Does anyone know when Ryanair will start selling flights for next summer?
My cousin wants to fly to Alicante next May. At the moment Easyjet and Jet2 have their summer flights for sale from Glasgow but Ryanair have yet to release their Prestwick summer flights.

Flights don't start till January 10th. I just tried to book a flight there and its working grand.

M--T-S-

I'm trying to book flights to lpa in mar/apr but to no avail. Do fr work on a 6 month booking period only or is it when they can be a+¥ed to. Whats the difference between ezy/fr etc... And the likes of monarch. Bmibaby flybe( flight only ). My point is you can book most flights for next year but ryanair you cant

I tend to agree. Nevertheless, I wouldn't say the same about most of Western Europeans.
Myself, I could consider flying via Tallinn to, say, Helsinki, but the road travel from TLL to St. Petersburg would be frankly too far to be considered - except if looking for some kind of extreme adventure ;). If - and I'm not so sure about it - Ryanair plan to encourage us to travel to Russia via anything in the EU, the only acceptable place seems to be Lappeenranta, situated less than 200 km from Sankt Petersburg. Any offer of that kind should however be carefully tailored for such a purpose. FR could evaluate e.g. providing the regular coach services from LPP to former Leningrad in co-operation with a local partner (coach enterprise/ travel office). I believe that giving pax a choice of further travel to Russia by coach in connection with the booking process would be a viable solution, worth trying. Otherwise most of the passengers will come from Russia only.

To consider flying from these remote airports you have to think not as a plane passenger but as train/bus passenger. Instead of 30 hour train journey your are getting 8 hour train journey and 2 hour flight - for a total trip duration of say 15 hours including transfers. The duration of the trip is reduced by half and the total price is also probably significantly lower - that looks like a very good deal.

And if you think that is still a tiresome journey think about that before Ryanair we had multiple daily direct schedulled bus departures from Kaunas to London full of travelers.

Problem with that is the Russian visa restriction tend to make inward travel problematic.

Ryanair do not need to and almost certainly would not want to act as the principal on any coach journey. The trick would be that Ryanair has a link on its website, pointing to a coach company that runs coaches between Tallinn airport and St Petersburg.

The coach company has a clear message on its website saying that if Estonian / Russian immigration don't like you, then you either don't get a refund or they'll put you on the next coach with a spare seat back to where you came from. Because they are a coach company rather than an airline, all the airline-specific legislation from the EU does not apply - i.e. no refunds, and the coach company does not get fined for bringing you across a border without a visa.

Ryanair would make money, a) by filling more seats on its flights, and b) the coach company paying a commission based on each ticket sold via the Ryanair weblink

One should of course consider, that processing a coach load of people at the EU-Russian border will take a substantial amount of time - there's always one person whose papers are complicated for which everyone else has to wait.

I have no idea whether this would actually generate worthwhile substantial income for either of the 2 companies

"Interesting few posts regards MRS, but my question is why is every UK base on a UK contract and with Ryanair UK Ltd?"

Presumably dates back to the fact that when Ryanair started in the UK they needed a UK AOC to operate domestic flights (prior to full deregualtion), so a company was set up to achieve that. Once in place, the cost of changing becomes prohibitive."

'cos UK is a "cheap(er)" place to recruit/employ?

The issue is really about EU law and employment. MO'L is up to his usual tricks, he's working towards a judge forwarding the case to the ECJ, no French judge will do it, they know they'll lose....

I believe there are more people employed across EU with French companies on French contracts than the small numbers employed by Ryanair.

This has nothing to do with Employment law as if it did then France would have acted against companies many years before who have people employed in France under UK contracts.

This is about looking after Air France purely and simply.

Public would trust O'Leary to lead Ireland out of recession?

Questioned during the telephone poll by Independent/Quantum Research the respondents were asked which non-politician they would trust most "to do the right thing in some form of national government". The Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary emerged a clear winner with 30 per cent of voters. "O'Leary would be perfect, can you imagine him allowing the waste that goes on in our public services?" was the view of one male respondent.

