Ryanair in 2015

[Stij]

Offer vs. Demand = Price, easy...

FR has the right to ask these fares, it's up to the customers to decide whether they pay them, book with another airliner or stay at home.

All the carriers should be happy!

Cheers,

Stij

[sean1982]

Yes Sean they are good at what they do except that they are now starting to charge the same fares as their competitors or even higher fares.

I mean come on... I see fares of 250 Euro's one way for 2 hour flights, 2 months ahead of departure, where the average used to be around 40 Euro's in the past 5 years.

I said that I was ok with a slight increase in fares, but FR have increased their fares very significantly while their main cost centre, ie fuel cost, has gone down. This is a bit ridiculous and while they will see a temporary increase as passengers take time to adjust, I'm seeing it going downhill from here.

I've used FR plenty in the past years for intra-EU travel, almost exclusively.
However, now they are forcing me to consider other options and have stretched my "travel-by-car" range to new limits.

If they continue on this path, they will not only be facing tough competition from the legacies who downgrade services for lower fares, but new LCC's are going to pop up and challenge their LCC status.

AHO and CAG have always been quite high fares in summer season due to the very high demand. Belgians book their holiday in january or february allready (13de maand) and so these flights are usually packed to the brim with only a few seats left here and there. Maybe closer to the date you'll find a bit lower fare.

[koja78]

On time performance ...

Not so hard if you always overestimate the flying time.

[Flanker2]

I'm not talking only about AHO and CAG.
By the way, fares have never been so high on these destinations, ever.

Other xamples:
- CRL-ALC July 11th, 18, 19th, August 1st : 254 freaking Euro's one-way
- CRL-Bari July 4th, July 18th: 246 freaking Euro's one-way
- Malaga, Thessaloniki, etc... : 150 to 250 Euro's throughout July and until mid-August, one-way

Where are the freaking "low-fares"?
In previous years, FR never had fares above 200 Euro's this far in advance. The most you would see is 160 Euro's even for the premium summer destinations. 260 Euro's is really shameless for a LCC.

I guess that something's got to pay for MOL's brand shiny new office?

I'm forced to use connecting trips with FR and add AZ for my summer schedule. How ridiculous is that for a loyal customer who uses FR all-year long on at least 4 trips per month?
Until now I felt little need to compare, but that's what I'm going to do from now on.

[sean1982]

Im not going to spend my time searching all these dates but I looked up a few:

To bari: next fare I found was AZ with a stop in FCO 405€ so 150€ more expensive and a longer travel time

To alicante: found a few cheaper fares but they all had a night stop in MAD, next up from FR was JAF at 275€ which was 75€ more expensive than FR. In all cases I looked FR had the cheapest fare (if you want to arrive on the same day as you left)

You cannot always expect to fly for a price cheaper than a train ticket to oostende, especially not in summer during a weekend

[Flanker2]

Well Sean, isn't that the whole point of FR's business model? The "low fares" image?

The way I see it is that FR has shot itself in the foot with their primary airports expansion and it has come at the expense of higher fares on the point to point routes from secondary airports, just as I feared!

Just have a look across the low fare finder.
BRU-FCO, BRU-LIS, etc are being sold at dirt cheap fares, while taking up significant capacity in the form of multiple daily frequencies.
If they used this capacity to the holiday destinations during that period, they would be able to offer more capacity to those relevant destinations and lower fares during that period, hence capturing a broader part of the market at higher yields than those business mainline routes.

IMO this is a misstep of FR's.
Once you show 250 Euro one-way fares, people erase the "low fares" image of FR from their brains, hence impacting this airline's main selling point.

[sean1982]

Capacity is being leased in and is on delivery from Boeing. Moving away from the "old" Ryanair was very needed because business was impacted severely (and staff morale as well in my opinion)

[Flanker2]

Well I'm sure that the move was positive on staff morale.
I'm waving the red flag here, simply as I have been representative of the loyal user that has participated in FR's growth from the early days to what it has become today. As such, I notice what is going on.

My post here isn't going to change my FR fares in July or any time in the future, but I'm pointing to a dangerous trend that FR is embarking on. You can deny it and continue and perhaps FR will fare fine.

