joannebritton

Hi there,
Need advice on flying from Santorini to Athens - Is Ryanair reliable. We fly in the am and then fly back to Canada on the same day. there are mixed reviews re: Ryanair??
Thanks

Moderator3

Title expanded and tag added to indicate Greece

raincitygirl

Hi, personally I think it's not a good idea to be trying to transit from one destination to another for your trip home on the same day. I would fly back to Athens the day before you leave for Canada. Especially now with the state of airports everywhere.

Also due to the state of airports and air travel right now it's hard to say which airlines are reliable. All I can say about Ryanair is that in June when we were flying from Brindisi to Genova we had no issues doing bag drop etc with ITA, there were no lines but the lines for the Ryanair counters were literally jam packed and extended right outside the airport. Once we were through security and airside I noticed big lines for the Ryanair counters there too and it looked like a giant mess.
Are there other choices for flights between Santorini and Athens? Whichever one you choose I highly recommend you download the App for that airline to your phone (all the airlines you will use on the trip actually). I did not do that for ITA and the one hitch we had was that we missed getting the update that our flight was delayed which meant we were late into Rome where we needed to change and missed our flight to Genoa.

Heimdall

The two Greek airlines are Aegean Airlines, of which Olympic Air is part of, and Sky Express. Both are reliable, and Aegean Airlines is rated by SKYTRAX as the best regional airline in Europe. While these two both use the main terminal at Athens Airport, Ryanair is an Irish budget airline that uses the satellite terminal, so it takes a little longer to get to the check-in desks in the main terminal.

Ryanair is reliable enough, but if you book with them read the terms & conditions very carefully. They charge extra for a lot of things other airlines include in the basic fare, and are very strict about check-in times. Personally I prefer to use a Greek based airline that I know will be coming from Athens rather than somewhere else. I don’t much like Ryanair’s attitude to customer service either, although Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair CEO, seems to have toned down his rhetoric recently.

I agree wholeheartedly with raincitygirl that it would be better to fly back to Athens a day or two before your flight home. Chances are everything will be okay, but you have a lot at stake if you miss the flight back to Canada.

Here is the SKYTRAX A-Z airline ratings:
https://skytraxratings.com/a-z-of-airline-ratings

janisj

Do not fly to Athens the day of your flight home . . . no matter which airline you use. Get to Athens at the latest the evening before. If there is a cancellation or overbooking and you don't make it to AHN that morning, you will lose your flight home. You'd have to buy new tickets at likely very high walk up fares and it might be several days before there is availability. (its never a good idea to be distant from one's departure airport)

janisj

. . . Ryan Air is by far the largest European airline based on number of passengers . . . by a long way

balthy

You check in ONLINE for Ryanair and download boarding passes to the Ryanair app or if you’re not going to have that, the BPs can be emailed to you. Don’t arrive at the airport without having done online check in. You will be charged for checking in @ the airport & for having the BPs printed. When you read posts that mention “check in desks”, it really means “bag drop desks” although Ryanair will have maybe 1or 2 desks for check in for those who forget to check in online and/or need a document check for their destination.

As far as reliability is concerned, usually they are pretty reliable & on-time but be aware that if things go wrong (delays, cancellations etc), you’ll be on your own. They are not known for being helpful with rebooking, refunds etc. And a lot of things are going wrong travel-wise all over the world right now. Maybe by the time you travel things might be more settled.

I’d be more comfortable using one of the Greek carriers.

balthy

The code is ATH for Athens, Greece.

Heimdall

Ryanair used to advertise flights from the UK to some European destinations for as little as £10, then added to that fare with extra charges. Passengers rated Ryanair the worst airline in Which Travel magazine’s annual survey in 2020. It probably won’t matter much on a 50 minute flight to Athens, as long as you are aware.
https://www.which.co.uk/news/article...d-arUZZ5e8k1zN

joannebritton

Thank you everyone

janisj

Oh Jeeze -- yeah I know. Was just a brain fade -- my cousin had asked me earlier in the day why she couldn't find any flights to visit her daughters at U of G in Athens GA. She thought AHN was a commercial airport and I had to explain what general aviation means. In fact I had to look up what the code IATA code was. That she'd have to fly into ATL or GSP. Guess AHN just stuck and I absentmindedly typed AHN instead of ATH.

Southam

If you are going home on Air Canada, you need to know that Aegean/Olympic airways are part of Star Alliance along with AC, booking each other's tickets. If you were buying your tickets now, you could easily fly home from Santorini the same day on the same ticket.

RyanAir doesn't connect to anybody. With them you should stay overnight to be sure of making the second flight. RyanAir has become one of the busiest lines in Europe through their efficiency, including their adept surcharges. It is not fun but it gets passengers where they want to go, cheap.

If your trans-Atlantic tickets are already purchased, I don't know enough to guess whether the itinerary can be altered to include an Alliance flight off Santorini.

Perhaps you are not familiar with multi-destination itineraries where several flights are combined on one ticket, rather than the customer patching together one-way flights for each leg of the journey. Using a multi-city search function can save time and money on the trip and reduce the stress of shopping too.