Ryanair Flight Information

[greenbroker]

I'm in a position where I am able to fly anywhere/anytime for pleasure. My main criteria is cost now that I am older.

I have flown with Ryanair on many occasions, but they have denied access to 3rd party users of their database and it makes searching for suitable flights rather tardy using their 'tools'.

Can I get a list of Ryanair flights and their frequency from another source, otherwise I might revert to the buses with my free bus pass?

[eu01]

Everybody can see the hopelessness of the "refurbished" Ryanair website and the inability to cope with the basic requirements necessary to use it as the professional booking engine. Until recently the potential passengers had, however, other possibilities. The sites like skyscanner.net were able to show you all Ryanair connections and prices in the matter of seconds (including taxes and fees to begin with). The absurdity of the present situation is that Ryanair so ardently have been fighting with all these sites by all possible means trying to ban them from doing so, that indeed the mentioned scyscanner (to use the example) does not show Ryanair fares any more. They are still comparing everybody elses' prices and showing all the alternative routes, not mentioning Ryanair. Ignoring FR by the carrier's own wish. It's a stupidity because in fact RYR would have won many of these comparisons, even including these taxes and fees...

[greenbroker]

It's a stupidity because in fact RYR would have won many of these comparisons, even including these taxes and fees...

I share your thoughts.

Websites like the Racing Post and Betfair have a huge databases which are scraped by many individuals (albeit with their permission). It attracts people to their sites and revenue from advertising.

It doesn't add up to me, as the likes of Skyscanner were doing them a favour IMO.

From what I've read the original Ryanair website was designed by students. I think it's begging to show? They need tools similar to Skyscanner, but maybe Ryanair is happy with their current situation?

[EI-CFC]

From what I've read the original Ryanair website was designed by students. I think it's begging to show?

Ermm..it's been re-done quite a few times since then, including the latest update that has made it a little slower and buggier than they would like.

[10W]

Skyscanner had a great service when it included Ryanair flights. Ryanair lost nothing, since if you selected their flight, it took you to the Ryanair website with the booking details all ready to process.

I quite often used it for finding somewhere to take a short cheap break to where I knew my travel availability but had nothing specific in mind, and quite often Ryanair were the people who got my money. Now that I have to trawl through the inefficient Ryanair site to look for a non specific flight, everyone else on Skyscanner is more likely to get my business as I don't have the time or inclination to spend half a day on an amateur and unhelpful website. :ok:

Cutting off their nose to spite their face methinks.

[greenbroker]

Skyscanner had a great service when it included Ryanair flights. Ryanair lost nothing, since if you selected their flight, it took you to the Ryanair website with the booking details all ready to process.


Somebody needs to tell them, but it would probably be a waste of time.

[The Real Slim Shady]

The design, i.e what you see, is only relevant to the speed at which a low end connection will load the page, and how easy it is to see, and find the informtion you need.

The back end, which is Navitaire, is the core of the booking engine, and that is where the problem lies. Until that is fixed by the supplier - the improved all singing and dancing version obviously not as stable as the old functional system (c.f. Windows) - it will have its problems.

[eu01]

I can only quote you my own post dated 10th of February (well before the new system was introduced)Navitaire NewSkies
(...) let's see
:Navitaire began developing a completely new, online reservation system - New Skies - using the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition database server, and the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating system. Ryanair heavily depending on the M$-based software? That will certainly cost them a bit and could force to upgrade the hardware as well. And it also gives some hints why the switch to this new software has already been postponed...
But even I didn't anticipate such a massive problems. And what about the EU regulator; didn't they ask why for such a long time you are being unable to clearly show the total price at the start of the booking process (FR showed the prices incorrectly even before the partial collapse of their booking engine)? This system is wasting your money and reducing incomes, but above all it's testing your customers' patience, dear Ryanair!

[TwinAisle]

Perhaps I can shed a little light into Ryanair's thinking here...

There are two good reasons why PCSs (Price Comparison Sites - the likes of Skyscanner) are a pain in the butt for an airline:

1. Revenue erosion. The vast majority of customers want a flight on a given day, and will pay the fare for that day - or perhaps one day either side. What the PCSs do is allow people to trade down from a higher fare by sharply changing dates - not good for the airline. And yes, some people just want to fly (like the original poster) but customers like this tend to be seriously outnumbered by the customers with more date constraints;

2. IT costs. PCSs make an inordinately high number of hits on the reservation system - they are continuously interrogating the airline's systems to price flights, the overwhelming majority of which do not get booked. This makes the systems slower for everyone else using the site, which pushes up the "bomb out" stats - ie, the number of customers who start a booking and then get bored and go somewhere else because the site is slow.

There is also an argument that allowing PCSs to hit the reservation systems like this means that they are building up an image of the airline's yield management profiles - and they are the Crown Jewels in terms of confidentiality.

BTW - re the back end system - Ryanair has migrated from OpenSkies to NewSkies, a move which is being pushed on to Navitaire users, since Navitaire is discontinuing support for OpenSkies. So I guess we'll all have to get used to it!

TA

[kingston_toon]

I notice that the "find lowest fares" function on the Ryanair website now also no longer works (whereas before it used to show you the cheapest fare each day across the week). Is this related to the Skyscanner case?

Even though the new website was slow, the ability to check all flights across a week in one go was very useful. Now, the whole thing is slow and a pain in the neck. :(

[greenbroker]

TwinAisle makes some good points, but a business website must be in tune with potential customers.

