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Yesterday I booked trip to Rome.

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I found this journey through Skyscanner and booked it through Kiwi.com.

Before booking with Kiwi, I tried searching the same flights up directly with Norwegian Air and Ryanair, to see what the prices were there. With Ryanair, I could not find the flight at all. Ryanair told me they do not offer any flights between those cities. They still tell me that.

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While researching for this question, I found out that I can actually find the individual legs of the flights on Ryanair.com, just not the whole CIA-OSL stretch. The thought occurred to me that perhaps they want to avoid selling the whole journey on a single booking, so that they are not liable for missed connections, etc, but it seems to me that whatever they gain from that should be way less than the lost revenue from not offering the trip at all?

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    I do believe they are legally bound to not deny you that, but certainly commercially keen to not offer it. Which is why 3rd party sites offer it.
    – Stian
    Commented May 25, 2019 at 21:30
  • Anything Ryan Air does is 1. Aimed at reducing their costs, increasing their profit [and, it often seems, increasing the aggravation to the traveller.] While the first two are common to any business that wants to stay in business, Ryan Air make an art-form of it. It seems likely that your "save 40E by direct booking" needs to have added " ... as long as both flights actually run and the 1st is nit delayed so the flights come close enough to overlapping that I miss the connection". If A leg is cancelled I imagine they have no obligation to refund or replace B leg. ...
    – Russell McMahon
    Commented May 26, 2019 at 3:14
  • ... Same if A is delayed and you miss the connection. | I've had QANTAS give me a "free" intermnal Australian flight (SYD-BRI) with unlinked tickets because I was a day late due to a major holdup caused by an unrelated airline. I've had Air NZ change a flight to a later date when I rang them in Beijing an hour after the Beijing outbound flight had left. I'd not expect that Ryan Air would do either of those things. Ever. I may be wrong.
    – Russell McMahon
    Commented May 26, 2019 at 3:17

1 Answer 1

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Ryanair is working almost strictly point-to-point. With a very few exceptions, they simply don't do connecting tickets, which saves them all the hassle and costs with accomodating people who missed their connection and so on. I can't comment on the profitability of this approach, but the fact that most low-cost carriers work this way is an indication that it does make some sense.

Kiwi.com, on the other hand, is a company that specializes in stitching together an itinerary from multiple separate tickets. They will book two separate Ryanair tickets for you and add their "Kiwi.com Guarantee" on top, which basically means you are not completely screwed if you miss the connection, but it's still nowhere near a true single booking.

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    Interesting. I notice that if I had thought about all this during the booking process, I could have probably saved something like 40 euros by making individual bookings directly from Ryanair.com. This answer suggests the Kiwi guarantee is not all that, so perhaps it would have been worth it to do so. I will consider that for next time.
    – Fiksdal
    Commented May 23, 2019 at 9:30
  • @Revetahw don't forget that if there is any issue, the airline operating the second flight, even if it is the same as the first one, will consider you a no-show if you do not meet the check-in/baggage drop/boarding deadlines, usually cancelling your ticket and often all subsequent segments. You will be on the hook to book a new ticket and pay for it. If you have checked luggage that usually means getting to the check-in/baggage drop desk 1 hour before departure of the second flight, after having deplaned, eventually gone through passport control and reclaimed your bags. Add a lot of buffer.
    – jcaron
    Commented May 23, 2019 at 13:08
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    @Revetahw Ryanair doesn't cancel remaining legs because they're selling you a bunch of one-way tickets as separate journeys. There are no "remaining legs". And, actually, this is another potential problem for your scheme. If an airline has to cancel your flight before you've left your start location, they can just give you a full refund. Because budget airlines sell you one-way tickets, if your STN-OSL flight gets cancelled, Ryanair can just say "OK, here's your money back. That's the end of our obligations." Hopefully Kiwi covers this.
    – David Richerby
    Commented May 23, 2019 at 17:34
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    Ryanair does not allow reselling of their tickets via third parties. Kiwi booked this on Ryanair’s website by pretending to be you, and is thus actually in breach of Ryanair’s T&Cs. These are basically two different tickets. So you will need pick up and recheck your luggage in Stansted. You will also need to go through immigration and security there. If you miss your second flight you can book another one at your own expense and try to claim it back from Kiwi.
    – Krist van Besien
    Commented May 25, 2019 at 9:11
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    @KristvanBesien Right, I've been wondering how they manage to pull that off without Ryanair suing them to hell. Kiwi is certainly big enough for Ryanair to notice. Perhaps they have some sort of an agreement where Ryanair tolerates them and gets some extra sales this way.
    – TooTea
    Commented May 25, 2019 at 11:47

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