If one knew nothing about our industry, then i think you would go away from the Panorma programe with the view that Ryanair are safe, very cheap, always on time and pay the staff (pilots) well and use brand new aircraft, most of which is of course true. What a programe can't show is hassel, wit schedules getting chopped and changed and having to monitor your e-mail every 5 minutes, or turning up at the airport hours before, because a minute late and you are denied boarding, even if the inbound is late, not to protect the time keeping, but to make you buy another ticket which will be 17500% more expensive that the pound ticket you bought on line or £40 for the boarding card that you left in the shop or security, that intended hassel

Ryanair business model is very price sensitive, and whilst the kid from Leeds with his visa electron card in his pocket (i doubt there'l be a condom in there!) might get off flying to DUB every week for £1.00 its hardly the most sustainable way of doing bussiness (he will get bored or have to start paying for his flying training!!)

What Ryanair have done is re-written the rule book (rule one there are no rules) and all credit to anyone who does that.

They would move every aircraft out of the UK before agree to BALPA and who can blame them? they have FTL that could not be operated by a UK airline,but can you imagin that BBC nerd trying to get that accross on the Telly?

There next big test will come when the airport deals are up, airports are starting to wise up that you can not bring Ryanair in and expect everything to stay the same with your present incumbents (if that's what you want) i suspect LBA is in for a shock when they turn up and tell the unwitting pax that the gifts/wine they have purchased airside will cost £30+ unless they can squeeze it in to the hand luggage and the airside retailers start moaning about Ryanair pax buying nothing (why do you think the asked for your flight number or boarding card in shops?) so all in all they do what they say they will do, bit like a bus, but on a bus you don't have to listen to adverts for Ryanair cigs Ryanair scratch cards and another on time arrival announcement when you get to Harrogate der et der ra.............

It already has benefited from recession in a number of ways
1.) exit of competitors
2.) people seeking lower fares
3.) Airports seeking new routes and passenger number as a result of failed operators / route exit becoming willing to approach and entice FR in

2001 was different in that was a crises of confidence brought about by 9/11 and they tackled it with passengers by giving away seats, overcoming peoples perceptions of confidence when a flight to Prague is free and secondly by ruthlessly expoliting manufacturers to get best prices for aircraft. Its business and thats how it operates not necessarily right or nice.

Lots of people lost their jobs already and some will still lose them but ultimately MOL is responsible for FR's performance not how others perform. There have been redundancies because of FR's actions in removing check in desks and route changes but I don't think any boss glorifies in that from any business, doesn't mean you don't feel for the people involved but he is there to make tough decisions and many times they are not nice ones.

Do FR screw up ? Of course but making a mistake is easy, its the recovery from it that is important and yup hedging screw up last year but in not hedging they have enjoyed lower prices than those who hedged at the top last year, not every decision is a bad decision.


I think in 2001 they gambled with the future of the company because had passengers refused to travel as happened in the US then the company would have ceased to exist.

It looks like a good decision now but in the 48 hours after they went with 1st big sale likely they sweated a bit. Which is more a risk, a passenger who will pay £/€10 for a fare or one where you relying on to pay 350 times that in business class, BA losses show which is not working at this moment in time.


He never said FR carried 66M as YTD thats not yet been achieved but as they don't overbook and don't refund then stating tickets sold as passengers is how they operate. They not the only ones but get the most grief for it as people want a stick to beat them with.

The 66M are seats sold as they do not sell return tickets, therefore unlike if you buy a ticket with BA from LHR-CDG if you fail to turn up at LHR for outgoing leg the ticket is void, however with FR / Easy etc turning up for outbound is irrelevant as its sold by sector.

If you went down the actual individuals carried then numbers would be a lot less as with all airlines as BA with 30 million passengers carried are not carrying 30 million unique individuals so it affects everybody in that context. An acquaintance is a SLF with BA and its Amsterdam or Chicago / Singapore / New York / Hong Kong on a rolling basis every week. He did 150 flights with BA (300 plus sectors) last year so it affects everybody equally.

I think there is a long way to go with LC model within Europe and people forget that countries like UK etc will come out of recession and people start flying more again so the opportunities are and will be available for quite a while.

