Ryanair - 6

[en2r]

Also EI's record profits were only compared to their own standards. If their best ever profit was 5 EUR and then they made 8 EUR, they would be record profits. Does not necessarily mean its a decent performance.

If I remember rightly, EI's profit per passenger in 2007 was higher than that of FR.

I think its clear that Ryanair seems to have reached market saturation for their product, especially in Ireland and the UK. This is evident by their moving into bigger and more central airports like Birmingham, Edinburgh etc. which they previously said they'd never base at. I think Ryanair really need to open a base in Eastern Europe. Its hard to believe they still don't have any base east of Frankfurt-Hahn! With Centralwings on the brink of collapse and Sky Europe looking to be going the same way, there is surely an opportunity there. They need to become less reliant on the Irish and UK markets which have become saturated with LCCs and concentrate more on the developing markets in Eastern Europe where there is far more potential for growth. Russia also is a huge opportunity, however without an open skies agreement it is unlikely they would fly there, at least not with Irish registered planes!

[eu01]

listening to passengers' needs.

In principle, I do not need any call centers, but it scares me that MOL's panaceum (remedia for everything) is to go further into cost savings only.

Ryanair said it would close its Dublin telesales operation, affecting up to 40 jobs, because phone bookings have been eclipsed by Internet reservations, and to help offset high fuel costs.

Ryanair , Europe’s largest low-cost airline, said on Friday phone bookings now accounted for less than 1 percent of sales as almost everyone booked online, but it would still maintain its cheaper call centres in Romania and Germany.

"These kind of cost savings must be made if Ryanair is to remain Europe’s lowest cost airline in these difficult recessionary markets," Chief Executive Michael O’Leary said in a statement.

[CamelhAir]

Van Bosh

Ryr lie about their load factors, as they measure them (in public) as pax booked as a % of seats available. The industry standard is pax travelled as a % of seats available. The real Ryr LF is between 5-10% lower than admitted.

[schoolkid]

Ryr lie about their load factors

Camel ,
Ryr are not lieing. I know for a fact that in their shareholder literature , it is stated that the LF figures include unflown sectors, as RYR operate a no-refunds policy. If anything its a little bonus as of course they keep any airport taxes etc for themselves!

[Charlie Roy]

If anything its a little bonus

Indeed, passengers not turning up also results in the aircraft weighing less, meaning less fuel burnt

[EI-BUD]

Ryanair

I was reading all the comments about whats happening at Ryanair, MOL is a smart guy in so many ways and he is cutting costs to protect profits over the next few years, but despite his business senses, he has no clue about brand.

Airlines like Easyjet are doing alot to promote their brand, and in the long run this will be more valuable than price.

Selling the price mantra is good, but unless you can wipe out your competition on the route to exclusivity its not a good strategy.

[en2r]

I wonder will DUB-CRK be shut down as this route is burning cash for a fact.

Not while Aer Arann are still on the route. It'd be too much for MOL's ego to give in first. Imagine the bragging rights RE would have! MOL would rather lose money on the route than be seen to give in to RE. However I don't think its burning cash. Its a very short sector, and loads have improved of late so while it may be lossmaking since yields are poor, I don't think its heavily lossmaking!

[Charlie Roy]

Cork - Dublin

I don't think its heavily lossmaking!

I disagree. Looking at the prices of tickets this route is hemorrhaging reserve dosh from Ryanair's coffers.
I think when Ryanair concretely see how using their Cork based aircraft this summer to do a couple of Carcassonne rotations has been hugely profitable, and then compare it to the gigantic losses being made on the Dublin route, they'll finally realise that the aircraft can earn them millions (on routes such as Bergamo, Hahn, Budapest, Madrid, Palma, Charleroi, Riga, Krakow, Warsaw, Treviso, Beauvais) instead of losing them millions on Dublin.

