Ibiza in Winter
The first direct Ryanair winter flight from the UK to Ibiza - 28th October 2008
Flight FR 9251 was slightly late leaving London Stansted on a beautiful if cold Tuesday morning the 28th October 2008. After an uneventful flight down from the UK at some 32,000 feet, we left the Spanish mainland and flew down to the island through rain cloud, which made it a bit “choppy” but we made a perfect landing in rainy Ibiza spot on time. On Ryanair you know that the plane is on time landing because they play a recorded bugle call to announce it! Not everybody’s cup of tea, but if that’s their way it’s a small price to pay for a direct scheduled air service to the UK in winter.
There were one hundred and forty seven of us on this, the first flight; not a bad number all other things being equal. EasyJet still haven’t finally stopped their schedule and Ryanair themselves had put out hardly any publicity! The Boeing 737-800 had seats for 189, meaning that the plane was 77.8% loaded.
I was interested to see who the passengers were. Some were clearly “locals”, others looked as if they were making a last minute holiday dash over (poor things in view of the weather) and yet others were business people, call them commuters if you like. My immediate neighbours on the plane were marketing types - preparing already for the 2009 season; in fact there was a jolly good cross section of the target market that I imagine the airline will try to attract and retain.
My trip went almost without a hitch, but in this case the ‘hitch’ really was my fault. I had booked and checked in ‘on-line’ and was only carrying the permitted standard hand luggage; that meant I could get straight off the ‘Stansted Express’ train and go immediately through security to the departure gate. Security read the bar code on the boarding pass I had printed the night before; I was ‘airside’ in less than fifteen minutes. All that was then needed to board the flight was the “boarding pass” strip at the bottom of the check in document. The instructions on the document say “Tear off here and hand this portion to the gate agent”, which I did, fine so far.
What I had failed to do was to keep the remaining portion of the “pass document” which meant that I had nothing to give to the flight attendant as I boarded - my big mistake! He kindly allowed me to board (after all I had passed all the checks, made it to the plane and my name was on the manifest) but for readers of this piece - remember don’t throw anything away until you are on board and sitting down!
And now a few words to the wise, study the published conditions and tariff, it’s on the company website! There was some dark muttering amongst the people travelling with me about how strict Ryanair is about following their rules - and make no mistake, they are strict and rigid. That is how they keep prices rock bottom. Follow the rules to the letter and you’ll have no problems. Make certain that your hand baggage is the correct size, not roughly the right size THE right size!
Read very carefully what the rules say about what is classified as hand baggage - for example, so as to count as one piece of hand baggage, ladies’ handbags must be able to be put inside whatever nominated ‘carry on’ luggage is being taken on board. If this is not possible the airline will count the handbag and the ‘carry on’ case as two pieces, put the ‘carry on’ in the hold and charge accordingly.
Make absolutely certain that you do not go over the permitted weight allowance for a carry on bag, (at the time of writing this was 10kg per person) any more and it must be paid for and so forth. If you are used to travelling on ‘high end - “leave it to me Sir I’ll make sure there are no problems”‘ flag carrying airlines, this regime will come as something of a shock and cost a great deal more than you might expect.
And don’t fool yourself by thinking that you can ‘blag it’ with the ground or cabin staff, Ryanair is forecast to carry 58 million passengers in year 2008 - 2009 and they’ve seen all the tricks before! Read “Air Babylon” by Imogen Edwards-Jones if you don’t believe me! So just to reiterate - read what it says on the tin, do what it says inside and you’ll have a perfect experience, even if you do have to walk for miles to reach your gate at Stansted! Surprisingly we were bussed the 200 metres or so from the aircraft stand to immigration when we got to Ibiza!
A word of praise for the on board team that brought us down to Ibiza. Captain “Marvin” and his first officer did very well; they found Ibiza first time without having to stop off in Barcelona or Palma to ask the way and well done for the landing, the final approach was a bit ‘lumpy’ but we landed first time round with a hardly a shudder! Congratulations too to the flight attendants, they were beautifully turned out, charming, ’smiley’ helpful and efficient without being over the top.
Finally, it is now down to us - the people of Ibiza, to support Ryanair’s initiative. I know that most of us don’t like being organised in the way Ryanair does things. Remember though that we haven’t had a direct winter service to the UK for twelve years since the ill fated days of “Excalibur Airlines”, Excalibur shut down in June 1996.
We have begged, schemed and pleaded for an airline to take our needs seriously; now we have one - lets give them our utmost support - we need this service and so does the island at large. The more people that we can encourage to visit, whether they are friends, neighbours, relatives, sailors, divers, walkers, conference and event promoters - whoever, the better it will be for us all and the economy of Ibiza.
By Carl Haig
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Tags: Ibiza, Ryanair, Winter Tourism
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