Subject: Ryanair airports
Hi all,

I agree with Evan about the obscure way of naming airports Ryanair has. They fly into very small airports, and advertise them as the nearest big city.

One of their latest additions is Santander-Bilbao. Getting an international direct flight to Santander used to be impossible, and I must say that it is quite a beautiful city and the offer of Ryanair makes it very tempting for the british people (who have always been faithful customers of the Plymouth-Santander ferry and who have been travelling to the Picos de Europa since ages).

But, and this is a big but. Ryanair misadvertise its offers making people believe that they are flying into the real thing. If you see Santander-Bilbao, you might think that you are flying to Bilbao, maybe not the main airport, but one nearby. Once you arrive into Santander, there are two options : if you are lucky, and you don´t have problems, you will be able to get one of two buses direct to Bilbao from the airport. If not, you will have to get a bus or a taxi into Santander, and another bus from there into Bilbao, making it more or less 1 hour and a half (if you are lucky and there aren´t traffic jams in the motorway near Bilbao ...). It is not the first time that people have gotten stranded ( I am thinking of Girona airport, the one they use to advertise Barcelona, there were lots of problems last year with late night cancellations, and people were in the middle of nowhere and weren´t able to find a hotel room ) ... There have been worse things happening with the Zaragoza flight, with a tendence to land in Reus in the catalonian coast :)

So, if you were flying a cheap airline, and you wanted to do London-Bilbao, I would prefer to fly Easyjet from Stansted. You would arrive into Bilbao airport and get the bus into town. In less than 20 minutes, for only 1,10 Euro you would be at your destination, instead of 100 kms away ...

Although, now that I think about it, probably the worst of all is Stockholm (even worse than Frankfurt-Hahn, Paris-Beauvais and Brussels-Charleroi). They fly into Vasteras and Skavsta, a small former military airport. Right now you can get a bus from Vasteras airport into town, and from there you could get a bus or train to Stockholm or a bus to Arlanda airport. Skavsta is near Nyköping, and it can be a bit complicated. All of this adds and adds costs and time in a very expensive country.

I would really prefer if they name their airports properly, but well, they might be losing customers ...

Kind regards, Covadonga Bilbao, Madrid - Spain