Ryanair 737-800 impounded at Bordeaux-Mérignac airport
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The reason this is news... is because your assertion is wholly incorrect; at least to date.
Any dispassionate observer cannot but come to the conclusion that the company in question... have been able to judge to a fine t exactly what the (non) consequences would be of their cocking-a-snook at the authorities
Any dispassionate observer cannot but come to the conclusion that the company in question... have been able to judge to a fine t exactly what the (non) consequences would be of their cocking-a-snook at the authorities
You can get away with it for so long, until you don't.
At which point the whole dirty scheme becomes a stinking pile of previously uncosted liabilities and everyone starts asking why no one noticed all this before (apart from the few people who did notice, obviously)
These things do have a tendency to snowball
Corperate history is littered with examples of institutions who convinced themselves they were untouchable, right before the whole thing unwound very quickly, in an 'emporer's new clothes' moment.
One only has to look to the global banking crisis, or dot com before that.
I would add that stellar growth, seemingly unaffected by the forces of nature and economic cycles, has of itself so often been seen in hindsight to be a clear indication that not all was adding up.
Last edited by Sonikt; 9th Nov 2018 at 23:51.
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And there's the rub
You can get away with it for so long, until you don't.
At which point the whole dirty scheme becomes a stinking pile of previously uncosted liabilities and everyone starts asking why no one noticed all this before (apart from the few people who did notice, obviously)
These things do have a tendency to snowball
Corperate history is littered with examples of institutions who convinced themselves they were untouchable, right before the whole thing unwound very quickly, in an 'emporer's new clothes' moment.
One only has to look to the global banking crisis, or dot com before that.
I would add that stellar growth, seemingly unaffected by the forces of nature and economic cycles, has of itself so often been seen in hindsight to be a clear indication that not all was adding up.
You can get away with it for so long, until you don't.
At which point the whole dirty scheme becomes a stinking pile of previously uncosted liabilities and everyone starts asking why no one noticed all this before (apart from the few people who did notice, obviously)
These things do have a tendency to snowball
Corperate history is littered with examples of institutions who convinced themselves they were untouchable, right before the whole thing unwound very quickly, in an 'emporer's new clothes' moment.
One only has to look to the global banking crisis, or dot com before that.
I would add that stellar growth, seemingly unaffected by the forces of nature and economic cycles, has of itself so often been seen in hindsight to be a clear indication that not all was adding up.
A very large number of their staff costs are contracted and can be easily disposed of should need to, even if fuel went to $200 pb they could park a large part of their fleet and ride it out having cut their personnel costs to zero.
The only thing that would likely see the company in serious difficulty would be a series of high profile high casualty accidents that pointed to safety failings on their part and that simply isn’t going to happen, their crew training to date has been top notch, ditto their line maintenance, the bottom line is that Ryanair understand when to yield and when to hold, who cares if your seen as the bully in the play ground if it’s become your play ground.
That 2018 has been a difficult year for them in terms of negative PR is not in doubt, but passenger numbers were up 11% in October YoY, the share price may be off but most in this sector are the same and investors are not bothered about publicity over staff allegedly sleeping on the floor, the brutal sacking of same is for investors a sign of strength not weakness that will make others think twice hanging their dirty washing out in public.
My work travel is paid for by my employer and i normally have a choice of carriers and I try not to use Ryanair in the main because of the constant selling on board of crap oftern in very poorly spoken English, but BA these days is much the same, the irony is that Aer Lingus are way better than than BA despite being in the same IAG group, Vueling don’t impress me much either and I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to see them mess up.
So FR will pay up when and only when it suits them or they have a gun held to their heads as in this case, it’s small beans, maybe a couple hours profit or 20 minutes of revenue, they know nobody likes them, they know they are the cheapest and they simply don’t care what people think, this isn’t a bubble that’s about to burst.
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Exactly. As a humble passenger who has to travel to various obscure places in Europe for work I’ve had to recently make the case for flying a two leg flight with a major carrier instead of a direct flight with Ryanair at a quarter of the price. My project manager agreed on the basis of “it’s Ryanair and I suppose you do want to know you are going to get home.” This takes it a stage further. It’s one thing treating the staff and passengers with contempt, but when the same extends to the statutory authorities, you start to wonder what else they are not doing that they should be. What other regulations do they think do not apply to them? They are firmly on my no fly list now, and this extends to a lot of work colleagues.