But the saying usually goes: "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

IMO MOL is getting soft and losing out to the temptation of becoming another high cost legacy airline.
There's plenty of evidence that they're going in that direction, ie less income from pax's mistakes and ancillaries, more spending on unnecessary overhead like a new office building, more corporate staff, IT systems here and there, etc... this all results in higher fares without any benefits to the mainstream FR pax.

That's the trend that I see and this may very well be the tipping point for FR.
I get that this is an improvement for you Sean, but it does make the long term outlook much less stable even though it makes your job more fun today.

[RoMax]

So basically what you are saying is that because FR is operating according to an LCC model they have no right of communicating their statistics based upon the fact that the model is more simple than a transfer-model?

No that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the way they communicate most of these figures is just meaningless and misleading without context, and some are even plain b*llshit such as the bag performance thing.

[Inquirer]

The way I see it is that FR has shot itself in the foot with their primary airports expansion and it has come at the expense of higher fares on the point to point routes from secondary airports, just as I feared!

I am not nearly as good as you with price comparisons, but I can't say it's a big surprise to me: we both predicted this the very moment they announced their 'new' strategy, didn't we?
Everybody with an MBA knows product diversification should be done through seperate brands, because now they are forced to have ALL of their passengers pick up the costs of any improvements to upscale, including the old customer base which doesn't aks for it.
The futher they improve, the more expensive they become, so each time they proudly announce yet another product improvement, they basically annouce yet another tangible average price increase for the simple reason there is no commercial segregation whatsoever between their primary airport, new style operations and their secondary airport, old style operations.
That was also the initial plan IMHO (hence their stubborn attempts to buy Aer Lingus and use it as their 'better brand'), but in the end they failed to get control of them, ran out of time, saw their lunch being eaten by others like Easyjet and had no other option but to go for a lousy plan B which we see now.
Never really understood why they absolutely wanted to buy an existing company like Aer Lingus in the first place; is it something personal to their CEO maybe, just to be able to say he bought 'his country's flag carrier?
They should have launched a newco a couple of years ago instead: much easier, no objections from the UK or the EU and better than what they did now too, but I agree that in the end, there was no more time for all of that.
Oh well, others will fill the void ryanair is increasingly leaving at the low end of the market, I am sure: so is the nature of business.

[airazurxtror]

The Ryanair bashers are out in full steam.
The excellent statistics of Ryanair made them furious, that is to be expected.
One of them saying that the statistics are good because it follows the LCC model, it's not just, if Ryanair were following the Brussels Airlines model, Ryanair would also get bad statistics. Yes, CalimeRomax, I am sure of it ! That is just the point, in case you have not noticed. (E troppo ingiusto !)
Lot of fun, those statistics, I'll keep posting them, for sure !

[Passenger]

Ryanair has lost the court case (first stage) they've started against the federal government and three Belgian carriers about the annual 19,7 mio euro state aid. The Brussels Trade Court yesterday rejected Ryanair's claim that the state aid, to compensate the high Belgian social security, was illegal.

Ryanair will probably go into appeal, and Ryanair also has two other law cases about this state aid: at the Belgian Raad van State / Conseil D'Etat and the European Court of Justice.

Source : De Tijd / L'Echo, 20th May 2015.

De Tijd and L'Echo were the first to report this on early Wednesday morning. But as they are subscribers only, I also give some free news sources:

http://www.gva.be/cnt/dmf20150520_01689 ... taatssteun

http://www.demorgen.be/binnenland/ryana ... -a2329511/

http://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20150520_01689857

http://www.lesoir.be/882999/article/act ... s-airlines

http://www.rtl.be/info/belgique/economi ... 24623.aspx

http://www.lecho.be/economie_politique/ ... .art?ckc=1

http://www.tijd.be/ondernemen/luchtvaar ... .art?ckc=1

[RoMax]

Someone is getting really pathetic here. Anyway, continue to stay blind for the meaningless and misleading FR PR as much as you want if that makes you happy. If you think that makes me furious, hahaha I couldn't care less, they repeat the same numbers over and over again and I know them well enough to know most of it are worthless statistics (fully aside from the LCC/non-LCC argument which you are now pathetically hiding behind because I used it in PART of my reasoning on why to take these numbers with a grain of salt).

[sn26567]

air azur, I saw no FR bashing here. Just interpretation of statistics. You know that every one can see in statistics what he wants to see.

