Review of Ryanair flight Sevilla → Manchester in Economy

Greetings and Salutations and welcome to my first trip report on this website.

Last week, I started my trip back to the United States from Sevilla to Houston Hobby Airport via Manchester, Reykjavik, and Baltimore (BWI) to go back to my college from my parent's location in Spain. Normally, I would fly American Airlines and Iberia from Jerez De La Frontera to Houston Hobby via Madrid Barajas and Dallas Fort Worth, but because this trip as a whole was not covered, we had to pay it out of our own pocket (which means I really could not afford to use national career). So, in October, I started looking at cheap and decent flight out of Houston Hobby as our family tries to avoid Bush Intercontinental like the plague due to traffic and the distance (50 min vs 90-100 min). So, the flight-plan was as follows.

Monday December 18
Southwest WN2020 HOU-ATL
Delta DL2104 ATL-PVD
Norwegian Air International D8 1605 PVD-EDI

Tuesday December 19
Easyjet EZY 6995 EDI-MAD
RENFE AVE/MD Madrid Atocha-Sevilla Santa Justa- Puerto De Santa Maria

My intention was to stay for three weeks and find a way back. Originally the plan was to fly from Sevilla to Manchester on Ryanair and fly Singapore Airlines from Manchester to Houston Intercontinental the next day and bus or uber myself to Hobby so it would not be a hindrance to my family memeber picking me up. But in the end, it was as follows;

Monday January 8
Ryanair FR4371 SVQ-MAN This Report

Wednesday January 10
Easyjet EZY1805 MAN-KEF Report Later
WOW Air WW117 KEF-BWI Report Later
Soutwest Airlines WN1019 BWI-HOU No report

Aeropuerto de Sevilla

Because both of my parents had to work that day, I had to take a train from the nearest train station to Sevilla Santa Justa Train Station, and then the airport shuttle bus to the airport. So my father dropped me off at the station and purchased the train ticket to Santa Justa taking about 75
minutes.

I arrived at the airport three and a half hour prior to my boarding time. But I was not able to check in yet because it was too early. So I waited around the airport for about an hour using the free wi-fi which was decent since I was able to stream videos unlike wifi at other airports.


The Check-In hall of SVQ

About 20 minutes prior to opening of the Check-in for the flight to Manchester, I got in line, the Check-in was fast (as you are recommended to print the boarding pass ahead of time) dropped off my luggage and got my visa stamp at their Customer Service booth just behind the check-in area (because I'm a US passport holder).

Security was a bit packed but nonetheless, it was efficient so I was able to get to airside in under 10 minutes. As for the area post-security, there's not much places of interest. Really the only thing present are Duty-free, a cafeteria and two Cervecerias and a few shops here and there. As I was not hungry I decided to wait until I arrive in Manchester to have dinner (as my lunch was at Sevilla.) So I found a corner to sit in and watched a couple of videos.

Flight

Ryanair
Flight No. 4371
SVQ-MAN
Boeing 737-8AS WL
STD 1835
ATD 1841
STA 2035
ATA 2019
Distance 1,185 Miles

About 20 minutes prior to boarding, I made my way to the gate 2A and went through the passport control. Like the CBP agents in the US the tendency is that the officers at places like these aren't neither friendly nor hostile (expected but). Although I do speak Spanish decently and I greeted him in Spanish, he just stamped my passport without saying anything.


Waiting Area

When I got to the waiting area, there were already people lining up to board. Ryanair has two types of lanes; those with priority boarding pass and those without. Although I thought about paying extra to be on the priority section, I thought to myself that it really was not the worth the effort and the money so I skipped it and got in line with the non-priority line which was kinda long. The boarding commenced right at 1805 as scheduled and the line went pretty fast even for the non-priority lane.



Airframe Info

EI-DAH
Delivered 22, January 2003 (planespotters.net)

The bird that was going to take us to Manchester was a nearly 15 yr old EI-DAH, since her delivery in 2003, she was stayed with Ryanair this entire time.

As being a Ryanair at a relatively small airport, we had to walk to our aircraft but that rewarded me, with a shot of triple Vueling parked at the jetbridges.


Vueling to Paris and Barcelona and unknown destination

As far as I know, Ryanair is one of the few airlines that utilizes the airstair to board the 737 (correct me if I'm wrong please). When I got on board, the cabin attendants greeted me with a smile and I did the same thing and made my way to my seat for the next few hours.


My seat for the next two hours 14F

Having experiences on Ryanair several times in my life I knew that seat pitch would no be my friend. But nevertheless, I didn't a have a time where I felt like I was in a sardine, although little reclining would've been nice.


Let's look at in-flight magazin..oh wait, there is none.

In case you did not know, Ryanair does not have a in-flight magazine in your seatback pocket as there are none. So should you fancy for some food or drink or in-flight shopping, you'll have to wait until the cabin attendant passes one out after takeoff.



View of Seville Airport

The door closed at 1831, 4 minutes before our schedule time of departure. Then they started to do the standard in-flight safety briefing.
Unique thing that you can see in Seville is that they do not pushback but they just turn hard right as soon as the engine comes on. The only other airport that can do this is at Frankfurt Am-Main Airport but it's only one of the gates (A1 I believe of Terminal 1).

On the way to our runway which was Runway 09. I saw a Bulgarian Cargo Air 737-400F reg LZ-CGV in their previous owner's livery Enterair. There was also a 737-400F of TNT Airways operated by ASL Airlines Belgium OE-LAR.



We took off from runway 9 and headed northwards towards Manchester Ringway International Airport.


Takeoff with a view of the EADS Seville factory with all of the A400M

Once we hit 10,000, the cabin crews began their distribution of the in-flight magazine which contained the menu and the shopping items. Then they came around to collect the order for those passengers who wanted some food. I decided to skip against it, because I wanted some British food, hint; it involves fish. Although the price is not overpriced in my opinion and looks a bit more appealing compared to say BoB menu for American Airlines with their sandwiches and crisps versus Ryanair's chips and lasagnas.



Cabin Crews taking orders and distributing snacks and drinks.

Arrival

The rest of the flight was uneventful as there was not a lot of turbulence throughout which was pleasant. Around 1950 GMT, we began our decent near London towards Manchester Airport, we landed at 2016, 19 minutes before our supposed arrival time. We were parked at a ramp so we had to bus ourselves to the terminal


Going towards the terminal


Last shot of EI-DAH

As soon as we got to the Terminal, we were directed towards the immigration control. Since they did not hand out a Landing Card since most of the passengers on board were EU passport holders so I had to go get on and went through an extensive questioning by the officer (since I was only staying for two days he may have been suspicious about me). The luggage did not take long to arrive and I was well on my way to Manchester Centre where my hotel was located in under an 40 minutes from start to finish. To do that, I took the Transpennine Express service to Manchester Piccadilly and walked to the hotel 10 minutes away.


On board the Transpennine Express service

This is where I leave off this report. Next one will include my day at Manchester and side trip to Liverpool and Easyjet flight to Reykjavik.

Thank You for tuning in to this report see you in the next one.

Cheers!