Ryanair Website Not Taking Booking?
Well, it's a nuisance for the passengers, but it's an obvious financial loss for the airline too. They say MOL is talented in cutting the cost base. Well, he is, no doubts about it. But there are still many gaps in the Ryanair scheme and many money-burning flows. The booking system is certainly one of them.
What would cost the fast creation of a better booking system? I bet the costs of such a fully-functional system would be much lower than the amount of money lost within the half year of that hopeless juggle with the present one. It still doesn't work properly, I believe it's a time bomb with more problems ahead.
Cutting the costs required? There is an other issue that should be addressed, it's a route policy. In fact Ryanair doesn't have any consistent route policy. I perceive it as something like "try-it-and-dump-or-continue" rule. The research... do they have any? FR does not seem to pay enough attention to the viability of some routes, in some cases the reaction is very slow. Being more active in seeking opportunities could be profitable too.
Once again, I'll give an example from my own yard - analyzing the Finnish market. Let's compare two longest routes from Tampere, these are DUB-TMP and BGY-TMP. The former is just an average one, with load factors around 80% and not the best yields. Right now one can get flights from September onwards for just 5 euros on many dates. Checking the latter we see an excellent load factors to Bergamo, over 90% across the board, very often up to 100%. The fares unusually high, hardly ever below 50 euros, last minute prices as high as 200 euros one-way. What would the flexible airline do? Firstly, it would try to rise the frequencies on the "better" route keeping an eye on the less profitable one. Secondly, it would try to broaden the offer by cautiously adding other routes between the two successful countries (Italy-Finland in that case; Pisa? Rome?). Thirdly, it would analyze which direction of flights to the country is more popular, e.g. East-West or North-South and would try to find similar destinations in the nearby counties. And so on.
Ryanair seems to be "immune" to such nuances like the passengers' "wish list". Why? Is this lack of flexibility due to lack of applicable "marketing agreements" and other deals? If that's the case it must be a very crippling rule, is it worth it? The possible gains resulting from some deals might not level the losses.