Based on the independent.ie news.

Press conference in Brussels tomorrow afternoon 5. Oktober, with Michael O'Leary himself. Someone any idea what this will be about?

O'Leary would cheer them up by making them believe they were on a €10.99 annual tax rate. Seriously in my view the chap has 9 of the 10 core compentencies of good leadership but why on earth would he want to. He's done his bit and they wasted it.

Ryanair’s booked passenger and load factor statistics for September 2010 are as follows:




September passenger numbers

Well the 306 cancelled flights on the 29th September is bound to have a positive impact on load factors either September or October assuming of course the inconvenienced passengers rebooked on later date flights.

As the pax have paid I suspect they are counted in Septembers pax total even if the sectors were cancelled. When they rebook they could be counted again. Ryanair traffic figure are nothing to do with people flying but just that they had a seat paid for. The airline "carred" loads of pax when all flights were grounded.

Does "carred" mean travelled by car? Because that's what lots of folks had to do when they were grounded!

The usual insight into Ryanair..........not.

As planes didn't travel they are not counted as passengers, neither were they counted in April BUT you know that anyway but need an anti FR post.

Why does their success disturb you so much ?

I very much suspect that Ryanair's definition of passengers fits in with general accounting principles. I'm sure there are others out there who know far more on accounting on me - if I've got it wrong, please say so !

As most know, Ryanair generally do not give refunds unless they absolutely have to. Thus, if you pay for a flight but do not show up, Ryanair gets to keep your money. In accounting terms, this means the funds paid by the customer can be "recognised" as revenue.

If on the other hand, Ryanair cancels a flight, the airline is obliged to refund the money paid back to the customer. These funds cannot be recognised as revenue.

The volcano in the spring was extraordinary, and it is likely that many airlines will show their monthly stats to include both recognised revenue and also separately "customers who booked but had to be refunded because of the airspace closure".

Investors and auditors may well accept the volcano as being an extraordinary event, and will take the separate "what if there had been no eruption" figures when examining the company's overall health. Air traffic control strikes are infrequent but not unusual and would not be deemed extraordinary. Thus a company should not normally expect to be taken seriously if it manipulates the stats for ATC strikes.

Let the speculation begin... ;)

RYR interested in up to 300x A320 NEO aircraft.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/97bf5f8c-cf25-11df-9be2-00144feab49a.html

And why wouldn't they look at it?

Old news. Airbus doesn't need him, it has plenty of backlog orders. They told him so much about 6 months ago when he went down to Toulouse to try and extract the deal of the century from there. I think they were quoted as saying that they would be more than happy to sell him as many airframes as he wants at their list prices. They are not stupid people and they won't have appreciated the fact that they had concluded a deal to sell him A320's only for him to fax it to Boeing and be undercut at the last minute. Boeing doesn't need him either. Nor do either manufacturer want him flooding the 2nd hand market with his wares reducing the fleet values and the knock on effects this has to the leasing market.

This is spot on. MOL got is 737-800s at a big discount but will now be stuck with them. Boeing and Airbus need as many airlines to keep in business as possible and giving cheap planes to MOL just kills other orders.

The best thing for Boeing and Airbus is for Ryanair to go under in 5-10 years time. This will allow for many new startups and the refleeting of the old boys.

Befree, like them or loathe them how can it be the best thing for anyone for an airline to go under. Possibly one of the most ridiculous comments I have ever heard.

Its reflects a desire on his part and pretty much any positive news on FR on here is always met by the "they are going bust" mentality. Think its called Exemployee Syndrome.

New Norwegian.no base at HEL:

https://www.norwegian.com/about-norw...a=pressrelease

This should take a good chunk out of FR's possible customer base for TLL. Now it could really be just EE which seems too small to sustain a base, or depend on the Russians. Plus not great news for 'St Petersburg West' LPP. I don't get why FR is so reluctant to expand in Europe's biggest economy (and also the second and third), but go to all the fringes instead. They will learn eventually where the money is.

