You get what you pay for. I would rather fly Ryanair than most airlines in europe.
I used to be a terrible snob about airlines and have a large pile of frequent flyer points with the oneworld airline based in my home country to show for it (mostly earned on that once apparently decent airline, BA).
Last year, my girlfriend decided that she wanted to live in Rome. I wanted to see her at least once a month and flying out there and back on BA, Lufthansa, AF/KLM or that airborne disaster called Alitalia (they're still flying 727s, FFS) was far too expensive. I therefore started flying easyjet from gatwick, which was also the most convenient airport.
As the weather started to warm up, even easyjet started feeling expensive, so i held my nose, gritted my teeth and started taking the Stansted "Express" (Express in name alone) out to the wilds of Essex to catch the airline that is the subject of this article.
After a couple of these trips, I was well attuned to the joys of priority boarding (though at Ciampino airport in Rome all that gets you is first onto the bus) and understood the system well enough to get myself into an aisle seat in the 2nd or 3rd row, everytime, nearly always with an empty seat next to me.
Contrast that with the last time I flew BA, back from Stockholm early in the new year. Despite my girlfriend and my tickets being booked together, we ended up in middle seats, three rows apart. I wasn't enjoying my Ruby Oneworld status on that flight, that's for sure.
I wouldn't check baggage for any trip less than two weeks, on any airline, so that's not a problem. I also became quickly appreciative of the vastly superior terminal that is stansted, especially compared with the minge pit that is gatwick south terminal. God forbid that I should ever have to travel through Heathrow again...
I also gradually became grudgingly appreciative of ryanair's no nonsense attitude. Most people interpret this as nastiness, which in reality of course it is, but whether that's a problem or not depends on your expectations. I expect Ryanair to treat me like an item of livestock to be moved from point A to point B and have a thing called an MP3 player that allows me to avoid all of their 2-4-1 spirit promotions, phone cards, scratch tickets, timeshares, mail order brides and whatever else they've dreamed up to sell on board.
Easyjet, by contrast, tries very hard to be nice and it just doesn't work. If you're going to treat me like livestock, I'd prefer to not also have to put up with fake smiles and pretend customer service.
Michael O'Leary is clearly a lunatic but his airline moves a lot of people around europe at affordable prices (well until the price of oil hit the roof, anyway). If he doesn't want third party companies to sell his products, that's his call to make.