Last edited by 45989; 10th Nov 2018 at 05:05.
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meanwhile in Dublin the pile it high sell it cheap policy has seen them become the biggest airline by passenger numbers in Europe and very cash rich.
Fond of borrowing from Southwest, Ryan Air never noticed that Herb Kelleher said:
"You can have the highest revenue airline, or the lowest cost airline and still goes broke. Neither matters on its own, it is the gap between the two that matters." (Paraphrased)
As such the inherent weakness in the low fare model is that yield is low and difficult to find, thus the focus on cost. Whilst axiomatically their labour cost is lower, their margins are narrow.
All those passengers rapidly disappear when only paying pennies for a flight, 'patrons' are price loyal only. After all as demonstrated repeatedly, their customer service is hardly leading the industry. Ryan Air need persistent high Load factors otherwise that cash you speak of rapidly evaporates.
Europe is littered with Low Fare Airline failures.
Ryan Air is vulnerable.
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There is a world of difference between the .com bubble where certain companies were worth billions but had never made a cent in profits, some are still out there Tesla are worth more than Ford or GM but only ever made a profit in the last quarter, ditto Amazon, meanwhile in Dublin the pile it high sell it cheap policy has seen them become the biggest airline by passenger numbers in Europe and very cash rich....So FR will pay up when and only when it suits them or they have a gun held to their heads as in this case, it’s small beans, maybe a couple hours profit or 20 minutes of revenue, they know nobody likes them, they know they are the cheapest and they simply don’t care what people think, this isn’t a bubble that’s about to burst.
The fact that such a rebuttal is felt needed speaks volumes.
What about the banking crisis? They were mostly cash rich but I recall it was the unresolved liabilities that unstuck them...
But what do I know, I'm just a casual observer, so I guess history will have to be my judge.
Last edited by Sonikt; 10th Nov 2018 at 08:04.
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Telling sovereign governments to go to hell is never a wise business strategy. I fancy that FR will be taught that lesson the hard way, in all likelihood sooner rather than later. When one side has (i) men and women with guns and handcuffs; (ii) jails; and (iii) unlimited financial resources, and the other has none of those things, confrontations between them tend to conclude in only one way.
One seems to remember Air France getting 2.4 billion illegally
And have witnessed the massive slump in tourism, increase in crime and poverty in the Gard region due to the French screwing Ryanair who moved to Northern Italy creating a boom there. Knock on effect is the other airlines virtually vanishing...ended up taking the TGV to the UK!
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Does Ryan air explain something about the impound in France? I did not see the statement from a company or their social media. another question, why they have been waiting so far? I don t know but all that happened does not any make sense. especially when we are talking about the Ryan air.
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With regard to yeild, the negative effect of a drop in load factor is magnified due to the escalator in the yeild pricing model e.g. the last few pax booking may pay 10x as much as the first few pax pay for their tickets, so a drop of say 10% in load factor could reduce overall revenue by perhaps 30% or more.
In this respect one could argue that FR profit model is not so very different to EK, whereby the cattle barely covers the operating cost and the premium pax contribute all of the profit
Unfortunately FR do not have a premium product like EK. What FR are essentially selling at premium price is time and convenience i.e. these are mostly late booking, time and reliability sensitive pax e.g. business travelers or other people who need to travel urgently at a specific time.
FR reputation for reliability is now shot to peices and will take time to restore. FR aggressive posturing in the face of strikes actually does them no favours in this respect, because it prolongs the uncertainty.
Business travelers now have a perfect argument why their employer should put them on a proper airline instead of FR, even if it costs a lot more. Private, urgent travelers will make similar calculations.
Ryanair have admitted this problem and their response is to trim the yeild slope, most especially reducing the price of the most expensive seats. So the recent increases in load factor are masking a much more significant drop on the revenue side, simply because they are having to sell the tickets cheaper to fill the planes.
As a secondary effect, pax are then discouraged from bidding up ticket prices rapidly by booking early, because the pricing remains low for longer. The phycological effect of the yeild price escalator is reversed in a kind of pricing death spiral.
Essentially, FR have themselves destroyed the most profitable aspects of their own product offer
Bang goes the yeild...
Last edited by Sonikt; 14th Nov 2018 at 02:04.