Well, the "instability" of flight schedules is an important issue. Probably every fourth pax flying from Finland just wants to get to HHN, STN or BRE to catch an other plane and continue the travel towards Spain or Italy. That is, however, very problematic as flight time changes are too common to be accepted, too risky in many cases. Ryanair may officially reject the idea of connecting flights, but should not hamper travel planning if anybody is brave enough to consider some self-made connecting routes, these guys are paying for two flights, after all. Well yes, theoretically the pax cannot blame the carrier for these changes but many of the travellers who had their plans ruined due to schedule changes will not be flying any more.

Btw. Some improvements in schedule planning (self-connecting pax in view) could encourage many more to use FR services. What's the sense in neglecting them?

It doesn't fit with Mikey-the-Pikey's cheap and nasty 'service' as it would require through luggage transfer, for one thing.

Those who risk flying with this nasty little airline only have themselves to blame when it all turns to worms.

It's not even just because of the baggage transfer, they could even allow connections for passangers with hand-luggage only, it wouldn't work either. But I can't see a Ryanair plane wait for other passengers that are arriving late on another flight. Plus allowing connections wouldn't give Ryanair the same flexibility to just change schedules and flight times everytime it suits their needs. It's just too complicated for their operational system.

BEagle - are you speaking from experience or just another one jumping on the anti-Ryanair bad wagon? With one exception I've always found the Ryanair experience fine and certainly no worse than many other of the airlines I've flown with. I certainly wouldn't describe the service as "nasty".

So how are they different from easyjet who do exactly the same thing in denying boarding, BA with their 35 minute rule at T5.

Its pretty hard to be denied boarding for FR now as you have to check in online.

As for leaving boarding card all over the place !!!!! Based on this you are a security risk and probably shouldn't be let out alone.

BEagle.

It is neither nasty nor is it little: 202 airframes growing to 312 in the next 2 years hardly qualifies as little.

As to nasty.....you get to travel on a new 738 ( fleet average age 2.3 years) for peanuts. You get there on time, best punctuality in Europe, without having your bag in Miami or Heathrow ( fewer lost bags than ANY airline).

Just what do you want for £10?

The aircraft is greener than your precious VC10 - around 25% of the emissions for close on 60% more passengers.

racedo
 

Your right i am a security risk, i'll take the bus...........lol, that'll be an AIRBUS

TRSS, I would certainly hope that the 737-800 has benefited from 40 years of aerospace development since the Conway-engined aircraft of the 1960s.....

£10 is a completely unrealistic figure for an air fare.

All Panorama did was to generate another excuse for that tawdry airline to grab more publicity. A shame that the interviewer was so poor.

As for European LoCos, I was once an enthusiastic passenger with Buzz. Their model was the acceptable face of a LoCo, as was GO!'s. But the wooden-headed, wooden-footed people at KLM killed Buzz off just as it was about to open a second hub. GO! was too successful for ba's liking as it was taking their passengers.

Buzz, of course, flew from Stansted to 'real' Frankfurt, not some ex-military base 115 km away in the Mosel pretending to be somewhere near Frankfurt.

I was stuck in solid traffic on the A61 Autobahn last Sunday and noticed the 'Hahn Express' also stuck. I wonder whether the outbound flight bothered to wait for the passengers.....??

Why do people hate Ryanair? They don't - they just detest that smug little so-and-so with all his arrogant BS. Did you hear him say how Ryanair had 'the best customer service'.........??

A few more airports with the resolve of Manchester and Malmö might restore reality.

BEagle

So you have never actually flown with Ryanair - its
the thought of doing so that explains your dislike?

A little education goes a long way......

MM

I have flown with Ryanair - in 2002.

Never again.

BEagle-- 2002 ,thats when they were ok.
You should try them now.


IMO In the last 7 years its only got worse

BEagle

It must have been a nightmare for you as 7 years
later you feel the need to comment with such bile!

poor thing.............

MM

Falcon666, yes, that's what I've been told.

I don't know whether it's true, but there was a story in the aviation press that some Boeing bigwig rang Ryanair to congratulate Mikey-the-Pikey on his idea to charge people to use the lavatory. Boeing would be entirely happy to design and fit a certified system to accommodate this.....at a cost of £50000 per door per aircraft.

