Not sure how to edit - but I meant you need to be in the first 90 of the boarding queue, not check-in, in order to guarantee having your hand luggage in the cabin.
Contrary to some of the comments on here, you will get an allocated seat number when you check in online. By not paying, it just means you can't choose your seats. You will be allocated one from the remainder when you check in online. We fly regularly with Ryan Air from Bergerac and from Limoges. The days of having to get on the plane and scramble for seats have gone. The only advantages to paying to choose your seat are that you get priority boarding and if you are travelling with someone else, you can choose to sit next to them or not if you prefer! If you allow Ryan Air to allocate your seats by not paying, your group may be split (although this has never happened to us). The other thing is your hand luggage may have to go in the hold if you're not one of the first 90 to check-in, so if there are a lot of priority boarders, you need to be towards the front of the check-in queue if you don't want to risk less sturdy hand luggage getting damaged in the hold (as my mum's did on one flight) or having to wait for the carousel at the other end. I find Ryan Air completely bearable for a 1-2 hour flight.
for the boarding cards
an internet café, a neighbour, given the time a relative in uk who posts them on to you.
This so called scrum was in my experience much better than all the queuing to reach your seat in the plane, you just used to find a free seat and sit in it, not a scrum at all.
Easyjet offer routes that are far more convenient for me than the full-fare airlines so I just put up with the lack of service. Ryanair have given up flying from Lyon or St Etienne so I don't get the chance to "enjoy" their services at the moment but I do remember being able to fly from Dublin to Luton for 1€ once, it wasn't pleasant but it wasn't long and it was cheap.
Who knows John, but sometimes waiting for visitors to arrive my heart sinks when they arrive. Some of the other people leave a lot to be desired. I hope my visitors are not on the same return flights home in some cases. It may be that the lure of 'cheap' flights, the destinations and what they tolerate that other carriers appear not to that is behind it. Who knows. The point is that there are some flights, some places and apparently indifferent staff combined that make them how I see them. Perhaps I am spoiled by the early days of EasyJet when it was a fifty-fifty possibility that Stelios Haji-Ioannou would say 'Hello' and shake your hand on the Luton to Amsterdam route I was using frequently during the 1990s and that Michael O'Leary verbally spat on that image a few years ago and made it clear that Ryanair existed to make money, which is quite right, but how it does it is not always nice.
Understood Brian, but is that really attributable to the carrier? what is the difference, is it really non allocated seating that turns people from civilised to rabble?
John, I highly recommend a visit to Bergerac during the height of the high season, then work out why many of us use Bordeaux, Brive, Limoge or Angouleme although the flights are more expensive and the airports quite some distance away. Why is it Ryanair and not Flybe or Jet2 (also two other carriers, but I have not used either) who have the scrums and check in desk fiascos. Given I have been flying here there and everywhere professionally for somewhat over 40 years, I will grant that Ryanair are not the worst by far, but here in Europe they take the pip. Not hearsay, but what this whole family has experienced and people we know and trust, including other SFN members who also do not read red tops, the Daily Heil or whatever has seen and had done to them. You sound like you have a 'civilised' airport, we do not as far as Ryanair go.
So we none of us read tabloids, but maybe they have got inside our heads early on, as social media of all types and all age groups now is worse than the Daily wail could ever get. I distinctly read without any separation of roles, the comment about liquids etc which is nothing to do with Ryanair staff and is applicable to all EU airports regardless of carrier but it used as tabloids do to add weight to a topic but is a red herring.
The scrums, well I would need to witness video evidence of a scrum taking place to back off, it's just literal nonsense. If you mentioned the Pfaffers who insist on getting on an airplane first, occupying the seats nearest the exits and then pfaffing around with luggage coats etc, holding everyone else up I would agree with you but that is the bain of all forms of travel. I have only witnessed orderly queues walking towards the plane and as the narrowness of the walk between the seats make a scrummage impossible I really have no idea where this happens.
Brian I do agree, drunk passengers are a PIA and if they committed a sexual assault on your wife air staff would be duty bound if you use those words to have to take notice because that is what it is. I have witnessed that on long haul on BA so it's a problem for all carriers but just to use a cheap shot on Ryanair because it's fashionable is dull and wrong. I have nothing to do with or any association with RA just a traveller of hundreds of flights on their and Easyjet flights and waiting to see a scum of a fight, battle whatever.
I would imagine some destinations like Faliraki could be hell on earth for grownups so best we don't go there.