But here we can also see a specific attitude so typical of FR. Could have harvested quite much out of some niche areas where they didn't have any real competition in lo-co sector. Like in Finland, but not only here. Even after a very quick investigation of the load factors and price levels on some routes, one must realize that in many cases there was much more money waiting to be earned. But no, FR was just hesitating, waiting for the support from communities, for lowering the airport fees, and so on. Building the route network based on whims and wishes rather than any careful analysis of customers' needs, deals-motivated mostly.

FR remains a very successive airline, no doubt about it. Thanks to their financial discipline and hard negotiation skills. But in the same time they did not manage to avoid many obvious flaws in regard to the development strategy and potential opportunities, lost in some cases. Also as a non-basher, have to take notice of this.

Ryanair kill off other airlines and overall do more damage to the viablity of other airlines than departure taxes or ash clouds. When Ryanair expand at an airport other airlines downsize both there and in the region. just look at Birmingham/Coventry.

Reading the Birmingham thread you get the impression that it is Ryanair that have downsized there and not other airlines, however I look forward to the evidence to the contrary. Regarding Coventry I very much doubt the demise at that airport had much to do with Ryanair and more to its proximity to Birmingham and other local issues.

Don't get me wrong I am neither a fan of of Ryanair in the way Racedo is for example or do I particularly dislike them, they fill a need in the market, however I do feel your comments were unfair to the people who rely on FR for their livelyhood.

Closer to home where I live the feeling was they may lead to the demise of Jet2 ate Leeds/Bradford, this certainly dorsnt seem to be the case.

You cant blame BHX/CVT's problems on Ryanair. Just look at EDI, massive FR expansion great news for Edinburgh and Scotland, but this has had no effect on other LCCs such as easyJet and Jet2 who are also doing very well running side by side.

BHX is simply an airport feeling the effects of the recession more than most, this is not Ryanair's fault. Passenger's want bucket and spade for their annual holiday and arent as willing to take 2/3/4 weekend city breaks. Those who can afford that drive to London etc and use those airports.

Once the good times come again expect all airlines to expand in the UK again.

On a note away from the usual Ryanair bashing...this winter sees a change in schedules dramatically across the network, with turnarounds increasing every now and again from 25 minutes up to an hour etc...I wonder whether this is effective planning to buffer the usual winter delays after a summer which has seen punctuality badly effected by strikes all over Europe. There's also lots of gaps which should allow for new routes to be announced. Still a strong rumour CPH is to see some Ryanair flights.

Also - 3 new bases are set to be announced in the coming weeks if all the rumours are to be believed, talk is 2 Canary's and Palma are high in the running.

Well I must be missing something and in a big way ...
Why are Ryanair so wrong in getting/wanting massive discount on A/C when they place such a big order ...
If I was buying 10 fleet cars for my company I would want a huge discount and if I was buying 300 I would want MASSIVE discount and yes if I could show Ford that vauxall were offering me a good deal I would expect Ford to beat that offer.

Am I missing somthing or is it just the Bashers throwing their toys out of their prams again.

daz - the reason Airbus were not happy with MOL faxing Boeing the details of Airbus' offer is probably down to
a) What is often referred to as "commercial confidentiality", and
b) Airbus would have expended a lot of wasted time and effort on putting together a deal with Ryanair, meaning that they had less time to spend on airlines that were serious about buying from Airbus

Commercial confidentiality is the concept that if you want me to tell you lots of commercially sensitive non-public information that my rivals would like to hear, then I expect the information to be treated confidentially and for you not to dislose it. In a similiar way, if a company has many employees, the staff expect their boss not to tell everyone else in their team their salary.

As for b), how do Airbus know that if they spend time in 2011 putting together a deal with Ryanair, that Ryanair will actually treat it seriously and not just use it as a negotiation tool with Boeing and then tell Airbus to get lost. In effect, are Ryanair just being timewasters, or are they really serious about buying 300 A320-family aircraft ?

