It’s a shame that EZY are possibly leaving those routes as I now suspect we’ll see more realistic fares again. I suppose RYR will pull a few rotations as well to claw back the yields. Ah well, good while it lasted.

Skymonster,

Firstly, an apology for the delay in getting back to you, I was in your neck of the woods, EMA of all places. You should pop in to Ryanair East Midlands Training some time, a nice warm 737-200 or -800 would be waiting for you.

Doesn’t pain me at all… I will not fly Ryanair even if it is the only choice, and I never will even if it is the last airline on this planet – which it won’t be. Therefore, Ryanair is largely irrelevent to me, although I believe that the guy who runs it is the biggest mennace to commercial aviation in Europe in the long term and I’ll not hesitate to represent that view when I have the chance. Even though it doesn’t pain me, it doesn’t stop me from having an opinion:

There’s obviously something that irrationally bothers you as you never miss an opportunity to slag Ryanair off. Is it the fact that you work for its rivals that may influence your vitriolic and abusive views?

Like I say, you’ve been sucked in by the Ryanair manta. At who’s expense do people travel for next to nothing? If you’re happy with the terms and conditions that now exist for employees in the industry, which have been immeasurably worsten since Ryanair came along, then that’s up to you.

I’m not naive enough to believe that Ryanair is perfect, in fact, for staff it is far from perfect. However, overall I am more than happy with my conditions as I’m paid considerably more than I would be had I joined a mainline airline instead of Ryanair..that’s a fact. You can choose to ignore all the benefits of Ryanair and waffle about about every little thing if you so choose, but sometimes you’re wide of the mark. Can you find any airline recruiting at least 320 pilots of which 260 are first officers who would otherwise be on the dole queue. I must also be imagining the numbers of pilots joining the airline from mainline and national airlines at their own free will. Why do they join? More money, bases close to home, new aircraft, home every night, predictable rosters (known up to 6 months in advance). I mean a captain I flew with 2 weeks ago joined 8 months ago and is making £115,000(€165,000) gross this year. He left bmi after over 20 years for that…horrible terms and conditions, I hope they never offer them to me, I’d be looking for the emergency exit outta here 😀

Airlines should not exist for the benefit of the bloated middle management and consultants who invariably cause most of the problems in the airline industry through their insatiable greed (see the USA). The European airline industry is in good shape with the exception of the usual suspects. I suppose you would have been in favour of companies such as Sabena and Swissair continuing on never making any money and bankrupting their taxpayers and staff for continual handouts.

If you’re happy that the passenger experience is more miserable – long queues,.

Again, I’m not going to pretend that everything is perfect but your views are debatable (hence me!). The average queue at a lot of the airports Ryanair use are short or often non-existant because the airports are not exactly LHR (hole!)for example. That leads nicely onto:

being dumped at airports they don’t want to be at,

Yes, Hahn, Girona, Skavsta etc. are located well away from their nearest cities, bear in mind that not everyone is going to these cities and they can still choose to fly into the main congested airports if they wish. Bear in mind that Ciampino, Bergamo, Gothenburg Save are actually closer to the city centres than the ‘main’ airports. People also now have the option of being able to fly directly to areas which were previously off limits or meant taking connections through the hubs and it’s becoming clear who is right. Here’s some market share data for you to chew on;
No.1 DUB LON = 45%
No.1 ROME LON = 34%
No.1 LON BARCA = 30%
No.1 BARCA DUB = 43%
No.1 STOCK MILAN = 50%
No.1 ROME STOCK = 60%

having to get themselves home when the wheels fall off – then that’s fine. I’d gladly pay a few more pounds for fair service, but Ryanair don’t provide that.

Again, you presume you know everything but in fairness nobody can have any excuses as the risks are well publiscised. However, that may be of little consolation to the passengers should the ‘wheels fall off’ and I have sympathy but it is very rare baring mind the 800 or so flights which are operated daily.

I have seen with my own eyes passengers being put up for the night in the Stansted Hilton when a crew member became ill yet we never hear about this because bad news makes better news. I have operated rescue flights, diverted to drop off engineers/parts to a sick aircraft, come in on days off to position aircraft. This summer there are between 4 and 6 spare aircraft depending on the day which shows the considerable steps being taken to minimise disruption to schedules. The fact also remains that Ryanair cancel the fewest flights and have the best punctuality in Europe…terrible isn’t it?