John, no "tabloid events" in my postings, as I never read tabloids, unless you count my local paper "Le Dauphiné Libéré". Only speaking from strict personal "vécu". And I "do" know the difference between RyanAir staff and security staff, thank you very much. I witnessed scrums finding seats at both Marseille-Provence and Barcelona several times - indeed, had to participate as we were five in a group together, but with military precision I managed to grab a line of seats. Now I take the option to book the seats in advance, thus avoiding unnecessary exertion, or go by Vueling which is a more "organised" low-cost line.
Looking back at my earlier post, I see nothing which merits a pooh-pooh, only strict personal observation.
Hostage to fortune?
Ryanair offers a great selection of destinations.
It provides a great number of jobs.
It makes money.
There are rules, as there always are with products which work and need direction.
NO one has to use Ryanair if they do not wish to do so.
John, that is rather unfair to assume that Ian or I are citing tabloid events. We are both referring to Ryanair check in personnel, not security staff who really do have nothing to do with Ryanair in that respect as you say. But I think he and I are both very aware of that, so we are not lumping anybody together. Our closest airport can be hell on earth from roughly Easter to the end of October, all of the things that are discussed can happen there and have occurred when we travelled. I do not read tabloids, but if that is what they report then I could easily have been one of their informants. A group of very drunk men who the check in staff let through thought it funny when one of them patted my wife's backside, I complained and got a Gallic shrug from an Irish member of ground crew. When I emailed them in complaint about inaction, they said that their ground crews do not let drunks travel. During the peak season I have yet to travel with them when there are not. As for any kind of apology, nothing. OK, that was five years ago, but there are enough people in this area who have since had comparably unfortunate experiences and now prefer a couple of hours drive to one of the next airports and another company. You, it would seems, have been lucky enough to have had good experiences, however your fortune does not mean either Ian or I have not had quite the opposite.
Is it correct to lump Ryanair in with the security staff at the airports, they are separate entities and should be spoken about in that manner. Regarding tabloid posting of scrums and fighting for seats, i have traveled so many times and never witnessed either and again if that actually occurs, I have never witnessed it at Stansted or Tours/Poitiers that is entirely the behavior of the passengers and nothing to do with Ryanair. Sure scums happen on the London tube trains but seldom do they blame the tube operators for the behavior of the passengers. It just seems fashionable to pop at Ryanair which is only a flying bus after all.
I can't answer the boarding pass question as it may have changed but without priority boarding you used to be able to print off the boarding card 14 days before departure which also allowed the return leg to be printed at the same time.
Confirm what Brian says ; you will get a seat but only after the people with booked seats are settled. Personally I prefer having the booked seats to the old system of a huge scrum fighting for a row in order to group your family together. And they do seem to have calmed down the old processions of staff waving scratch cards and other "discounts" in your face. From Marseille we only have RyanAir, whereas from Lyon there is Vueling which I found much more congenial. Confirm also that if you don't turn up with check-in and boarding printed out you'll cough up and hold up the queue which is a major sin at RyanAir desks :) Don't foregrt all the palaver about liquids in plastic bags and be ready to drop belts and take off shoes with buckles, and empty pockets with anythin gmetal in them ; flustered fumbling at the portiques leads to lots of sighs and muttering too :)
Oh yes, we play their games too, all of which they somehow or other charge for but we manage to get round. If you have a booking but without paying for allocated seats, then you will not be excluded from the flight because the regulations prevent them from overbooking. You simply join the scramble for seats. because we have youngish children, staff often put us near the front of the queue so that we don't get stuck in the scrum, but not always.
You have plenty of time with seven days really, so simply go to somebody who has a printer and log on to your email, then print off your tickets. Small computer stores often have the facility to do it for a couple of Euros. Which airport are you near, in other words where will you be in France, so that if you are near enough to other SFN members one can help you out, many of us will have printers. It not only costs good money by turning up without the tickets but time at their check in desks. It has never happened to us but we have seen the frustration and fury of other travellers waiting and becoming nervous as the flight time draws closer and they are still several travellers back. Not nice.
Their chat line, having used it once only, has no more advice to offer than I am, ditto other people who might comment later, but lots of platitudes without sounding sincere and, as was our case, an attitude problem when asked how to deal with an error or problem.
I cannot abide the company but, like many other people, we are hostage to fortune. Some of the flights we take are most convenient using them. As it is, that is our only reason for using them. The flights, schedules and even their crews are OK, it is the way they treat people as cattle in the business sense and make a penny with every possible twist and turn of their screws.