[airazurxtror]

A recent YouGov poll found Danish consumers have an overwhelmingly negative view of Ryanair, but the airline's tickets have still been selling briskly since its entry into Copenhagen in 2014.

The poll is one thing, the wallet is another one ...

[Passenger]

It’s not only joy for Ryanair in Kopenhagen. On 20th May, the Danish Labour Court will settle a dispute between Ryanair and the Danish unions. The unions want to organize a “sympathy blockade” against Ryanair, as protest against the Irish labour contracts for Danish staff. Ryanair aks the Labour Court to forbit the “sympathy blockade” because it is against the principle of freedom of trade within the European Union.

End of hearings. Verdict of the Danish Labour Court (Arbejdsretten): on 15th June 2015. If the court determines that Ryanair is subject to Danish labour laws, it clears the way for a legal strike. If however the court rules that the airline should play by Irish rules, a strike would be illegal.

[airazurxtror]

Ryanair today (21 May) released the latest upgrade to the Ryanair mobile app, featuring an improved “My Ryanair” customer registration function, allowing even faster access and easier booking of Europe’s lowest fares.

Using the “My Ryanair” mobile feature, customers can create their own personal profile and securely store payment and passport details on the app to ensure swifter bookings and flight check-ins. Ryanair’s mobile app allows users to:
•Log in via the “My Ryanair” feature
•Search Ryanair’s 1,600 low fare routes
•Choose & book fares & allocated seats
•Manage bookings & add baggage
•Book hotels & car hire
•Check-in & download mobile boarding passes
•View live flight information

Available in both IOS and Android format, the Ryanair app has been downloaded over 6m times. Further additions to the “My Ryanair” customer registration service will be added later this year, which will allow users to add family members to their profile, as Ryanair continues to improve its digital offering under year 2 of its “Always Getting Better” programme.

- See more at: http://corporate.ryanair.com/news/news/ ... 5OGgA.dpuf

[airazurxtror]

Ryanair announced it was increasing the number of flights on its Liverpool to Dublin route next winter – just hours after rival carrier Aer Lingus said it would be operating the same route from October.
On Thursday morning Aer Lingus announced a deal with Liverpool John Lennon Airport (LJLA) that will see it operate 16 flights a week to the Irish capital.
Within hours of the announcement, Ryanair said it was increasing the frequency of its flights from Liverpool to Dublin from three to four a day.
One-way Aer Lingus fares to Dublin, including taxes and charges, will start from £19.99, while Ryanair offers fares from £9.99.

Ryanair is to boost frequency on its Dublin to Manchester route this winter, from five-times to six-times daily; it is currently operating a four-times daily summer service on the route.

Ryanair is to increase frequencies on 12 routes from Dublin for the Winter 2015/16 season from October.
The carrier will operate a six times weekly service to Alicante, a daily service to Fargo and Malaga, Barcelona will increase will increase from two to three times daily, Berlin Schonefeld will operate nine times weekly, Madrid increases from twelve times weekly to eighteen times weekly, five flights per week to Tenerife South and eight times weekly between Dublin and Warsaw Modlin.

Increased frequency on the airline’s Birmingham to Dublin service from four to six times daily.
The airline will also operate two new services to Copenhagen and Lublin next winter as well as extending its Venice Treviso service to a year-round service, from Dublin.

[Passenger]

One-way Aer Lingus fares to Dublin, including taxes and charges, will start from £19.99, while Ryanair offers fares from £9.99.

Any idea what is included in that Aer Lingus "as from 19.99" that is not included in the Ryanair "as from 9.99" (apart from the friendly Aer Lingus check-in)?

[sn26567]

Ryanair announced it was increasing the number of flights on its Liverpool to Dublin route next winter – just hours after rival carrier Aer Lingus said it would be operating the same route from October.

I followed this battle on Twitter: Aer Lingus claims that their big advantage is that they are able to offer transatlantic connections in Dublin and they hope to get a big share of that market in Liverpool (whose transatlantic passengers will be able to avoid the hassle and the long time for changing planes in Heathrow).

http://t.co/BTTNgtQZeh

Aer Lingus today announced its schedule for Winter 2015/2016 including a further boost to its growing long haul business with a 13% increase in capacity. Airline is also investing heavily in key European short haul routes.