Free flights
Ryanair at the moment are running a near-free flights promotion. While not strictly free, flights cost 1 penny / 1 eurocent, and there is none of the extra taxes / charges / fees business.
I'm curious as to how such a promotion affects the stats that are shown in the quarterly results presentation.
If one has an Electron card, a rational consumer would make many bookings for flights in the full expectation that most of the bookings would lapse unused.
After all, if one is undecided about whether to make a trip, it's worth making the booking anyway if it costs 2 pence and takes 2 minutes. One can always add things like luggage entitlements via the website nearer the date of the trip if you actually decide to fly. I've made multiple flight bookings for the same date - I can thus decide on the day where to go based on weather forecast.
Ryanair are presumably happy because they get the publicity boost without having to actually fly many people anywhere or pay Govt taxes / airport charges.
Most other airlines won't sell below the cost of Govt tax, thus adding friction to pax reservations and avoiding mass unused bookings.
Ryanair's monthly pax figures are reported as number of seats purchased rather than pax flown on the basis that refunds are not given, thus the 1p promotions may cause overstatement of the number of pax and load factor. Further, the reported average fare will decrease because of all the 1p flights. Stats thus look great but are shown through rose-tinted glass.
Does anyone have any data to say how this kind of promotion with resultant non-utilised bookings affects quarterly statistics ?