Michael O'Leary, the CEO of Ryanair, once called British Airways "expensive bastards". Having recently spent almost £300 for a one hour flight from London Gatwick to Cork I would have to agree. Except it wasn't with BA I booked the ticket, this was Ryanair. Despite booking the ticket seven weeks ahead of the flight date this is the ridiculous price I had to pay over Christmas for the short haul flight.

The Boss of the low-cost airline has also been quoted to say, "No, we shouldn't give you a bloody cup of coffee. We only charge 19 euros for the ticket."  However, even if you pay close to £300 you still have to pay for your own coffee (incidentally, the average price for a BA flight is £178).

Low cost airlines are superb, as long as they remain low-cost, but if you have to pay above average prices for no frills then you don't ever get a sense of customer loyalty. Since Go was absorbed into Easyjet and Barbara Cassani its CEO left the low-cost airline industry any sense of customer service vanished with her. It certainly doesn't exist in Ryanair. 

Despite being unable to book an EasyJet Flight online due to a bug or lack of information on their website I'm still very much a fan of this low cost airline. But now that they've discontinued the Gatwick (LGW) to Cork(ORK) route, choice is limited.

In fact, there were no available flights on BA when I wanted to travel, and I didn't want to fly from Heathrow. This only left me with one choice, Ryanair.

After you've paid for each direction on the flights, added almost £50 in taxes, another £7 for a bag, and a further £1.40 to pay by debit card, the total price comes in just shy of  £300.

Surely it's wrong to pay this for a Ryanair flight where you don't even get a seat pocket.

All I wanted to do was book a cheap flight. Surely this should be a simple operation on the internet. I've done it so many times before; you select your dates, you modify your preferences, you go ahead and book the flight.

I get to the familiar easyjet screen, pictured below. I click "Show Flights"

At this point I'm expecting to be taken to a screen where I can look at flight options, instead the following alert pops up.

I click ok, the only option and back at the familiar screen

I click "Show Flights"

At this point I'm expecting to be taken to a screen where I can look at flight options, instead the following alert pops up.

I click ok, the only option and back at the familiar screen

I click "Show Flights"

........oddly, as I type Ryanair into my address bar these words from Yeats drift into mind "Now that my ladder's gone, I must lie down where all the ladders start". The words are from "The Circus Animals Desertion" Ah, maybe thats the connection