Sorry to make a statement off topic again.
For those who continue to question the company Ryanair, I feel really sorry for you guys because you proved that you'll never understand the true beauty of doing real good bussiness.
There is no question that Ryanair made a verry sweet deal with Boeing. That's also the reason why they sell their oldest airframes these days: because of that sweet deal those airframes are probably written off in their balance sheet after 10 years or so (sorry for the language, I'm not a native English speaker). The price they get for those airframes is the rest-value + profit (again not sure of the right spelling), so it makes perfect sense to sell now instead of investing in them to go for another 10 years with Ryanair!
I read an interview with MOL a couple of weeks ago (sorry, don't have a link to a source but I'm sure I've read it somewhere), about the strategy of Ryanair. It comes down to the fact that they want to profit from the economical crisis by being thé alternative for those how prefer to save on airline tickets. And I want to bet that plenty of new candidate customers will turn up in 2009 to make use of that alternative.
If you just look at the balance sheets that you can find on the Ryanair website, than you're blind or can't read if you say that things don't look good for Ryanair. Oh yes, in the interview MOL hinted out that Ryanair really profit of the crisis. At the time that you had to pay 1,5 USD for 1 EUR, they went to the bank for a little 'exchange'
, how do you think they will pay the next 50 airframes? Correct!
I think too many people made aviation bussiness look verry difficult and for 'elite' only but hey, it's the simple genious that does the best bussiness. Not convinced yet? Have a look at Southwest Airlines in the US.
Cheers