Ryanair - 2
 

This article says that Porto in Portugal will soon be a base of Ryanair.
http://www.fabricadeconteudos.com/?l...a36f30086ec37f

Wouldn't have been my first guess though...
From reading various news articles the last few months I would expect the next base to be in Poland, probably Krakow. Ryanair bosses have also visited Murcia to see how construction of the new terminal is proceeding, Hamburg Lubeck is still waiting in the wings, Madrid is the surprise hot new favourite to be Ryanair's next base, and an Oslo Torp base wouldn't surprise me in the slightest as Ryanair can't get enough of the place recently.

Some interesting months ahead... :O

Any news regarding eventual Ryanair operations to Greece?

When will the final DUB schedule be released and will HUY be dropped (which is unfortuantely expected)?

airhumberside

:( Unfortunately Humberside is currently the only destination from Dublin that is not bookable for winter. You never know though... Malmo and Goteburg were only added today. Maybe they still have to add Humberside in the next day or two.

BOH
 

Seems like Ryanair are getting pretty hacked off with TOM's expansion down at BOH and having taken them on with Pisa are looking to duplicate other TOMMY routes? Anyone know what's cookin down there? Seems EZY are also gettin in on the act this autumn.

What makes you say that?

Ryanair - 2
 

Moderator pruning. Old Ryanair thread is still available but is now read-only.

Ryanair's Polish airports
 

This is an interesting article on how the low cost airline explosion in Poland is putting enormous pressure on Poland's small regional airports that are so well loved by Ryanair.

http://www.pulsbiznesu.pl/content.as...8-517640B1B1EE
"Lodz airport noted record increases and had nearly 82,000 passengers while in the same period of last year it was below 1,000"

just about travel if anyone can help,do ryanair accept provisional driving licenses for ID?? flying from Ireland and my friend wants to know for definite.

The Ryanair website states "driving licence", it does not state that it has to be a full licence. It must of course have a photo. A driving licence is only acceptable for flights within Ireland or between Ireland and UK.
Also if you use web checkin you MUST show your passport at security and when boarding the aircraft, regardless of whether the flight in within Ireland or not.

New winter routes
 

Prestwick - Eindhoven
Prestwick - Riga
Hahn - Balaton
Hahn - Biarritz
Hahn - Nantes
Hahn - Valencia

Are these routes to replace routes possibly being dropped from Prestwick and Hahn?

All current routes seem to be operating as normal from PIK and HHN in the winter 06 season. I dont know for certain, but it appears some of the "sun" routes frequencies are being cut back slightly to allow these new routes to operate. PIK-EIN appears to be simply there to drive Transavia off the PIK-AMS route.

On a similar topic, I always had Ryanair down for providing high frequencies to stimulate demand. Recently they seem to have been veering from this model. For their sake, I hope it doesn't backfire in the long run. But if you are not really catering for business traffic I dont suppose daily is necessary on STN-SUF and PIK-MJV for example.

XSB

Is the Ryanair business model really viable in the long term? My thoughts would be no. I just dont see how you can continue to treat your customers like an inconvenience and still enjoy repeat business.

If I may atke my recent FR experience....
At check-in we presented three large suitcases for check-in (at Dubai they wieghed 57 kilos, we were allowed 60kg in total(15 x4). Two bags were overwight, the charge would have come to €180 had I not packed an extra bag. We then had to go through the unnecessary stress of repacking our bags and we then sent four bags under.

At the gate I noticed an older lady who had trouble even getting up from her chair...did FR offer her a wheelchair to the aircraft. No, they made her queue up with everyone else and then fight for a seat on the aircraft.

The aircraft itself was fine, the Cork based crew were not. Very poorly turned out, awful attitude and most were chewing gum. Apparently passengers are only there to be flogged inedible snacks at shocking prices.

Fair enough my ticket was about €25 return. But what about the people who booked a few days in advance, it would have cost them almost €500. This level of serivce surely isnt good enough for those kind of fares?

