Ryanair - Connecting Flights

In the past if you wanted to connect between two Ryanair flights - you had to make two separate bookings and hope your first flight wasn't delayed.  But sometimes it was the best option, and as long as you left enough time between flights, you could be reasonably sure of making your second flight!

Back in October 2010, I flew on Ryanair's first flight from Nador to Beauvais - and whilst I travelled on to London by Eurostar, my sister flew on to Dublin with Ryanair a few hours later.

Then in April 2017, Ryanair announced that they would start offering a limited number of connecting flights - but I'm not sure if it actually happened at the time.

Now though you definitely can book some through tickets on Ryanair - where the risk of missing the connection passes to the airline - with some big caveats.

Ryanair will only sell you connecting flights if the transfer time is between 2.5 hours and 6 hours, and only at certain airports.  They will only transfer your hold luggage for you at Rome Fiumicino, otherwise you need to collect it and check it back in again (or possibly Bergamo and Oporto as well - depending on which Ryanair webpage you read).  Although if you're waiting around for hours at the airport, you may be happy for something to do!

What we don't know is what will happen when things (inevitably) go wrong for a small number of passengers whose first flight is delayed.  Will Ryanair put you up in a hotel if you need to wait 24 hours (or more) for the next flight to your final destination?  Will Ryanair put you on a different airline's flight if the next Ryanair flight is more than 24 hours away?  There aren't many examples in the chatrooms yet about how Ryanair performs when it comes to irregular operations for connecting passengers.

The restriction is not just on the connecting airport, it's also on the departing airport.  Ryanair doesn't currently offer any connecting flights from any London airport (presumably because of concerns about delays arriving into any connecting airport).  From the UK, only departing passengers from Bristol, Manchester and Edinburgh are offered connecting flights.

Many of the destinations that Ryanair offer as connecting flights are in Italy, with the second sector being a domestic flight from Bergamo or Fiumicino airport - and yes, I know that Athens isn't in Italy!

If you are offered a connecting flight, it's made quite clear on the booking screen

And once you click on 1 Stop you see the details of the two flights, including how long you will be sitting around the airport

So whilst the connecting options that Ryanair offer are extremely limited, and I wouldn't be totally sure about how they will treat passengers if things go wrong, with the limited number of flights currently available this may be an attractive option for some passengers.

Redeeming Avios in Club

As long as you fly once a year with your British Airways Executive Club number tagged to a flight, you gain the benefit of much lower taxes/fees on shorthaul redemption flights - BA call in Reward Flight Saver (RFS).  This means that instead of being Lufthansa redemption levels of taxes/fees - where the points price can be the same as the cash price - the flight will cost 17.50 gbp per sector in Economy, and 25.00 gbp per sector in Business class.

There's a well know trick to reduce the taxes/fees on the ex-EU sector by booking two singles.  For example an Economy seat from DUB to LHR currently costs 12.59 gbp (instead of 17.50) and a Business seat also costs 12.59 gbp (instead of 25 gbp).  So if you're booking a return ex-UK it always worth checking if it's cheaper to book as two singles, especially if travelling Business class (although there may be other reasons you don't want to).

I was recently looking up ex-DUB flights to Rome (connecting in LHR) on the Avios website, and it was charging the expected 41,000 avios, but requesting 100 gbp in taxes in fees.
I tried booking DUB-LHR-FCO as a one way ticket and FCO-LHR-DUB as another - but it still kept trying to charge me 50 gbp for each ticket.

This seemed strange, so I scooted over to the BA website, and for exactly the same flights they wanted 41,000 avios and 79.10 gbp
Booking it as two separate tickets (DUB-LHR-FCO and FCO-LHR-DUB) they wanted 31.26 gbp and 47.84 gbp - so no additional saving to be had !

Booking through the BA website, you also get a lot more choice on which connecting flights to take - with the Avios website, they just give a single connecting option for each initial flight.  This may not be an issue, but worth remembering if you don't like what's offered.

What I don't know is whether you would be charged the lower amount if you weren't eligible for RFS - that would be perverse ... but possible !