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Ryanair, are connecting flights possible?


Ryanair has been strictly point-to-point airline, and while plans for connecting flights were revealed in 2017, it still remains oriented towards direct flights. 

Currently official Ryanair connecting flights are offered via a limited number of connecting airports. These airports are Rome Fiumicino (FCO), Milan Bergamo (BGY), and Porto (OPO). If you buy an connecting flight from Ryanair.com, your baggage will be transfered to your final destination and you will be offered protection in case of missed connections. Full terms are available at Ryanair official website

Below you can see how the connecting flights are indicated on the official Ryanair.com website. The itineraries with connection have (1 stop) remarks. 
 
Picture: Ryanair.com 
   
For all other cases, you or your travel agent can construct Ryanair connecting flight itineraries out of separate point to point tickets. On  Ryanair website, you can find a connecting flight schedule planner, which can be quite useful in that respect.  

Rynairair is under constant expansion, currently carrying over 100 million passengers annually. Most of the flights are within Europe, serving a huge number of smaller, regional airports and holiday destinations. Ryanair is the European leader in low fares, some fares are ridiculously cheap, going as low as EUR 10 including one piece of hand baggage. For this reason, many savvy passengers construct their own connecting flights, buying separate tickets on Ryanair. This allows them to reach attractive destinations for very little money, connecting at hub airports such as Stansted, Milan Malpensa, Barcelona, Dublin, Berlin Schonefeld and many others from Ryanair's extensive network. 

When passengers construct (search, find and book separatately) the connecting flights on Ryanair.com on their own, they carry the risk of making it to the next flight. Ryanair considers such passengers as point to point passengers and provides no assistance. Another possible issue with booking the tickets separately is that from time to time airlines do schedule changes. When they do such changes, by law they are required to inform passengers and refund them in case they don't accept the schedule change. If this schedule change happen to "kill" the connection and you decide to get a refund, Ryanair will do so only for the leg in question. They will not refund you for the second (or respectively first) part of the journey, where no schedule change exist. Such schedule changes are not a common practice, but happen from time to time. The more in advance you book, the higher the chance of such event. 

Nevertheless, a considerable number of passengers choose to fly Ryanair on connecting flights. Our recommendation is to use the website kiwi.com for searching and booking Ryanair connections. Kiwi charges some premium as opposed to booking each Ryanair flight separately, but the benefit is the connection protection service they offer. It covers you in case of change of schedules, missed connections and other possible disruptions during the trip. You also book all your flights in a single transaction. Search and book here

To share your experience with Ryanair connecting flights, you can visit our Ryanair review section

Connectionreview.com editorial team. 

info@connectionreview.com