A couple of months ago I happened to be surfing the web and came across a post mentioning that Ryanair had a sale on where they paid all the taxes and charges. This seemed like a great offer, and for only 2p each we could take a midweek day trip to Dublin from EMA! Now I will say now I always swore never to fly Ryanair no matter how cheap. But a flight for 1p each way cannot be beaten, and to be honest even if it all went tits up for 2p what can we expect?

We went ahead and booked a trip for our 5th wedding anniversary (I know, a big spender me), and booked the 6.35 flight out of EMA and the 21:45 flight back from DUB to give us a good day seeing the sights of a place we have never been to.

The day soon came around, and at 3.30 am I was woken to “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” by The Kinks, playing on Smooth Radio. We decided to take the Corsa rather than the Mondeo to use a bit less fuel, and were on the road by 3.55am. The M1 was nice and quiet at this time on a Thursday morning and we arrived at EMA 25 minutes later at 4.20am, just as a UPS MD11 took off from runway 27.

As we arrived at the terminal building, we noticed huge concrete walls temporarily erected along the length of the front of the airport to stop any rogue jeeps accidentally mounting the kerb and crashing into the building. They make the airport look more like Beirut than EMA!

We walked into the terminal building, relieved to see the queue out of the door was for an easyJet flight heading for somewhere on the Mediterranean. The Ryanair queue in contrast was non-existant, we walked straight up to the desk and checked in. I was surprised that the boarding cards were pre-printed, and the agent hand wrote our names on the boarding passes! We walked through towards the old terminal and I was most surprised at how much it had changed since I was last here a couple of years ago! Where previously was the old check-in hall with shops and restaurants, was now the queue for security! All the shops had gone, and were replaced by airside departures!

There was hardly any queue for security and the Group 4 security men were very friendly and were having a good banter with the passengers. “Are you wearing a belt sir?” the friendly guy asked. “Don’t worry I don’t need one of those with this belly” I replied. “Tell me about it!” he replied, laughing. We went through the metal detector and another happy guy was handing back coats and things. We walked through to departures, where I started to get my bearings again and recognised where I was. On the ramp were three Ryanair 737s, EI-CSG, CSN and CSR as well as an easyJet A319, two BMIBaby 737s and a Thomsonfly 757 at the back of the ramp.

Departures, as usual for EMA, was absolutely packed. Surprisingly for midweek there were very few business men. These were replaced by lots of tourists, including a hen party complete with L plates and shiny wigs, and a group of girls wearing pink T-shirts emblazoned with “Magaluf 2007” on the front and back. Oh how classy EMA has become in the quest to become a leisure airport!

We looked at the departure boards and under the status of our flight (as it did with most of the others) said “Relax and shop”. Nice try, wise guy!

We went through to get an English breakfast (family tradition whenever we fly anywhere) where we followed a family with half a dozen kids with names such as “Callum”, “Jaydon” and “Daryl”. Judging by the T-Shirts and shorts they were headed somewhere warm. We tucked into our sausage, bacon and egg before heading back to check the screens. Our gate was displayed and was in the UK/Ireland departure lounge, a lovely little room that we usually end up in when we fly domestically in the UK or Ireland. Shortly after we sat down, there was some activity at the gate and the Ryanair logo appeared on the screen.

We watched a couple of people head for the gate, so we followed them and waited in line. The procedure was very organised, with a priority queue and a “tight arsed bastard” queue (of course it wasn’t really named that). We were in the latter, being tight arsed bastards and all that. The priority queue was quite long, I estimated around 50 people in that line. Soon after, they were invited to board and within a couple of minutes they had all gone, and our line was split into two so we could be boarded quickly. The ground crew had the queue moving very quickly, it was literally a case of tearing the boarding pass and through we went.

We walked out onto the ramp and towards our waiting aircraft, EI-CSG, shining in the morning sunshine. We headed straight for the rear steps, as there was a queue on the front steps containing all the priority queue passengers! By boarding at the rear we were onboard before most of them, who appeared to be stuck behind passengers stowing their hand baggage in the first few rows. We didn’t pay any money for that and were sat down before any of them!