My basic question is why do FR have so many hidden charges( baggage, overweight baggage, and phantom taxes???) Why are they so bloody inflexable and why in Gods name cant they assign a seat. Its not that difficult.

Actually my basic question is why bother? Will people eventually get sick of being screwed for cash at everypossible oppertunity?

And befor anyone says it, I would complain to FR, but I wouldn't waste the price of a stamp, or my time.

I think Ryanair have bitten off more than they expected with the 737-800s. They are starting to struggling to make them pay on some routes such as Dublin to Durham Tees Valley. This must be due to the fact that the 738 has 189 seats. When you compare this to other low cost carriers that generally operate 150 seat aircraft you can see the difference and it becomes clear why Ryanair are having to push seats at such low prices. This in turn reduces the yield. The deal they got from Boeing may have been the steal of the century but I think it may start to hurt them. Hopefully they have realised this and change some of the options they have into 737-700s.

A 737-700 is no cheaper to run than a 737-800.

Essexboy are you sure? Yes full it probably is cheaper to run than a 738, but running half full it won't be. Remember a 738 is heavier than a 737-700 so fuel costs should be more.

I beg to differ. I don't have up-to-date detailed numbers to hand but here's a US starting point:
http://www.unisys.com/micro/images/c...harts/fig6.gif
This is from a Unisys report which is a few years old but which gives a rough idea. Of course fuel costs, landing fees etc will have changed, but not the fact that there's a difference in operating costs (on a plane-mile basis) between the -700 and -800. You can see from the chart above that for the airlines flying both -700s and -800s (e.g. Continental, Alaska) there's an appreciable difference.
C.

Reading the graph correctly for the ASM the 737-700 and 800 are similar in cost using Alaska as the figure to compare.

On a mile basis the 700 is cheaper as it should be. In Europe the figure is different due to landing fees and overflight costs that are MTOW related..

Any news on the DUB-ORK route? Any idea of loads? I think FR 737-700's would be a good idea! I've noticed a lot of new routes are 3/4 weekly, as a 738 is to much capacity for a lot of routes! Flying a 738 from Dub to Durham and Humberside is overkill!

Is NCL to Milan been pulled also

Cyrano, from your graph if you take the continental figures the difference between 700 and 800 is quite small. This is due to the fact that the 800 has a very efficient cruise wing among other things. Now if you couple this to the low cost model which says that 20% of the passengers pay for 80% of the flight this difference is quickly eroded. Sure I accept that on an individual flight where pax numbers are low the smaller aircraft will be slightly cheaper. One less cabin crew member for one but the airline varies its schedule maximise loads and if it stopped getting that last 20% or part there of it would have to make more changes than just buying smaller aircraft.

Another factor that this doesn’t account for is that Ryanair by committing to a single type has managed to reduce both the purchase cost and the maintenance cost of the fleet. This means that each aircraft doesn’t need to produce such high revenue in order to be in profit. If your graph showed £1 profit per mile per aircraft I think it might tell a different story. Nice graph though.

Essexboy:

You're quite right, and I think we're actually in agreement: in practice the commonality benefits of a single-type fleet will considerably outweigh the operating cost advantages of the -700 on lighter sectors. My purpose in posting the graph was just to illustrate that there *is* an operating cost difference between the two variants.

Contrary to what some other posters have suggested, I don't think it would make sense for Ryanair to get -700s: sure, they'd optimise load factors in some cases, but they can no longer swap aircraft around as they want or they'd end up with overbooked flights. The complexity of their operation would go up - and all in order to save a relatively small % of operating cost on thinner routes.

To my mind, the conclusion to be drawn from these lower-load-factor routes of Ryanair's is not that they should be buying 737-700s but that they perhaps shouldn't be flying the routes. There are going to be some routes that can't just profitably be operated with a 737-800. (There will be others where the load factor is lower than average but the yields are good enough to make things worthwhile).

I recall a few years ago someone from Cathay Pacific (anyone remember who?) described the secret of their success as "the creative misuse of aircraft". He was referring to - for example - flying 747s on the one-hour sector from Hong Kong to Taipei in between intercontinental flights. The plane wasn't really optimised for that, but it made money and improved asset utilisation. I think that some of Ryanair's routes may be like that on a smaller scale.