Even Ryanair is making apologies for its website ATM, stating "We regret, due to system slow down issues, we have been unable to display the tax inclusive fare box on this page, since 25/06/2008."

PCSs make an inordinately high number of hits on the reservation system - they are continuously interrogating the airline's systems to price flights, the overwhelming majority of which do not get booked. This makes the systems slower for everyone else using the site, which pushes up the "bomb out" stats - ie, the number of customers who start a booking and then get bored and go somewhere else because the site is slow.How do Amazon cope? Their site actually uses customer feedback to dynamically create the pages on the fly and I've yet to see it crash.

[TwinAisle]

The difference between say Amazon and an airline reservation system lies in the complexity of the product, and the scarcity of its supply.

That is - if I look at a book on amazon.co.uk, I can see the all-up price. The action of looking at this book sets a marker in terms of making recommendations to me at a later point - but this does not interfere with the sales engine. The book is then added to my basket (if I decide to buy), a payment engine takes over, I pay, and bingo - transaction closed. Whether amazon.co.uk actually have the book or not in stock is almost irrelevant - provided that they have confidence that they can get it in a sensible time period, they can sell it.

In an airline system, a more complex system is at play. When I search for a flight, I get shown a range of fares around the date I want. This has to be live data - the fare being quoted comes from an active backend database that may change after every few transactions (amazon have a price for the book that is a simple look up against a dumb database). I select my ticket, and that seat is then lifted out of the airline's live inventory - meaning that it cannot be sold to someone else. I then have a finite amount of time to get my payment made, then the system tickets, and the seat is removed from inventory permanently.

If I don't get payment made inside the right window, at some point the ticket is returned to general sale. Until it is, however, the seat cannot be sold to someone else.

What many of the PCSs are doing is causing lots of seats to be lifted from inventory - which can in fact drive quoted fares up for other customers.

Amazon does not generally employ dynamic pricing, airlines do - which means that PCSs make far heavier demands on airlines than booksellers.

[greenbroker]

The difference between say Amazon and an airline reservation system lies in the complexity of the product, and the scarcity of its supply.Thanks for a very imformative reply. You obviously have a good knowledge of how databases, behave and are accessed. In a nutshell, as you described, an airline seat to a given destination at a certain time of the day is unique. It's not like a book, which can be supplemented, in the way that you describe.

Horses for courses as they say. It looks like Ryanair needs to polish up its queries to its database and make them user friendly and accessible?

Maybe I need to contact you for a cheap flight to anywhere during September? When one thinks of it, it's not such a demanding request is it?

[TwinAisle]

Thanks for your comments, GB. I have indeed been involved in the planning and implementation of a number of res systems (including Navitaire), and I'm happy to be able to shine a little light into a dark corner!

I think the reasons that we're starting to see slower and slower res systems across the board (and I won't single out Ryanair!) are two-fold:

Firstly, we're making more and more demands on the databases. In the old days, when people were using old-fashioned res systems, at the dawn of low cost, you asked for a flight from A to B on Thursday 8th, and that is what you got. It didn't show you the 7th, or the 9th. Just the 8th. Since then, we've just screwed on extras - day either side, low fare finders, even alternative routes ("Alicante flight full? Try our Murcia service" etc). We've chucked in different fare classes ("want more flexibility? Click here"), and all sorts of other rubbish. All of which slow the systems down.

Ryanair have resisted most of this - but one could argue that they have the second problem...

When systems like Navitaire were written, they worked on the basis of being used to power airlines that had, say, 50 aircraft. Since then, some of their airlines have grown like topsy - eg FR, U2 - and I would wager that some of these systems are starting to strain a bit. The choice then is simple - spend lotsadosh on systems upgrade, reduce functionality - or lock the people who are hammering the databases for the hell of it (eg PCSs) out. Guess which gets the vote? :}

There's a whole range of res systems out there - the market leader in low cost is Navitaire, but I think we're going to see the growth of new generation systems soon (eg Radixx), and perhaps even the smaller systems may power-up (eg AirKiosk). Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, we're going to see less speed with more features...

As for cheap flights - the problem is in essence that you are trying to drive the database backwards. The vast majority of customers will know where they want to go, and roughly when - and the database search functions are built that way. Ask the database for the lowest fare, and that's a new search function - ask for lowest fare on all destinations (since you don't care) and that is a huge processing task.... your best bet is narrow your search down a bit, and use the airlines that have "fares by month" grids (bmibaby and easyJet to name but two)...

[greenbroker]

Ask the database for the lowest fare, and that's a new search function - ask for lowest fare on all destinations (since you don't care) and that is a huge processing task.... your best bet is narrow your search down a bit, and use the airlines that have "fares by month" grids (bmibaby and easyJet to name but two)...I understand where you are coming from. Put one grain of sand on the first square of a chessboard and double up on the remaining squares.....see how many grains of sand you'll have on the 64th square!

I do have City+Guilds L3 qualification in web design and I thought a simple database query was difficult enough!

However, going back to my original grouse, skyscanner provided a good service. As an earlier poster said, Ryanair seems to have shot itself in the foot.

I will look at the bmibay and easyjet 'fares by the month' features on their websites.

[Flying_Frisbee]

"We regret, due to system slow down issues, we have been unable to display the tax inclusive fare box on this page, since 25/06/2008."

Ryanair's been dragging their heels over displaying the full fare since they were told they had to display it.
I'd like to hear their explanation as to how a slow system stops them displaying the tax inclusive fare.