We took our seats around row 26 on the left hand side (didn’t note seat numbers). It was somewhere in seat A/B about halfway between the wing and the tail.

Date	5 July 2007
Airline	Ryanair
Flight Number	FR535
From	East Midlands (EMA)
To	Dublin (DUB)
Aircraft	Boeing 737-800
Registration	EI-CSG
STD/ATD	06:35 / 06:35
STA/ATA	07:35 / 07:30
Flight Time	0:55

 

Legroom wasn’t bad, typical short haul really. The cabin crew were very young, one of them looked no older than about 18. They were mostly of Eastern European descent, apart from one of them clearly a local lass judging by her accent!

There were a few adverts on the overhead bins, but only advertising a special offer Ryanair have on alcohol. There were the seatback safety cards, actually a really clever idea thinking about it – no wastage, and when you travel on a ferry for example the safety cards are on the wall. The seats didn’t recline but there were window blinds, which I wasn’t expecting.

As we sat down I heard a mobile phone ringing. I thought somebody had forgotten to switch it off, but then it transpired to be an advert over the PA for an Irish mobile phone company. They played some generic music for a bit, then there was another advert for the alcohol offer they have, where a jolly Irish bloke rambled on about offers on “Gin! Rum! Vodka! Whisky! Cognac!” – before we heard music again. We then had the mobile phone advert on again before the captain came on and welcomed us onboard. He was clearly German, and told us we’d be taking off towards the west, climbing to 18,000ft and flying up to Liverpool before turning left and flying straight to Dublin. The flight would be pretty smooth and the weather in Dublin was cloudy and 14C.

The doors were closed early and the aircraft next to us, headed for Rome, pushed back and faced towards the east. We pushed back just after to face to the west, nose on to the other 737! Okay I thought, how are we going to do this? We ended up pushing back the entire length of the apron, into the far western corner, by far the longest pushback I have ever experienced. We ended up where they park the private jets, right on the western edge of the apron.

 

 

 

The safety announcement followed, and was a recording in an Irish accent, as the teenagers showed us how to use a life vest.

Our engines started and off we went on our taxi to runway 27. We were moving pretty fast, certainly the fastest I’ve taxied on the ground in a 737.

As we approached the runway, we were awoken from our trance by “Gin! Rum! Vodka! Whisky! Cognac!” again – before it all went quiet and we saw the Rome flight head off from runway 27.

 

 

We powered onto the runway and without stopping applied full power and off we went. We rotated around the main apron and saw an Antonov 124 parked on the DHL ramp.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Within a few seconds we were straight into the cloud, and within another few seconds were out into the beautiful summer sunshine above. We climbed out to the west to the south of Derby, and up to our cruising altitude of 18000ft. 

 

 

 

 

The seatbelt signs went off, and the crew came around handing out inflight magazines. We took one, which was pretty dog eared, and had a read. It was pretty good actually, a good read to pass half an hour of the flight.

The crew came round selling drinks and food, but not many took up the offer. We carried on towards the Northwest for a while, way above the cloud. The cabin went pretty quiet and I took a few photos out the window. 

After a while there was suddenly some loud music which turned out to be another advert over the PA, saying how we could win €1 million on Ryanair’s inflight lottery. The youngest cabin crew member got the short straw on this one, as she walked the length of the cabin, selling absolutely no tickets. Shortly after that another advert was played, saying how good the prices were on Ryanair’s duty free. Another crew member went down the cabin for this one. The youngest cabin crew member then walked through the cabin to collect the magazines she had handed out earlier on. The funny thing was, when she handed them out she had ran out before she got to us and had to get some more. When she collected them in however, by the time she got to us she had only one magazine in her hands! Just goes to show the honesty of some people! Needless to say we handed ours back in again.

The German captain came on again to announce we had began our descent into Dublin and would be on the ground within 15 minutes. It was still very cloudy outside, and we hadn’t seen the ground since we left EMA. We descended into the cloud, and emerged underneath them seeing a few sailing boats on the water outside Dublin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First sight of land!

The ground came into view not long after, and we appeared to be on a straight in approach for Dublin. The seatbelt sign came on, and we began our final approach. The approach was smooth and I took more photos out the window.

 

 

 

Massive Graveyard!

