Easy Jet out of Orly would be more convenient and probably about the same price. They fly into Rome CIA. There is a shuttle into the city center for about 8E. www.terravision.it

Thank you so much to all who replied! Some great ideas. I will check out the other airlines and prices. We are pretty flexible with our dates. And we are not making a connecting flight until the next day. If all else fails, I would consider an overnight train. We will make sure we are very early for the flight, if we decide to go with Ryanair. And for those of you that asked, yes the 133euros included everything on fees and taxes. (Because the actual flight costs were 20 euros each going to Rome and approximately 5 euros each coming back. So it was 50 euros without taxes and fees. Nuts! What an amazing price. For that, I kinda wish I lived in Europe! I've been thinking about transferring to our London subsidiary so that I can "discover Europe" on my weekends and holidays. Sounds quite doable with these cheap rates! (But, I don't know that I want to do this now, as I have three young granddaughters that I don't seem to be able to live without for longer than a week!)hhahaha THanks again, all. Keep the comments coming and please feel free to email me direct with anything else that might be of assistance! Y'all rock!!!

ONE MORE QUESTION, if I may? Is it too early to book these seats? I think we'll take the Easyjet option. It is only a couple dollars more and sounds more convenient. But since we are not going until October, is it too early to book? Will these seats not be available to book later? (I did ask for a return from ROme to Paris on a Sunday and it gave me NO options, it defaulted to the Saturday before. Do they not fly on Sundays?)

Ryan air airports are out of the way, but they provide a great bus for like 10 euros to take you to town center and from the town center to their airports.

I love Ryan Air. We had a very professional flight. I wish we had lots of $5 fares in the US. We'd be gone every weekend.

if its showing on their website then its available to book. if you are sure you want the flights book them, those prices or seats could be gone!!

The closer you get to the departure date, the higher the price. If Ryanair fits your needs, book the flight. Be aware of one more issue with luggage: You cannot combine two persons with one suitcase that would exceed the individual luggage allowance but be below the total allowance for two. In other words, if two of you use a single suitcae, it must still weigh 15 kg or less, or you will be charged for the extra weight.

Ryanair is OK as long as your are flexible and willing to adapt. Bear in mind that they do not always land in the airport they advertise for.
Flights to Barcelona land in Girona (an hour drive).
Flight to Hamburg land in Lübeck (70 km away)
Flight to Stansted imply paying an atrocious high price for the Stansted Express.
Flights to Milan land in Bergamo.
Flights to Venice land in Treviso.
Flights to Brussels land in Charleroi.
Flights to Paris land in Beauvais, and so on.

You have to add the cost of transportation from the airport to the city you want to visit.
IMO (and I live in Europe) Ryanair is fine as long as you fly to a small city with a small airport - let's say Girona to Alghero for instance - but no so cheap otherwise.

I love both easyjet and ryanair. The prices are just fantastic and the seat pitch doesn't really matter that much on a short flight. We flew to Rome with Ryanair - lovely plane, great flight. I have flown a lot with easyjet, including into Venice and Athens. I have never had a problem with ewither airline.

Carolena

If Easyjet is only a couple of dollars more then take it. It's far easier to get to Orly than it is to get to Beauvais.

It's very hard to see the final Ryanair price until the stage immediately before saying "book this flight" so that couple of dollars less could turn out to be a lot more

Here's a few pointers about Ryanair:

- Book ASAP. Not all seats are cheap. Once they're gone, they're gone, and the regular full fare is far from "budget"

- Besides the ticket price and tax, they'll charge you for a credit card processing fee. Not like you have any options.

- They charge you for checked luggage. Cheaper if you pay when you book your ticket; double if you wait until you're at airport.

- If you're not checked-in at the cut off time, you're so out of luck. Not arrived at the airport, not waiting in line, but actually checked-in. There's limited online check-in. But not if you have luggage, and many other restrictions.

- Like others have said, check the airports they use. Hahn is many miles from Frankfurt, for example.

