STN to EIN Ryanair Economy

Airline:  Ryanair

Flight #: FR2537

Route:    STN-EIN

Class:    Economy

Seat:     31A

Date:     Monday 31^st March 2025

Back at the end of March, with a few days off work and a yearning to explore, I had booked myself some cheap Ryanair flights for a daytrip to Europe. Just across the North Sea from the UK, The Netherlands is one of our closest neighbours, meaning it was just a short flight from Stansted that would take me to the Dutch city of Eindhoven. Whilst I’ve visited The Netherlands a couple of times before, this would be my first visit to Eindhoven, and I was looking forward to exploring. However, first I had to get there!

An 0630 departure from Stansted meant I had to be at the airport early, however I was still able to use my usual trick of parking at a nearby railway station and catch the train in. This time I used Audley End as it’s first departure to Stansted gets to the airport at 0514, almost half an hour before the first train from Bishop’s Stortford. Whilst 75 minutes is closer than I’d usually like to cut it when getting to Stansted, I wasn’t paying the extortionate price for parking at the airport, so to prevent any unnecessary stress I paid £10 for FastTrack+ which allowed me to both use FastTrack security and also use the shortcut that avoids Duty Free and brings you out in the corridor by the Plaza Premium lounge and Pret.

Its only an extra £3 for FastTrack+ over standard FastTrack, and to avoid Duty Free during the morning rush was personally worth the extra, however obviously it won’t be for everyone. If you’re flying with Ryanair, I’d recommend downloading their app as it usually provides gate information a few minutes before the departure screens and saves you the scrum both around the screens and as the mass of people head towards the gate. On this occasion the app announced my gate just as I was leaving Pret with my breakfast, and a short walk toward gates 80-88 meant it took me just 20 minutes from stepping off the train to reaching the gate.

I’d barely reached the gate before those with priority started BoardingNotBoarding, although I was fine not to have priority on this occasion as there was some drama to keep me entertained. Firstly Border Force were at the gate waiting for some people booked to travel on the flight, although I didn’t overhear why, and then there was the usual Ryanair drama of people having large carry on bags that they hadn’t paid for. Whilst I certainly don’t agree with the inconsistency that the low cost airlines apply their baggage policies, in clear cut cases like this one was, the passengers didn’t really have a leg to stand on given the amount of times the booking process makes you select what bags you do and don’t want.

15 minutes after Priority BoardingNotBoarding started, it was extended to non-priority and I was soon joining the queue in the stairwell down to the ramp. Thankfully, actual boarding started only a few minutes later and I was soon walking across the tarmac to the aircraft that would work my flight, EI-DWK. This 17.5-year-old Boeing 737-800 has flown with Ryanair for its entire career and featured the old ‘chunky’ interior onboard. I was in Seat 31A, a window seat three rows from the back on the lefthand side, and one which has okay window placement. As I settled into my seat, I was able to see EI-EMN which was parked next to us ahead of a flight to Nantes, somewhere that I have previously visited as part of a cheap Ryanair trip (read about that here).

With a scheduled flight time of 1 hour and five minutes, I was pleased to hear in the Captain’s welcome announcement that we’d only actually be in the air for 45 minutes, and would be cruising at a lowly 21,000 feet. The aircraft doors were closed at 0621 and five minutes later we were pushing back, starting our taxi a few minutes after that. As we taxied the length of the airfield to join our place in the queue for departure, we passed the freight apron where Asiana Boeing 747F HL7417 was parked having arrived as flight OZ893 from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Rolling down runway 04, we took off at 0638 and as we climbed from the runway I was able to see the UK Government Airbus A320 parked up on the north side of the airport.

Our flight path took us out over the Port of Felixstowe to the North Sea, with the huge container ships looking like toys from above. Unfortunately, we met a bank of cloud mid-way across the North Sea which blocked my view of the expansive wind farms, and this cloud stuck with us all the way to The Netherlands, with us only passing below it on approach to Eindhoven. Having had my Pret breakfast, I didn’t purchase anything when the cabin crew rushed through the inflight service, barely having time whilst we were at cruise to complete all their tasks. The short flight was pretty uneventful, and we landed on Eindhoven’s runway 03 at 0821 local time, almost 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

Eindhoven is a shared civilian and military airfield, and although I couldn’t see any military aircraft as we landed and taxied (mainly due to the side of the aircraft I was on and the direction we landed in), we seemingly arrived in the middle of Eindhoven’s morning rush hour. On the ground there were two Wizz Air Airbuses (9H-WMB and HA-LVT) and a hattrick of Boeing 737s (PH-HXM and PH-HZV of Transavia accompanied by PH-TFR of TUI) and we were also followed in by Ryanair’s EI-DLV which arrived from Pisa. Unfortunately, this car park of planes meant that we ended up at a gate at the furthest point from the terminal building and had a five-minute walk outside to reach passport control.

Thankfully all of the other flights had either arrived early enough, or had been from Schengen destinations, for there to not really be a queue for passport control. It did take a few minutes to get through though, with this being the first time I have ever been asked for my return flight information before being allowed into Europe. Whilst I always have a return journey booked, I hope this isn’t a sign of things to come, as it’ll inevitably slow the process down and make the divide between the UK and EU feel even stronger. Despite the walk and extra questions, it did only take me 12 minutes from the aircraft doors opening to reach arrivals, and I ended up waiting longer than that to be able to get onto a bus into the city.

I think, other than Dublin, this is my shortest flight with Ryanair to date, so there’s not much to review, however there’s nothing really to complain about either. The airports at both ends of the flight had efficient processes, all the staff I encountered were friendly and helpful and we arrived nice and early. I can’t even really moan about the BoardingNotBoarding on this occasion as my staircase wait was limited to just three minutes!

Lounge              0*

Seat/Facilities     3*

Food                3*

Service             5*

Punctuality         5*

Overall Rating      16/25 (read about my rating system here!)