 

 

 

We touched down smoothly at Dublin and engaged reverse thrust. We didn’t appear to be slowing down though, and used about ¾ of the runway to slow enough to taxi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We exited to the right and began our taxi to the terminal. There was quite a lot of construction going on, lots of cranes and things.

 

 

 

 

We taxied past neat rows of Aer Lingus, Lufthansa and BA aircraft parked neatly at airbridges, before arriving at Ryanair City – a portacabin surrounded by FR aircraft. In fairness this is because they are currently rebuilding this area of the airport, and it wasn’t bad at all inside.

 

 

 

 

 

We pulled onto stand and the engines were shut down. We chuckled as a couple of Irish lads pushed the steps to the aircraft! 

The doors at the rear were soon opened and we walked the few rows back to the door, saying goodbye to the flight attendant as we left. We walked across the back of the wing and into the terminal building. We emerged into a huge room that was packed full of passengers waiting for their flights. For a temporary building it was pretty roomy inside, and we made our way through this area to start our walk to the terminal. There was a sign that said “Immigration 10 minutes”, which gave us an idea of how far we had to walk! It was a very long walk along the corridors with wooden floors, sounding like a herd of elephants walking through as we passed adverts for Vodafone on the walls. Eventually we arrived at immigration and had only to flash our passports to get through, they weren’t even examined by the immigration guys. Interestingly, all FR arrivals come in this way so I guess even domestic passengers have to carry passports to arrive at DUB.

From here we emerged into arrivals, and headed out to the bus stop to see about getting our bus into Dublin. We caught the Airlink 747 bus into Dublin, and drove into the city. Dublin is a very weird place, it looks like England in places with council houses, parks and underpasses, but then you see the European road signs, measured in km, foreign number plates and it begins to look like Europe. By the time we arrived in downtown Dublin on O’Connell Street it was reminiscent of an American city with long, straight streets and old buildings.

We arrived into the centre of Dublin near to the huge spike on O’Connell Street. It was the middle of morning rush hour and everywhere was packed! We popped into a corner café to get a coffee and wait until the rush died down and the tourist information centre opened at 9am. We then walked up to the tourist information centre, and bought our tickets for the open top bus tour of the city.

We decided to stop off for Kilmainham Gaol, which was most interesting and very spooky, when you see where people were executed and where they took their last walks, as well as the dire conditions there – during the Irish potato famine an 8 year old girl was sentenced to a year’s hard labour in Kilmainham for stealing a loaf of bread!

We then continued on our tour and visited the Jameson Distillery, which isn’t actually a distillery any more as it is all done in Cork! The tour was very interesting though and culminated in a shot of Jamesons on the rocks – which I actually thought was a lot nicer than the Scottish stuff, but maybe that was our Irish tour guide Orlaigh brainwashing us a bit!  

Once we’d finished here we went back into the centre of Dublin and visited a few shops, before deciding to do the tour again as the tickets were valid for 24 hours! We went the full loop again before getting off at Dublin Bus for our ride back to the airport.

The Airlink took 45 minutes to get back to the airport as the traffic was terrible, we eventually arrived at around 17:30. On the recommendation of a fellow A.netter, we asked for directions to the Coachman’s Inn and after being told “It’s a 10 minute walk away” we embarked on our 20 minute walk to the middle of nowhere to find it! It was a very nice pub though, and we had a 4-course sit down meal for €16 each which was pretty reasonable. We finished our meal at 19:15 and thought we’d better start heading for the airport. It was typical Dublin weather outside, throwing it down with rain, and we hailed down an empty cab who was headed back to the airport. He agreed to take us, and when we pulled up it was going to cost €5.80 for the 5 minute ride. We only had €3 in change and a €50 note (it was the end of the day!) and we offered him the note and he was like “How can I change dat?”. I offered to run in and get him a smaller note and he said “I haven’t got time for that, dust give me your change” which we did! We were quite pleased that we’d managed to short change a taxi driver, makes a change from them ripping us off!

We checked in where again we were first in the queue, before heading straight through to departures. There was a very short line for security, and in no time we were airside browsing through the shops. On checking the screens we were down for departure from gate A69, and the signs indicated this was a 10 minute walk away.

