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Taken 22 June 2008 from London (Stansted) - STN to Riga (Spilve) - RIX

I have just been to Latvia, and flew with Ryanair for the first time. I thought they were pretty good.

Ryanair are ticketless, and booking is thru the website. I was a little annoyed with them, because they sometimes advertise ridiculously low fares on their website, e.g. ten UK pounds to Riga, but there seems no way to get that fare! When I phoned them, the money ran out so quickly, I could not get through. So anyway, I ended up booking a return to Riga for 68.00 GBP, which I thought was still quite cheap.

I did my usual trick of turning up really early at the airport. Check-in was routine.

The plane was a 737-800. For those of you (like me!) old enough to remember when the 737 was a stubby, awkward-looking plane, think again! The 737-800 is a sleek and stylish plane, with large upward-pointing wingtip stabilisers. These make for a smooth ride, as well as helping save fuel. I think Ryanair only have these now, or certainly, all the ones that I saw were this model.

We were pretty well on-time. I had booked priority boarding, which I found to be worthwhile. This was to be sure of an aisle seat, and to be certain of avoiding the dreaded seat 13.

We took off smoothly, climbing out over the checkerboard countryside of eastern England. By the time we crossed the coastline, we must have been about 15,000 feet high! I think this is partly because Ryanair charge to put a bag in the hold, so a lot of people travel with hand baggage only, hence we were fairly light.

I have no idea which route we took to Riga, because there was no info from the flight deck, and there's no map you can follow. There was a bit of turbulence, but nothing to write home about. After a couple of hours I asked one of the stewardesses how far we had to go, and she told me we only had about 20 minutes to go! And it was true. We made a lovely smooth descent over Riga bay, and lined up for a pillow-soft landing at Riga.

So, my only slight criticisms were (i) the fare thing mentioned above, and (ii) no flight-deck communication. Other than that, Ryanair were fine. Their planes are shiny and new, and I look forward to flying with them again.