C.

MADRID
 

More evidence of an imminent annonuncement of a new Ryanair base in Madrid:

http://www.presstur.com/site/news.asp?news=6632
"A Ryanair pretende operar a partir de Madrid para Roma, Milão ou Bruxelas."

So the list of potential destinations from Madrid Barajas currently stands at:

Granada
Canary Islands :ok:
Rome
Milan
Brussels :}

Cyrano it’s interesting what you say: there is a rumour in Ryanair at the moment that we are getting B777s. I am sure you are laughing as much as I did when I heard it but taking your “creative misuse of aircraft" quote and the use of the 747 by Cathay perhaps it’s not so daft. MOL is the master of taking someone else’s idea and making it his own.

Does anyone know if Ryanair's recently introduced Dublin-Humberside route is continuing for the winter? It seems to be the only route ex-DUB not on sale on their website. Pax figures have been OK but fall short of what FR wanted for the route.

Regards

Mike

Hmm, interesting. As the Italians say, "se non e vero, e ben trovato" (essentially, "if it's not true, it's a good story anyway!").

Just purely hypothetically, what could FR do with a high-density 777? Yes, of course they could do long-haul, but I'm wondering more about what their densest European sectors are in terms of number of daily flights. DUB-STN? Are there others which are dense enough for them to credibly replace several 738 flights by one 777 flight? It seems to me that relatively few routes on the existing network have this density. Or would they just launch a higher-density operation e.g. from STN to Malaga, Faro and Marseille?

C.

Christmas
 

I see that Ryanair are operating a limited number of flights on Sunday December 24th and Sunday December 31st, finishing the day around 4pm.
No flights Christmas day which is normal enough since most airports it operates to close that day, and also there is the question of staffing, and would there be many customers Christmas day... ?

Also on Tuesday the 26th of December again limited services with the first flights around 2pm...

NEW ROUTES!!!!!
 

From Luton to Morocco (Fez and Marrakech).
From Shannon to Bournemouth and Edinburgh.
From Stansted to TWO NEW DESTINATIONS: Deauville (North Western France) and Pula in Croatia.

Check out the route map on their site!!!

Charlie Roy

THis is pretty much standard practice in most western airlines. Try working in LHR terminals on Christmas Day - a lonely experience. Only flights from/to countries where Christams is not a major holiday bar a few exceptions.

Screw the passenger
 

Ryanair today dropped NOC - LGW, hardly 2 weeks since hounding Easyjet off the route, so 2 become none.

The service was apparently doing well. SNN - LGW also. This sort of competition dose no one any good, definitely not the passengers in the south of England who use on these routes. Protecting the home market I suppose.

http://www.irelandwestairport.com/ne...42&dbtype=News

I don't see why FR would want to operate from MAD, however good the deal - isn't that airfield far too large for their type of operation?

Easyjet seem far more happy with the major hubs, whereas I'd suspect FR are looking at a few bargaining chips for other Aena properites (hey, and we complain here about BAA/Ferrovial's market share), or just playing MAD off against the new Don Quixote, which might just get to call itself Madrid South, considering that 200kms by AVE will take much less time than 100kms by a crawling bus.

And according to U2's website, LGW to NOC is staying over the winter, or am I misreading this?

3 new bases
 

Michael O'Leary said today that Ryanair expect to announce 3 new bases by the end of this year.

http://business.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=1086902006
"O'Leary said Ryanair expected to announce three new bases by the end of the year"

My money is on Madrid, Krakow and Porto. But wouldn't be surprised by Lübeck, Murcia, Beauvais, Torp, Wroclaw, Treviso, Riga, Tampere, Eindhoven, Bratislava, Weeze or Berlin.

Where do ye think the new bases are likely to be?

Charlie,
I would say that the RYR Christmas timetable is what they have done for as long as I can remember.
I would think that Poland is due to get a base. I don't believe Madrid will as yet and I think the others could be Porto and Eindhoven with Oslo Torp as an outsider.