[eu01]

Originally Posted by Charlie Roy

Looking at the prices of tickets this route is hemorrhaging reserve dosh from Ryanair's coffers.
I think when Ryanair concretely see how using their Cork based aircraft this summer to do a couple of Carcassonne rotations has been hugely profitable, and then compare it to the gigantic losses being made on the Dublin route, they'll finally realise that the aircraft can earn them millions (on routes such as Bergamo, Hahn, Budapest, Madrid, Palma, Charleroi, Riga, Krakow, Warsaw, Treviso, Beauvais) instead of losing them millions on Dublin.

I guess the profitability of (some) routes does not have any priority for MOL. He cannot resist fighting some local wars first (to eliminate the competition) and the profitability doesn't matter as long as his competitors are present there. Like a boy playing Monopoly (not like a millionaire investing real millions of cash belonging to his firm). Perhaps the fight with the competition is a kind of exciting stimulus that matters. He still keeps adding bases and/or routes to the countries where the competition is fierce (UK, Ireland) and still didn't create a single base in CE-Europe (e.g. Poland) where the competitors are weaker and the labour costs lower. He will even compete with trains on some domestic routes where the fares are very low and keep selling tickets for nothing on some other unprofitable destinations but has done nothing to develop the network from/to the countries where he has no contestants at all (like Finland; excellent profits, yet no route development for years - just because no competitors there?).

So, in my opinion, the route development Ryanair style is: let's see first who could be hurt by the opening of a new link, let's connect as much "friendly" airports as possible, no research needed (are the routes viable, will they find enough passengers), who cares about the analysis (overlooking opportunities).

[Facelookbovvered]

Its a little bonus, but not for long!!!

Presently all carriers are involved in this racket of non refunds on APD which is a goverment tax, but only applies to pax flown, not pax that book (and pay the APD) but for what ever reason do not fly.

Airlines can not lawfully refuse to refund this the APD, however they can (and do) lawfully apply an admin fee for dealing with this refund, the policy varies company to company, but in general with the like of Flybe, Ryan, and most of the LoCo carriers if you are a family of 4 paying around £100 in APD you will be charged around £20.00 per person admin fee to get back £25.00 each, ok you say you still get back £5.00, sorry not so beacuse the " credit card fee" applies whether you are being debited or credited!!! so expect another £3.50 per person on top, do the maths and from the APD of £100 you will be lucky end up with more than £6.00.

In some case the admin fee plus credit card fee is more than the APD paid so you are out of pocket, if this was a high street bank there would be an out cry!!

BUT NOT FOR LONG

From 2009 the APD will be abolished and airlines will be charged based on a new formula based on aircraft emissions, NOTE AIRLINES WILL BE CHARGED not passengers, of course the goverment in the run up to the election will put positive spin on this for customers, but airlines will pay more and will have to decide how and if to pass this on, either way HMG will get the dosh whether the aircraft goes full or empty and MOL and other bandits will no longer be able to pocket the cash that rightly belongs to the passenger.

BTW its not just airlines that do this sort of thing, Trainline apply similar fee's that mean if you apply for a refund it will cost you more than (you wont) get back

I suspect that the scam goes far deeper and that some airlines spread the APD amongst their pax figures, but most heavily on pax that don't fly, remember the APD only applies to flights within or leaving the UK, not the return leg so you pay it twice to fly from London to Scotland , but once to fly from BRS to AGP (Malaga) and back, it get even m ore interesting when you get into two class cabins because in theory ADP doubles, some carriers have got round this by removing the cabin divders or curtains which makes the aircraft single class but still charge the extra APD, this is one of the many reasons why the goverment is moving to an aircraft based charge, the current regime is all but impossible to police and is wide open to fraud (just like family tax credits,disabilty allowances to name a few) a good idea, but not thought through.

[JobsaGoodun]

From 2009 the APD will be abolished and airlines will be charged based on a new formula based on aircraft emissions, NOTE AIRLINES WILL BE CHARGED not passengers, of course the goverment in the run up to the election will put positive spin on this for customers, but airlines will pay more and will have to decide how and if to pass this on, either way HMG will get the dosh whether the aircraft goes full or empty and MOL and other bandits will no longer be able to pocket the cash that rightly belongs to the passenger.

This is not really that big a deal.

