Ryanair & Manchester: On Kissing and Making Up ...
A bit of background on the stormy relationship between Manchester Airport and Ryanair. As you know, back in the days of the acrimonious split when Ryanair suddenly reduced from ten routes to just one at MAN, the airport famously stated that it refused to "prostitute" itself for Ryanair. MAG claimed at the time that they had offered terms which worked out at around GBP3 per passenger (seemed pretty reasonable to me). It certainly costs alot more than GBP6 to make an overland return journey from Manchester to an alternative Ryanair departure point.
Fast forward to January 2011 when Ryanair announced new routes to Spain from MAN and hinted at further cooperation with the airport in the future. At that time, Michael O'Leary gave a hilarious interview to "Manchester Confidential" discussing his change of heart. The interview is absolutely brilliant, well worth looking up. MOL on top form. I am not having much luck posting the link, but if you do a google advanced search on the following items: "Manchester Confidential ... Go to the loo before boarding ... Simon Binns meets Michael O' Leary ... January 26th" the piece should come up for you. It is well worth the effort. Perhaps someone else on here could try posting the link?
Anyway, keeping in mind the "prostitute" comment from the bad old days, MOL is quoted as follows: "The management at Manchester Airport has changed ... We're all involved in prostitution, but the old management didn't know much about the sex industry. We're Irish, we're not proud. We know you have to pay for sex and you have to pay to be at Manchester Airport too."
"The deal with Manchester is actually worse than the one we discussed 18 months ago but the level of growth is different. It's higher cost on lower traffic figures. I think its a fair arrangement."
Do look up and read the original article if you can. It is sure to put a smile on your face.
Speaking for myself, if the latest rumours are borne out I could be booking alot of Ryanair sectors over the next few months ... there are some interesting destinations in that list. I hope the new services are not all head-to-head with other carriers on existing sunshine routes. As I posted on this thread many moons ago, I used to be a frequent flier with Ryanair but that ground to an abrupt halt when MAN was reduced to a DUB route only. They simply didn't have any routes which were remotely useful to me after that, so I couldn't use them. Lots of folks in the Greater Manchester area found themselves in the same predicament. But if the latest rumours are true, I welcome the news of their return. In Ryanair's previous brief expansion I got to NRN, HHN, BRE, MRS, SNN (and DUB) ... just missed out on my CRL travel dates ... before they pulled out again. I look forward to adding to that list in the future. Customers such as myself don't hate Ryanair as a company ... we just hate inconvenient overland journeys to more distant departure points. And at MAN, we are fortunate to have many other flight options which circumvent that inconvenience.
Anyway, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for afew more exotic destinations ex-MAN if the latest reports are confirmed. I guess we will all know one way or the other within the next few days. SHED.