So let's see. Competition comes on a route, ryan put in a service to compete and stuffs the competitor, then once the competitor throws in the towel Ryan pulls their service too, presumably after making a slight dent in their war chest of cash, sending a clear message that other airilnes should not mess with Ryanair's markets. Forget about the passengers who welcomed and supported the new service.

On the other hand, they drop routes beacuse an airport tries to increase charges, giving airports a clear message about not playing ball with Ryanairs model. try to charge more and we will move to the next gullible airfield who will hopefully play ball better.

Who's next?

ryanair and canx flights
 

i have never known an airline to canx so many flights due to a thunder storm, i have just had a look on ryanairs website and they have canx over 10 flights due to the weather i live 20 or so miles from stansted and have not seen a flash of lightning or heard a crack of thunder this cant be right and i bet they dont pay out any compensation as this is an act of god
i would be intrested to here what other airline canx flights into and out of stansted tonight

it seems to me that it is all so easy to canx flights and not have to pay compensation when its due to weather

i would be also be intrested to know just how long and how bad the storm was

daz211

It is not at all "so easy" to cancel flights. In fact it's the last thing they want to do, and costs them a lot of money even if they are not paying compensation. I would think the flights were cancelled because it was necessary to do so unfortunately :(

Milan Bergamo - new winter routes?
 

Considering the FR aircraft that are based in Bergamo, and looking at the winter timetable, then they do the same work as in summer but with the following exceptions:

Glasgow: Reduced from 7 to 4 weekly flights
Brussels: Reduced from 7 to 0 weekly flights
Hamburg: Reduced from 7 to 4 weekly flights
Liverpool: Reduced from 4 to 0 weekly flights
Newcastle: Reduced from 3 to 0 weekly flights

The Brussels reduction is explained by a Brussels aircraft taking over from the Milan one. Thus, reductions in Brussels, Glasgow and Hamburg services add up to 13 freed up rotations per week. Therefore I foresee quite a number of new route announcements for Bergamo!!! :ok:
(I suspect that Liverpool and Newcastle have not been axed, but will rather be rescheduled amid the launching of the various new routes.)


Other bases:
Shannon has launched Bournemouth and Edinburgh for winter, both on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. This new capacity has materialised out of thin air, suggesting that existing Shannon schedules will be modified shortly with a number of destinations seeing a reduction in order to facilitate these new routes.
Dublin is very difficult to figure out because summer and winter timetables differ significantly on several routes. But last week the winter schedule showed a Dublin based aircraft operating a late evening service to Cork on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. This has now disappeared, but hasn't been put to use on another destination. Potential for a new route here! Meanwhile Humberside remains unscheduled (although possibly axed), and there could be a few free rotations hanging around that I have missed...
Cork winter schedule contains some time descrepencies, so the flight times are likely to see some minor modifications.
Luton has a three and half hour rotation as of yet unscheduled Monday to Friday due to the axing of the Shannon route. Probably one more route announcement to come here then.

For about an hour and a half yesterday no aircraft could take off or land from STN. The storm sat directly overhead with the terminal being hit by lightning and also the north side copped one as well.

There were several aircraft that had taxi'd and just sat waiting on the taxiway's.

11 FR and several EZY inbound aircraft were diverted to other airports (BHX, LTN, MSE, LGW) This is what caused the cancellations, as they could not operate their next rotations. Most of them did not make it back to STN until after 10pm.

It certainly was the worst storm I have witnessed in this country also some of the old hands at STN reported never seeing a storm of that force at STN.

Are there reduction at Charleroi in order to allow one of the based arcraft their to operate Bergamo?

airhumberside

Yes, there is a reduction in Charleroi.
At the moment there are 19 flights per week between Dublin and Charleroi. 7 using a Charleroi aircraft, 12 using Dublin aircraft. In winter Charleroi - Dublin will be reduced from 19 to 12 flights per week, with the Charleroi aircraft that normally does the evening Charleroi - Dublin now being used to do Charleroi - Bergamo...