The airlines that choose to slap fees on any refund of taxes are those who generally operate with higher load factors and therefore are less susceptable to the new tax given that it will be spread over a greater level of ticket yield. Effectively this is now a tax on seats with every seat, be it full or not attracting a form of taxation.

You say that airlines will be charged and not passengers however this is currently the case with the airlines acting as the tax collector on behalf of the government. Make no mistake about it, the airlines will not be 'paying' the tax on your behalf. You will be charged through the cost of your flight ticket, of that there is no doubt, although this new method is likely to be far less transparent resulting in you potentially being charged more than is actually being levied by the government for your particular seat on the aircraft. Essentially this charge will just be re-grouped into what most airlines class as 'taxes, fees and charges'.

[ryan2000]

Cork-Dublin

This route isn't the loss leader that people think it is. They pulled Dublin Shannon after a few weeks but they're now on the ORK route since NOV 2005 and have no intention of walking away.

[chrism20]

There is also the small matter of Aer Arran 5 times a day on the ORK/DUB route.

RE's refusal to lie down and die on this route will be bugging MOL big time. If RE were to withdraw tomorrow FR would either do the same, slash frequency or fares would rocket.

We only need to look at the EZY/FR debacle that happened not too long ago

[Facelookbovvered]

Jobsagoodun

I think you miss my point at present the airline collect the tax from all passengers, but only pay to the goverment the tax paid to the airline by the passenger that actually fly. I understand that in Ryanair case this is an average of 7% of their booked load. This will of course only apply to uk departures and that might? be on 15-20m out of their 52m+ pax a year, but 7% of 15m is 1.05m at £10 a time is £10.5m which in my terms is still a fair chunk of cash for free. In simple terms the new way of charging the airline will mean this free money (its billed as tax) is lost.

Put it another way on baby or Jet2 pax numbers (and most of theirs are UK) it could be worth over a £1m a year and that might make a loss into a profit or vice versa

[Charlie Roy]

I.T. problemos

Dear Ryanair,

Your booking engine is down. Again!

[JadeGoody]

I think TRF(sandefjorden, oslo) will be a new ryanairhub

[eu01]

Indeed, if the route policies were unable to destroy Ryanair, the new booking system will do the trick...

Please review everything carefully then click the CONFIRM FLIGHTS button at the bottom of the page.
[nothing to review]
Pricing
Total Cost of Flight 0.00

and later on...

An Error Has Occurred

An error condition exists which is preventing you from continuing. You may wish to start over and try again.
If you continue to get this error message, please contact the airline.

Additional details about the error:
An error has occurred. Please try again.

And... da capo al fine.

PS (edit). Shouldn't they already stop informing about some "minor" problems with the booking system? That will be shown to the court when they'll finally decide to sue Navitaire (the software provider) for all that chaos.

[airbourne]

€16 to use an Irish Credit Card. €6 to use an english card. Please tell me how they work that out?

[JobsaGoodun]

Facelookbovvered - I've not missed you point. The fact remains that if this form of revenue stream is cut off then it will simply be re-couped another way.

We all demand lower and lower fares when infact the reality of the situation is that the operating costs for airlines have increased significantly on what they were even 3yrs ago, mainly due to the cost of oil.

At the moment, you know how much you pay to the government...its is the £10APD. With the new scheme, you probably won't. An airline may indicate that it might work out for them at £10 per seat however they will probaby charge £15 to account for seats that are not filled. This will simply resulting in higher fares for everyone with the only sufferer being the passenger!

[daz211]

I for one have flown over 50 times with Ryanair and always pointed friends and family in the direction of the Ryanair website.
As you can see by my posts on this site over months and years I sang from the Ryanair hym book.

WELL no more I am sick to the back teath with Ryanairs website
and have not, nor will I, book on the user UN-friendly website again.

I hate to think how many bookings they have lost due to the website.

I never thought the day would come when I would walk away from Ryanair, there was a time when my blood was BLUE and I would stand and defend Ryanair to the death.

Today is a sad day for me! GOODBYE RYANAIR .