STN to KSC Ryanair Economy

Airline:  Ryanair

Flight #: FR2366

Route:    STN-KSC

Class:    Economy

Seat:     12A

Date:     Thursday 22^nd June 2023

Having returned from Derry less than three weeks earlier (read those blogs here, here, here and here), I managed to squeeze another short trip away into June, with an overnight stay in the largest city in eastern Slovakia, Košice. As with a lot of my short European trips, this one started at Stansted with a cheap Ryanair flight.

With my flights at more reasonable times than usually, I was able to catch a train directly from Peterborough for this trip and I was pleasantly surprised to make it from the train to being through security in less than 15 minutes. It helped that I was directed through the two temporary security lanes that had been set up to trial new scanners. These scanners don’t require liquids or electronics to be removed from bags so it makes the whole process a lot quicker!

Through into departures, I decided to head for the lounge and see how long a wait it would be given I got reduced entry through my travel insurance. Unfortunately with a two-hour virtual queue and only 90 minutes until my flight, this obviously wasn’t going to happen and so I headed back out to the main departure lounge to get some food.

The main departure lounge was very busy (although not chaotically so) and the ‘big tent’ design of Stansted was doing nothing to help with the air temperature inside. After queuing to enter Burger King, I had some lunch and then managed to find a seat within the main area of the departure lounge until it was time to head for the gate.

Ryanair’s app gave me the heads up on the gate a couple of minutes before it was displayed on the screens within the terminal. All of Stansted’s gates are in one of three concourses separate from the main terminal, one of which is directly connected, one which is a short ride on the shuttle and one which is a ten-minute hike. Typically my gate was gate 41, located in the latter and so after a hike I arrived at the gate to find that it was showing a very delayed flight to Knock.

Figuring out something didn’t seem quite right, I hung around near the back of the mass of people and when, at our departure time, a gate change was announced, I managed to move quickly and get to the front of the ‘other’ queue at gate 47. The usual ‘boarding not boarding’ then commenced, with us initially queuing in the stairwell before then standing out on the tarmac as it began to spit with rain.

Arriving in on a flight from Prague, our aircraft for the flight was EI-HET, a three-year-old Boeing 737-8 MAX 200, or as Ryanair refers to them following the Max groundings, a Boeing 737-8200. This particular aircraft spent the first nine months or so of its life grounded whilst Boeing rectified issues with the aircraft type.

My seat for the flight was 12A, relatively near the front of the aircraft. Its worth noting on Ryanair’s 737 Max’s that on row 12 the window is slightly behind you over your shoulder, whilst row 13 has no window at all. Row 11 did seem to have the window in the perfect place to actually be able to see out of it, so there’s my top tip. Of course, with Ryanair, you’ve got no idea whether you’ll have a 737 Max ahead of time, so it’s a bit of a gamble.

Our 1640 departure time was going particularly well already when the front door of the aircraft was closed at 1715, however we then proceeded to sit there with nothing happening until pushback started over 15 minutes later at 1732. After some further checks and a taxi to Stansted’s runway 04, we took off at 1754, 74 minutes late.

Onboard Ryanair’s 737 Max there are modern slimline seats, although whereas on the 737-800 these give each seat a little bit of extra legroom, on the Max they have been used to fit in an extra row of seats. Compared to the 189 seats on a 737-800, the Max can carry a whopping 228 passengers, with our flight being pretty much full. Whilst passenger comfort is not hight on the list, modern aircraft with more seats generally means lower fares, so I can’t really complain.

Our route across Europe was a bit different to what I expect is the usual owing to thunderstorms over southern Germany. As such after take-off we headed north-east to Amsterdam before turning south-east towards the German border. Approaching the west German town of Bielfeld, we headed further north over Hannover and heading east almost to Berlin before turning south towards Dresden and Prague.

As we crossed the German-Czech border, we turned to head more south-easterly, for the first time in the flight heading directly towards Košice. The final approach to Košice airport took us briefly over the Hungarian border, before lining up to land on the northerly runway 01 .

What our excursion over northern Germany shows is how much time there is usually in a flight schedule as despite the longer routing we’d actually made up a little bit of time. Having taken off 74 minutes late, we landed a Košice at 2108 local time, a total of 63 minutes late. Seemingly our flight was full of the kind of people that clap when an aircraft lands, so that was fun, and just four minutes later we were parked on our stand and starting to disembark for the walk across the tarmac.

In conclusion, my first flight on a Boeing 737-8 Max 200 was ok, although obviously Ryanair have utilised the aircraft to fit as many people as possible onboard. The delay was annoying, especially as we didn’t ever learn why, but these things do happen so hey ho. All in all not Ryanair’s best effort given the wrong gate, the delay and lack of info and the less comfortable than normal aircraft.

Lounge              0*

Seat/Facilities     2*

Food               3*

Service             4*

Punctuality         0*

Overall Rating      9/25 (read about my rating system here!)