembarkation commenced through both the front and rear doors around three minutes after coming to a stop.

In no rush, eventually I stood up and made my way to the rear of the aircraft where I thanked two crew members before heading down the covered airstairs and walking around the port wing until I reached the terminal. Once there, I headed up the stairs and commenced a short walk to immigration where I joined the non-EU passport queue. With this being shorter than the EU queue and with three booths open, things moved along quickly and after around ten minutes of waiting, I had my passport stamped and headed down to the baggage claim hall before exiting into the landside area.

---

Share your travel experience by submitting a trip report to exyu@exyuaviation.com

---