Ryanair’s Head of Communications, Paul Fitzsimmons said:
“Ryanair welcomes competition. This is not the first time an airline has announced a Dublin route and it won’t be the last, and like all the others, they won’t beat Ryanair on price, frequency or punctuality. Ryanair’s fares to Birmingham start at €0.99 – that’s half of MyTravelLite’s best fare, and Ryanair has twice the frequency – 4 daily return services. Ryanair’s fares will always be half the price of MyTravelLite, with twice the frequency.” Ryanair’s response
Ryanair lie No 1
Ryanair are telling a blatant lie in saying they have FOUR daily returns. They have
THREE: FR664, FR669 and FR673 (for both Summer and Winter). Some of the flights go at a different time of either Saturday or Sunday, but if they think that this allows them to describe it as a 4 times daily operation then they’re deluding themselves.
Ryanair lie No 2
At Monday’s 1200 press conference, MyTravelLite predicted that Ryanair would engage in predatory pricing and cut it’s lead-in fare to half of that offered by MyTravelLite. It took until 1600 on Monday for Ryanair to do just that. However, they’ve hidden the ‘saving’ in their higher taxes.
Ryanair states that it’s DUB-BHX lead-in fare is €1.00 less than MyTravelLite’s. However, Ryanair’s taxes are €13.52 compared to €11.13 for MyTravelLite. So MyTravelLite’s lead-in fare is really €1.39
LESS. Travelling BHX-DUB, Ryanair claims it’s lead-in fare is £0.50 less – but its taxes are £14.86 compared to £13.83 for MyTravelLite, so again MyTravelLite is cheaper.
And in any case, differences of a few pence or cents are pretty meaningless: the real test is seeing what kind of fare you can actually find on the websites for a day that you’d actually like to travel. I’m sure pax are more influenced by other factors – like that MyTravelLite times are better suited for BHX originating business pax.
P.S.
brabazon: TJ did sign a non-competition clause. It’s now expired.