- There's no seat assignments, so if you want choice seats, you need to get to gate ASAP and stand in-line. Or pay extra to get ahead of the line. There's no "ABC" boarding cards like Southwest, so early check-in won't help.

- At most airports, they don't use jetways, but two staircases. So, you walk down from terminal to apron, and then up the plane. Oh, if you walk slow, others can definitely pass you, so you wasted time standing in line earlier.

- The seats on the plane has 29-30" pitch (31"+ on US airlines), and have no recline. There's no audio/video system. There's no inflight magazine. The seat doesn't have a pouch, and the safety instruction is stamped on the seatback in front of you.

- You better like lemon-yellow color.

- You pay for drinks and snacks and everything.

- The flight attendants are basically salespersons who happen to be trained for safety. Throughout the flight, you'll see them going up and down the aisle selling stuff. The British passengers love buying stuff on the plane, it seems.

- They may give out a free ticket to someone on your flight. Lucky draw for the shoppers. The more you buy, the better chance you get to win. [Probably still have to pay tax, though.]

- Basically all announcement onboard will be about shopping. Buy buy buy.

- My last flight from London to Palermo was an evening flight, 2.5 hours. But no dimming of lights, because how can you sell stuff in darkness?

- As for Stansted, the Express train is 15GBP. But there are cheaper buses from Victoria and Liverpool Street. Still 8GBP, or almost $16.

"There's no seat assignments, so if you want choice seats, you need to get to gate ASAP and stand in-line. Or pay extra to get ahead of the line. There's no "ABC" boarding cards like Southwest, so early check-in won't help".

Last time I flew Ryanair (last October) it was on a first come, first served basis. People with numbers 1 to 90 boarded first.

I flew in December from Stansted.

There are two lines at gate- one for those who paid, and one for everybody else. No 1-90, no 90+. Passengers were all lining up - not just our gate, but others too - 30-40 minutes before boarding time.

<<< There's limited online check-in >>>

Limited to people with cabin luggage only AND a passport issued by an EU country

As for paying extra to get to the head of the line - it doesn't work if you have to take a bus to the flight

<<< Besides the ticket price and tax, they'll charge you for a credit card processing fee. Not like you have any options. >>>

"tax" in this case means government taxes & what Ryanair charges extra in order to have shiny happy 1p headline prices in order to pull in the mugs

"There's no seat assignments, so if you want choice seats, you need to get to gate ASAP and stand in-line. Or pay extra to get ahead of the line. There's no "ABC" boarding cards like Southwest, so early check-in won't help".

Never heard that you had to pay extra. Is this new?

Priority boarding:

http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/faqs....p;pos=MYFLIGHT

rkkwan

Thank you ! Amazing !
I expect they will soon charge extra for choosing Ryanair over other airlines ))

Ryanair's "theory" is that people should only pay for the things they need. In reality it's what Ryanair thinks you need but they do give an option (generally not obvious at first glance) to remove things.

Personally I'm just waiting for Ryanair to start having charges for using the loo (extra if you need to sit down or use some toilet paper)

In October we paid 156 euros for four of us to travel Frankfurt to Rome return. I've made five trips with Ryanair and love them. As long as you keep all of their restrictions in mind and have a back-up plan in case something happens to delay or cancel the flight, they're great!

A word to the wise about paying for priority seating....you cannot pay for it at the time you check-in. You need to first check-in and then go stand as the ticketing counter to buy and pay for the priority seating. When we tried this on our way to Dublin in January they told us that the plane was only half full and it probably wasn't worth it. On the way home we did pay the extra though and it was well worth it. There were only seven of us who boarded first (mind you, we were only about a minute in front of the crowd), but the plane was full and we were so glad we had.

Sarge56, if you have the option to book now and you're happy with the fare, book it. The fares change really quickly. While there's still a lot of time before you travel (fares could bounce a lot still), it'll get more expensive when it gets close.

And if I had to pick between Easyjet and Ryanair for only a few dollars/euros/pounds difference, I'd go with Easyjet.