We walked down towards the portacabin and sat on the comfy seats just outside before going through. I watched a few Ryanair aircraft outside, as the clouds rolled in from the west and dumped a whole load of rain on the airport.

About an hour before departure we went through to the departure area which was very busy.

 

 

There were several FR flights leaving, for Newcastle, Bristol, Manchester, London and ours to Nottingham. There were a couple of plane spotters there who turned out to be headed for EMA on our flight, complete with binoculars and notepads. I wondered if they were A.netters too!

The Manchester flight closed at what was to be our gate, and they appeared to be having trouble pulling the airstairs up. The aircraft sat there for a few minutes as a couple of people started to queue at the gate for the Nottingham flight. We joined them and the gate agent was frantically searching for a sign that said “Nottingham” to place above the door. She returned from the other side of the departure lounge eventually with the right sign.

Shortly afterwards, another aircraft pulled up outside and was waiting behind the MAN flight, which was still sat at the gate. A moment of frantic activity followed and we overheard an annoyed gate agent say into the radio “The inbound’s turned up 20 minutes early while the Manchester’s still at the gate”. The reply was “Move it to A70”. Before the agent had even started saying “Can we move along to gate A70 please” a line was already forming there, with other passengers jumping the line to be first in line. We were third in line in the Tight Arsed Bastard’s queue, and the plane spotters were first in line in the “More money than sense” queue.

The flight was soon deplaned and the priority queue started boarding half an hour before the flight time. Within 2 minutes they were all out of the building and we followed them, another quick boarding followed. It was throwing it down with rain outside and we again ignored the front queue and headed under the wing straight for the back steps. We were first onboard at the rear and again were seated before the priority passengers!

One thing we’ve learned is that the speed FR board their aircraft, you will always have free reign of the aircraft even if you don’t pay for priority boarding or online check-in.

 

 

Date	5 July 2007
Airline	Ryanair
Flight Number	FR536
From	Dublin (DUB)
To	East Midlands (EMA)
Aircraft	Boeing 737-800
Registration	EI-CST
STD/ATD	21:45 / 21:45
STA/ATA	22:45 / 22:25
Flight Time	0:40

 

We took our seats in the same sort of area as previously, again in seats A and B.

 

 

 

^ The glorious weather as we waited to depart from Dublin!

There was suddenly familiar music over the PA, before we heard “Gin! Rum! Vodka! Whisky! Cognac!” guy going on about cheap deals on booze. A few minutes later the captain came on to welcome us aboard. This time he was British, and said we’d be away on time this evening, with a strong tailwind that would have us arriving 20 minutes early into EMA. We’d be flying at 22,000ft across to Liverpool, before turning right and flying overhead Crewe, down across the Derbyshire hills towards the north of Nottingham, flying across the city before turning back to the west for an arrival on runway 27. The flight was unfortunately going to be very bumpy, due to the low cloud and heavy wind and rain around Dublin, and we should keep our seatbelts fastened at all times. The cruise wouldn’t be too bad, but again around Nottingham was low cloud and heavy driving wind and rain, so the approach would be very bumpy too. 

As we sat there waiting, we could feel the aircraft rolling from side to side. It became evident this was the wind as the aircraft next to us was doing the same thing! It was very turbulent before we’d even pushed back! The rocking got quite bad and the crew were rushing to get away a bit early. There was another announcement from the flight deck. “Well, folks, we’re just having a bit of trouble getting the stairs raised, our engineers are working on it and we’ll be away within a couple of minutes”. Sure enough, within 30 seconds the door was closed and we were pushing back with the safety announcement. The cabin crew were mostly Eastern European on this sector, and a few passengers had picked up on this, mocking anything they said and saying things like “I hope they get us there in one piece”. 

Our engines fired up and we began our fast taxi to the active. We pulled up at the end of the runway and waited for another FR aircraft to depart in front of us, then an AF BAe 146 to land. Before the 146 had even passed the threshold we were lining up on the runway, and were holding on the runway before the jet had even touched down!

Within a few seconds the crew applied full thrust and we were off.

