Originally Posted by
Sonikt
And there's the rub
You can get away with it for so long, until you don't.
At which point the whole dirty scheme becomes a stinking pile of previously uncosted liabilities and everyone starts asking why no one noticed all this before (apart from the few people who did notice, obviously)
These things do have a tendency to snowball
Corperate history is littered with examples of institutions who convinced themselves they were untouchable, right before the whole thing unwound very quickly, in an 'emporer's new clothes' moment.
One only has to look to the global banking crisis, or dot com before that.
I would add that stellar growth, seemingly unaffected by the forces of nature and economic cycles, has of itself so often been seen in hindsight to be a clear indication that not all was adding up.
There is a world of difference between the .com bubble where certain companies were worth billions but had never made a cent in profits, some are still out there Tesla are worth more than Ford or GM but only ever made a profit in the last quarter, ditto Amazon, meanwhile in Dublin the pile it high sell it cheap policy has seen them become the biggest airline by passenger numbers in Europe and very cash rich.
A very large number of their staff costs are contracted and can be easily disposed of should need to, even if fuel went to $200 pb they could park a large part of their fleet and ride it out having cut their personnel costs to zero.
The only thing that would likely see the company in serious difficulty would be a series of high profile high casualty accidents that pointed to safety failings on their part and that simply isn’t going to happen, their crew training to date has been top notch, ditto their line maintenance, the bottom line is that Ryanair understand when to yield and when to hold, who cares if your seen as the bully in the play ground if it’s become your play ground.
That 2018 has been a difficult year for them in terms of negative
PR is not in doubt, but passenger numbers were up 11% in October YoY, the share price may be off but most in this sector are the same and investors are not bothered about publicity over staff allegedly sleeping on the floor, the brutal sacking of same is for investors a sign of strength not weakness that will make others think twice hanging their dirty washing out in public.
My work travel is paid for by my employer and i normally have a choice of carriers and I try not to use Ryanair in the main because of the constant selling on board of crap oftern in very poorly spoken English, but BA these days is much the same, the irony is that Aer Lingus are way better than than BA despite being in the same IAG group, Vueling don’t impress me much either and I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to see them mess up.
So FR will pay up when and only when it suits them or they have a gun held to their heads as in this case, it’s small beans, maybe a couple hours profit or 20 minutes of revenue, they know nobody likes them, they know they are the cheapest and they simply don’t care what people think, this isn’t a bubble that’s about to burst.