It went rather quiet at the Irish end of the line....:hmm:

If people prostitute themselves by flying Ryanair and then have to fork out £500 to get home on a real airline when they get dumped by Ryanair and told to rebook for a flight in 4 days time, they only have themselves to blame for encouraging Ryanair to get away with their woeful attitude towards delayed customers. To my mind, the type of person who thinks that a 1p ticket to fly to Europe is the same type of person who buys counterfeit DVDs at a car boot sale. If the price is too good to be true, then it probably is.

The only thing I do agree with, though, is the rigid check-in time requirement. At least their aircraft aren't delayed when a bunch of drunken oiks stays in the airport bar too long.

OPO-UK September LF
 

STN-88,4%
BHX-84,5%
LPL-78,3%
BRS-76,1%

By the way, the new route Opo-Eindhoven, had a fantastic performance. LF over 90%.

connecting flights
 

Well, the statistics would actually be in favour of FR connecting flights. Allowing minimum 2.5 hrs for the transfer (why less?) would make the loss of such a connection by pax very unlikely. Worth considering, but frankly, I don't believe FR would bother. Not their style so far. Even so, FR should re-think its schedules in order to faciliate kind of un-official connections (pax being self-responsible for making them).

Pee has mentioned Finland, let's consider Tampere. An ideal solution to give a boost to such kind of travelling would be to have a daily flight to, say, HHN in the morning with a return flight therefrom as late as possible. There is no base in Tampere, how to achieve it? Well, here is an example, using a 'triangle' concept:

daily flights:

6:30 NYO - 8:30 TMP (originating NYO)
8:55 TMP - 10:25 HHN
(all flights from 12:00 onwards avaliable for Finns)
10:50 HHN - 12:45 NYO (back to NYO base)
-----------------------------------
17:05 NYO - 19:05 HHN
19:30 HHN - 23:00 TMP
(Finns arriving at HHN before 6 PM could return home)
23:25 TMP - 23:25 NYO

By using triangles one can create kind of "feeding" flights reflecting the prevailing direction of travel (morning/evening). Also possible: day trips (like in the example above for Swedes to Tampere).

And of course, TMP is only given as an example here. Generally it is more important to have flights from small airports to centrally located bases in the morning with an opposite trend in the evening.

racedo, your rhetoric would be best confined to Jet Blast.

eu01, is there something about the Mosel that appeals to Finns to such an extent that a daily flight to not-Frankfurt (Hahn) would be particularly popular?

If you want to fly from Tampere to Frankfurt, there's always the Air Baltic service via Riga.

@BEagle

Don't know about Finnish people travelling to Frankfurt, you can ask one of them here.

Concerning Hahn (not Frankfurt at all), this airport could be the low-cost equivalent of FRA for people brave enough to effectuate the connections between two separate lo-co flights. I've discussed some preconditions needed to faciliate that.

BEagle - With over 15,000 posts on PPRuNe, you must be the eminence grise of our Network. I therefore respect your point of view. However, eu01 has a point. Air travel has changed a lot since 2002. Our expectations and behaviour have too, as the type of service on offer has changed.

In the old days, an 'excursion return' fare was much cheaper than two singles, but required the pax to stay a Saturday night. People therefore moulded their behaviour so as to return from the same airport on the same airline and stay a Saturday night. You don't need to do that now. Instead, those who can do so mould their behaviour to avoid Fri/Sun evening travel and to take hand luggage only.

The fact that Hahn is miles from Frankfurt does not matter if they call it Hahn. It's only silly because Ryanair has called it Frankfurt. I recently flew to Torp. Not Oslo. Torp. I was going to the Norwegian town of Tonsberg. I flew to Torp because it is near Tonsberg. I didn't fly to Oslo because it is miles from Tonsberg. And because of the lo-cos, people can now choose to visit the Mosel region without having to go to Frankfurt.

Rome is, of course, the exception, with lo-cos using Ciampino (10 miles from the city) rather than Fiumicino (23 miles).

On the subject of transfers, I think a lot of people do it already. I do, anyway. I go into it with my eyes open, and fully realise that should I miss a connection, then an alternative flight is going to be quite expensive. That is a gamble I'm willing to take, and so far I've not had a problem.