Originally Posted by
davidjohnson6
May I ask why Ryanair tend to release seats for a given month quite a bit later than other LCCs ?
I'm assuming that some routes not being on sale beyond 4th November (i.e. barely more than 3 months away) is due to some specific reason, but FR still seem to regularly be the last major LCC to come to market by a sizeable margin.
I know that forward bookings beyond 3 months are low, but these are presumably non trivial and it's worth picking up those extra potential sales - or at least telling people about the planned schedules so that customers can make plans for a trip. And yes, I know that once a flight goes on sale it becomes much harder to do significant changes to the scheduling of the fleet in a flexible way, but slot conferences are far in advance of Ryanair seats going on sale.
I'm puzzled though as to why Ryanair need so much more time than Easyjet, Wizz, Norwegian, and all their other major competitors, and also why they don't seem concerned. Anyone knowledgeable able to suggest a reason as to Ryanair's rationale ?
Perhaps one possible reason is ongoing airport (re)negotiations, which as you know is a no-holds-barred activity in Ryanair's case. "If you want us to fly to your airport this winter, you need to pay another €x00,000 to
Airport Marketing Services, otherwise we won't do it. See, we've loaded a lot of our winter schedule, but we haven't loaded your flights, and we won't unless you agree to pay."