 

 

 

 

We rotated around halfway down the runway, immediately feeling the wind as we crabbed to one side and dropped a little just as we rotated! We got a quick view of the gloomy, rainy, dark city, before emerging through the cloud into a beautiful clear, sunny sunset above the clouds.

 

 

 

 

The climb was pretty bumpy but the crew appeared to speed up to go through any bumpy patches. We climbed to cruising altitude as the food and drink sales began.

The sky was beautiful up here, as it was sunset for most of the flight. As we approached the UK, the cloud came up to meet us at FL220, and at times we were going through the cloud even at cruising altitude! Needless to say it was very bumpy and there was solid cloud between us and the ground! As we approached Liverpool I caught a huge anvil cloud overhead the Isle of Man, with flashes of lightning inside and outside the cloud. Beautiful!

 

 

Every so often we got kicked back in our seats by increased thrust, before hitting a bit of turbulence around some cloud, then we slowed down again. I appreciate the gesture to make it a bit more comfortable for us, but surely it would take its toll on the airframe after a while.

The captain came on again to say we were overhead Liverpool and would shortly be commencing our descent down into EMA. The temperature on the ground was 12C and there were heavy rain showers in the area. Looking out of the window I caught a couple of small breaks in the cloud, with some settlements in the Wallasey area.

The descent began over the Derbyshire Dales, and we hit cloud pretty much straight away. It soon broke up a bit though, and as the captain announced “10 minutes to landing”, the cloud broke up a little below us.

 

 

 

The first thing I saw was Red Hill Roundabout in Arnold, Nottingham, nicely lit up below. We flew overhead Arnold then overhead Mrs G’s parents house in Carlton. Then I saw Morrisons and B&Q, before we crossed the River Trent and flew over Radcliffe on Trent, then out towards Bingham, easily recognisable on the roundabout with the A52 and A46. 

Bingham:

 

 

We took a swinging right hand turn to do a 180 turn and came back over the A46 on the approach for runway 27. The approach got a little bumpy and we could see Loughborough out to the south.

 

 

 

We came in over Kegworth and the M1, touching down heavily on runway 27. 

M1:

 

 

Full reverse thrust and brakes were slapped on, as we heard the seats and overhead lockers creaking under the strain.

 

 

We exited the runway at S1, less than half way down the runway and straight onto the apron! A small round of applause followed as we taxied in to the terminal.

A cabin crew member came on and said “We are pleased to welcome you to East Midlands Airport, 20 minutes ahead of schedule. In order to help us achieve our 25 minute turnaround we ask that you take all rubbish with you as you leave the aircraft”.

 

 

We pulled onto stand next to a BMIBaby 737 right in front of the arrivals door. We got up and left the aircraft through the rear steps, saying goodbye again to the crew member.

We walked across the apron as I got my phone to call Mrs G’s parents to say we were down safely and would be with them in half an hour to pick up the dog! “You should still be in the air” he said. “Why’s that” I replied. “I’m on the East Midlands Airport website now and it’s saying you’re not expected for another 10 minutes!”.

We walked straight into the terminal and emerged out the other side within 2 minutes, in fact I was still on the phone to the father in law!

We paid for our parking and headed across to the medium stay to get our car. The plane spotters from Dublin were waiting at the bus stop as we walked past.

We collected the car and within 30 minutes of landing were reunited with the dog and in-laws!

All in all, I have to say I was very impressed with Ryanair. Yes I swore never to fly with them. Yes it’s cheap. But despite all this, I got what I expected and more. Both flights were bang on time and arrived early. The aircraft were modern, clean and comfortable, crew were professional and it was nice to get the progress reports from the flight deck throughout.

They run a very efficient operation, which moves flawlessly and fluidly, everything is timed to a tee (although if something went seriously wrong I can see it wouldn’t be as good). The adverts throughout the flight were no worse than any other LCC in the UK, and I would rate them at an equal level to easyJet and Jet2.com in terms of the overall flight experience.

I was expecting a cheap, nasty flight over to DUB and back, mostly due to the reputation FR have. What I got was much more than that. I will certainly be taking Ryanair again, particularly due to the unbeatable cost of the flights. I understand we got a good deal at 4p for both of us for the entire day, but even if you have to pay taxes at £10 it is excellent value for money.