However with RyanAir those “perks” are a little bit limited:
- Free 20kg checked bag – you’d get that with a lot of other airlines especially if you were a frequent traveller
- Priority boarding – not that big a deal
- Allocated “premium” seating – this seems to be seats at the front of the cabin. They aren’t any bigger than the other seats, so the “premium” probably applies to the position in the cabin
- Flexibility of travel changes – this is probably quite useful, though how useful it would be would depend on the route. Being able to change flights for Dublin – London (or vice-versa) would be useful, but on other routes the frequency of flights isn’t that high.
- Fast track security – getting access to the fast track can definitely save time. What’s interesting with this is that RyanAir are offering it at quite a few airports (currently: Dublin, London (LGW, STN), Birmingham, East Midlands, Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Barcelona (BCN), Malaga, Rome (CIA, FCO), Milan (BGY), Brussels (CRL, BRU), Athens, Budapest, Stockholm (NYO), Frankfurt (HHN), Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Warsaw (WMI), and Eindhoven)
- 2nd carry-on cabin bag – fine as long as there’s space to stow it, which seems to be a problem with most airlines these days. Between people bringing on a crazy number of quite large bags and the overhead bins being really really small
Whether the options are a bit limited or not isn’t important. What is important is that there’s some level of competition in the market, which is nearly always good for the consumer!