If you tell Ford the details of the offer on a huge fleet of 100,000 cars that Vauxhall were offering (remember that a 737 is worth over 1,000 times that of a car), you may well find that Ford improve their offer and you go with Ford. If you need to buy some more cars five years later, and in the meantime the fleet salesmanager at Vauxhall finds out what you did, then Vauxhall will be much less interested in talking to you - in effect Vauxhall may tell you to either pay full price for their cars or stop wasting their time.

Shannon Airport is taking legal action against Ryanair for breach of contract as they failed to meet passenger numbers.

RTÉ News: Shannon taking legal action against Ryanair

Proposed Strike In France Next Week
 

I have noticed that Ryanair have already cancelled a large number of flights next week some four days before it is due to begin. A number of services are not to French airports but overfly. May I suggest that it is the middle of October and a bit quiet just before half-term so lets not operate or try to operate because the revenue will be down.
I bet a lot of other airlines will try to rearrange flights and show a bit of guile and ingenuity and try and get round the problems especially flights to/from Spain - but Ryanair don't do that sort of thing do they!

Determining this is one of the joys of being in the sales team for any large-scale product, and is a skill that both Boeing and Airbus will be leaders in. Believe you me, both manufacturers get many approaches more potentially wasting of their time than Ryanair !

Correct which is why I said last year that Airbus Exec who gets FR's business is set up for life with bonuses.

Despite the public statements no manufacturer will turn their back of a 200 plane order irrespective of what they think of the purchaser.

Have to agree with Racedo on this
 

Post 9/11 MOL took a huge gamble & called it right, he got probably the deal of the decade and Boeing kept it plants turning and no doubt some soft loan loans in there as well!

Unfortunately for MOL the time is not right, both Boeing & Airbus have huge backlogs of orders (Boeing are increasing NG production to 38 a month!!)

Having said that a large order would be fought over by both sides and if Ryanair are to grow they probably need to split the order to keep both parties on their toes price wise.

I very much doubt that MOL will get the same level of discount from either player, they don't need it that badly, unless he has the balls to order a 1000 units!! or he could go to the Russian's or China?

The next money maker could be the regional market place, think what he could do in Europe with 500 dash or ATR's? lots of unemployed pilots (many trained and drained by Ryanair)

I was taxing out of EMA to Turkey the other day and the Ryanair "T" was doing circuits, when asked whether it was a touch and go the the training Captain said " no a full stop" quick as a flash someone came on the radio and said " credit card empty"

stn ibz back on from december, made a second home owner very happy!

Lappeenranta
 

Having been one who, along with pee has written here about the potential of Lappeenranta for Ryanair, the current schedule leaves me cold. Destinations are Dusseldorf and Brussels (well, their nearby equivalents). Who decided on these then ? For those in St Petersburg the prime destinations of choice in Western Europe would be London, Paris, and either Milan or Rome in Italy. Quite why these didn't make the cut but the lesser destinations did I can't imagine.

Also looking at the FR "timetable", Dusseldorf Weeze seems just once a week on Sunday, and as for Brussels Charleroi I can't get it to show me anything at all. That's not a road to profitability at all.

Lappeenranta
 

Don't forget about me ;) - pee was first indeed, but I've backed this idea as well, already in 2006 in Ryanair-2 thread. The ideal place and still underdeveloped. But even if NRN-Weeze wasn't the most fortunate choice, Lappeenranta did take a second place among all destinations served from NRN in July if ordered by the load factor, which was 90% on this route.

Ryanair tends to react very fast having struck a good deal somewhere, places several planes at once there and starts flying partially loss-making routes just to celebrate this deal. On the other hand, many interesting and decently profitable destinations with great prospects are developing very slowly as a "few euro per pax" deal is missing.

I guess it has to do with subsidies. Probably these do not come exclusively from the Finish end and NRN and CRL were willing to cough up some money, whereas those airports you mentioned were not.

Charleroi - Lapeenranta will be flown on Tuesday and Saturday, beginning November 2nd.