And don’t get me wrong – I’m not against low-fares/no-frills, but you need to take a look at what Southwest offers to realise that fair and reasonable service can still be combined with relatively low fares. Ryanair is in the gutter, easyJet comes close, and Southwest have got it pretty right.

I wholeheartedly agree re Southwest although I was only flew on them once, they are excellent. However, only 2 weeks ago I saw an interview with Colleen Barrett (another great Irish export), President and COO of Southwest who said that because of the rip off nature of the flag carriers in Europe, it was ‘inevitable’ that someone would create Ryanair it was just a question of who.

Ryanair will come a cropper – they’ll either bend a plane or two and write off a few passengers, or one too many people will get pissed off with what they offer, or something else will happen. But the airline industry is cyclical, and sooner or later some semblance of service will bounce back. Despite the pain that will be caused by that, it’ll be a good day for air travel.

Please forgive me if I’m wrong but it almost seems as if you are wishing for Ryanair to ‘bend a plane or two’. I don’t care how strong your beliefs are that is simply unnecessary, nasty and quite frankly disgraceful!

Back to more mundane matters, if you look at the longest served market – Ireland – you’ll see that loads, pax numbers, routes and market share have never been greater for Ryanair. It’s now about 15 years since Ryanair started down the low frills route there and it’s never been stronger so we must be on one hell of a long cycle especially considering the usual airline industry cycle is 6-8 years (we’re approaching the top right about now IMHO).

If you look at the most affected airlines from Ryanair, namely BA and Aer Lingus, they are doing incredibly well – hiring staff, new aircraft, large profits, record passengers – due to their ability to adopt to new challenges. Ryanair does more than anybody else to stimulate demand and that is where most of the growth is coming from.

I have an article from Flight International in 1994 which questions the decision to acquire the 737-200s from Lufthansa saying that Ryanair wouldn’t last long. Uh oh, how times change.

Unfortunately, your wishes for Ryanair to disappear are misplaced. We’re not going anywhere but up. What is it now, yes €2 billion in the bank, that’s means that if nobody ever bought a Ryanair ticket from tomorrow, it would take almost two years for Ryanair to run out of money even if every flight was operated. 22 consecutive years of profitability is rare in our industry as I’m sure you know. Ryanair has only scratched the surface of what is possible, huge potential lies ahead. 😀

PS Please do not interpret my comments as derisory or aggressive, that is not what is meant. I enjoy your views and debates.

I won’t be surprised if EZY go ahead and chop the routes if there’s money to be made elsewhere. Here’s the loads and average pax numbers for the routes for March 2006;

Cork-London(all airports)
Ryanair 42,700pax 73% load factor 138 average pax
easyJet 14,300pax 55% load factor 86 average pax

Shannon-London
Ryanair 37,300 69% 130
easyJet 4,500 52% 81

Knock-London
Ryanair 24,100 69% 130
easyJet 5,400 55% 86

Loads of 50-55% aren’t sustainable in the low cost model but I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

We’re all happy campers then. I don’t know what mantra your’re thinking of but I work for RYR, I’m very very contented as indeed most are and extremely proud of Ryanair. It seems to really pain you and that gives me great pleasure (kind of sadistic I know). 🙂

I’m sure the billions of £€$ people have saved is a terrible thing, wasn’t it great back in the day when everyone was getting ripped off left, right and centre? Don’t say it didn’t happen, it did and still does where allowed to do so.

Hip Hip Hooray!

BAA is a highly successful company making huge profits (glorified shopping centres) so if new owners come in, they would more than likely be happy to keep things mostly as they are.

A potential blip on the radar is that the Office of Fair Trading are looking into whether BAA has become a monopoly because of dominance of the major airports eg BAA has 92% of all London traffic and 86% in Scotland.

Very interestingly, the chief executive of the OFT, John Fingleton, had a similar postion in Ireland and ordered the break up of Aer Rianta (former operators of Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports) into separate entities to compete with each other.

Of course, the major customers of BAA would be in favour of a break up so they could play the airports off each other. See Ryanair’s Position. Also, a recent article from The Telegraph. Interesting times, I wish I had some shares in BAA! 😀

Here’s a link to link to some PICS . It seems the #2 (right) engine failed first shedding a disk (not a fan blade) which ripped through the lower fuselage, wing and somehow into the #1 (left) engine. The result was a double engine failure with a fuel leak which ignited causing the damage. 😮

I’ve never seen something like this before, just as well it happened on the ground, that’s for sure.

It looks like they picked the safe (but boring) option. It’s bit of a let down really.