Originally Posted by
Charlie Roy
Looking at the prices of tickets this route is hemorrhaging reserve dosh from Ryanair's coffers.
I think when Ryanair concretely see how using their Cork based aircraft this summer to do a couple of Carcassonne rotations has been hugely profitable, and then compare it to the gigantic losses being made on the Dublin route, they'll finally realise that the aircraft can earn them millions (on routes such as Bergamo, Hahn, Budapest, Madrid, Palma, Charleroi, Riga, Krakow, Warsaw, Treviso, Beauvais) instead of losing them millions on Dublin.
I guess the profitability of (some) routes does not have any priority for MOL. He cannot resist fighting some local wars first (to eliminate the competition) and the profitability doesn't matter as long as his competitors are present there. Like a boy playing Monopoly (not like a millionaire investing real millions of cash belonging to his firm). Perhaps the fight with the competition is a kind of exciting stimulus that matters. He still keeps adding bases and/or routes to the countries where the competition is fierce (UK, Ireland) and still didn't create a single base in CE-Europe (e.g. Poland) where the competitors are weaker and the labour costs lower. He will even compete with trains on some domestic routes where the fares are very low and keep selling tickets for nothing on some other unprofitable destinations but has done nothing to develop the network from/to the countries where he has no contestants at all (like Finland; excellent profits, yet no route development for years - just because no competitors there?).
So, in my opinion, the route development Ryanair style is: let's see first who could be hurt by the opening of a new link, let's connect as much "friendly" airports as possible, no research needed (are the routes viable, will they find enough passengers), who cares about the analysis (overlooking opportunities).