Ryanair

Ryanair is the airline app travelers use for booking, boarding passes, baggage add-ons and the other bits low-cost flying makes you manage yourself. By our assessment, it is good at keeping the booking flow, trip details and airport documents in one place, which matters when the whole model is built around direct online handling. The catch is the usual low-cost one: extras are where the friction lives, and the app tends to mirror the airline’s strict rules, add-ons and prompts. In practice it feels efficient when everything is already set and fussy when you are still changing plans, because the interface is doing the airline’s admin rather than hiding it. Compared with a full-service carrier app, Ryanair is leaner and more demanding; compared with paper check-in, it is obviously the easier side of the bargain. By our assessment, it is fine for routine point-to-point travel, but it is not the place you go for a relaxed, all-in-one booking experience.