I love Ryanair — it's like Ayn Rand created an airline. Every flight is a battle of wits between the me, doing my best to _only_ pay the insanely low ticket price, and the airline, attempting to trap me at every turn, using every scumbag trick in the book. The irony is that the people who vilify the company are the same people subsidizing my ticket by refusing to engage in the challenge.<p>Having said that, due to increased taxes I think the hayday of insanely cheap flights is over. I remember flying London -> Slovenia once for £20 return. The train from the central London to get to the airport? £25.
Everyone complains about Ryanair, but they still buy the tickets. What the hell do you expect? I fly from Dublin to London every two weeks like clockwork and Ryanair is perfectly fine for the job. All I need is a bus in the sky (I'd actually prefer a train, but nobody's built a tunnel yet).<p>Why should I subsidize someone else's bag, seating choice, or forgetfulness? Don't think of them as fees, think of them as discounts.<p>For what it's worth, on the rare occasion that Cityjet (run by Air France) is cheaper I take that, but this is only once every few months. It IS far nicer, with free wine (seconds if you'd like), decent sandwiches, desert chocolates, and a landing at LCY.
> The checking of any bags should be avoided as they slow down loading the plane, inflate the turnover time, and end up costing the airlines more than they are worth.<p>Are the benefits that significant? After all, boarding times are significantly slowed down by people trying to cram suitcases that ought to be checked into overhead bins. Also, quite a bit of carry-on luggage ends up being checked anyways once the overhead bins fill up. I would love to see some real analysis on this.
Southwest is not really a "budget" carrier anymore.<p>They may have started out that way in the 70s when the level of service on traditional mainline carriers was much higher than it is now, but since then, most other carriers have adopted elements of Southwest's business model. Some of the mainline carriers have even gone further (see no free bags, charging for assigned seats, etc).<p>Especially now that Southwest flies to major airports (DFW, BOS, ATL, the NYC area airports, SFO, etc), I would classify them pretty much the same as the rest of the majors. The only thing they don't do that the majors do is allow their fares to appear on aggregator sites. That, and the free-for-all seating (which I can't stand, but that's a different complaint).<p>In fact, unless you book far in advance or catch a fare sale, Southwest is amazingly expensive to fly on. A couple of months ago I had to travel on short notice (death in the family, only 3 days until the funeral). An airfare on Southwest from Nashville to Boston was a 56% above the competing mainline carriers. And if I flew into Providence, which would have been more convenient, it was an astounding ~75% higher than Delta or US Airways.
> Although Southwest was once considered a pioneer amongst low-cost carriers, it has remained just that; a dated, bonnet-wearing airline. If Southwest ever hopes to offer it's customers lower rates or increase their profit margin, they are going to have to ditch the sweet tea and start drinking some of Ryanair's killer Kool-Aid.<p>Last I checked, Southwest doesn't care a whit about Ryanair. They care about competing in the US and here they have the lead.
Southwest - the developer who charges you $5 for a game, in full.<p>Ryanair - the developer who gives you the game for free/for $1, and makes you pay through the nose with in-game purchases.
Looking at only two options almost inevitably presents a false dichotomy. Ryanair is slightly more profitable, but EasyJet is bigger, offers similarly cheap prices, and while it's no all-inclusive luxury flight, they certainly don't attempt to screw you at every step.
Complain about Ryanair all you want, but I flew from Marrakech - Morocco (Africa!) to Stanstead - UK for about £40 (~$65 USD), including 1 checked bag. It was uncomfortable, but I got there.
You can barely even get a train to London from my city (Nottingham) that cheaply.
Only problem is that people stop using Ryanair. I've been burned a few times and finally sued them in the small claims court(and won). I've never flown with them since and have quite happily paid more money to avoid. I see this happening for a lot of my friends, and I think the "fuck you" customer service attitude they have is giving way to a much better one as seen by O'Leary's recent comments about wanting to reform their nasty image and "stop unnecessarily pissing people off".<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/05/ryanair-michael-oleary-investors-future" rel="nofollow">http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/05/ryanair-mich...</a>
btw - Ryanair is becoming more friendly (yes, it's strange combination, I know). Read here: <a href="http://www.ryanair.com/en/news/ryanair-rolls-out-more-customer-service-improvements" rel="nofollow">http://www.ryanair.com/en/news/ryanair-rolls-out-more-custom...</a><p>Quote:
Ryanair, Europe’s favourite low fares airline, today (28 Nov) confirmed that from Sunday all Ryanair passengers may now bring a second small carry-on bag (35 x 20 x 20cm) on board, in addition to a free 10kg cabin bag allowance, while its boarding card reissue fee has been cut from €70/£70 to €15/£15 for customers who have already checked-in online.<p>These latest customer service improvements have been rolled out across the entire Ryanair network and follow the launch of the new Ryanair.com home page, 24 hour grace periods (for minor booking errors), the introduction of quiet flights (pre-8am and post-9pm), with standard airport bag fees to be cut from €60/£60 from 3rd January and fully allocated seating (from 1st February) already in place.
Kind of weird viewpoint it is written from. As someone who flies every week, usually Delta and Southwest, I would absolutely love it if Southwest charged lower ticket prices and huge fees to people who bring bags, change their flights, or don't preprint. I'm not the one slowing down the flight with that, so give me the option of a lower price and encourage others to be similarly efficient. Meanwhile the author acts like these are bad things.
I really got burned by Ryanair's miserable 'visa check' stamp policy. After checking in online (mandatory), passing through all of Gatwick security, waiting an hour for the delayed flight at the gate, the attendant simply denied me entry saying he was not qualified to decide if my visa with a clear 3 years before expiry was valid or not and I would have to exit back to the counter and pass back in through security, obviously an impossible 60+ minute process. Oddly departing Berlin, the stamp was provided at the gate.<p>Back at the counter, the sales attendant tried to offer me a flight to Bremen for five times the cost of the original ticket leaving 8 hours later. When I asked why I would want a flight to Bremen vs my original destination of Berlin, she simply shrugged her shoulders saying it departed sooner...<p>Needless to say I cannot in good conscience ever give money to this admittedly clever/cunning corporation. Easyjet is not much more and significantly more humane.
I think the missing piece of this analysis are the other players in the respective markets. The assumption here is that Southwest can drop elements of their service and still keep the same prices. But competition might dictate if they offered less services than their peer airlines then they would lose customers to those peer airlines. I'm not sure about Europe but perhaps there is no one close in price to Ryanair so there under little competitive pressure to increase what they provide for their price.
People talk about RyanAir from two viewpoints; "they were fine as I knew how to not get ripped off", or "I got ripped off and I'll never use them again".<p>Look into the safety of RyanAir - pilots scared about how little fuel is onboard, landings with damage have happened too often for comfort etc. and if you're in the first group you would be insane not to become part of the second.<p><a href="http://lowcostaccidents.wordpress.com/category/ryanair/" rel="nofollow">http://lowcostaccidents.wordpress.com/category/ryanair/</a><p><a href="http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/dispatches-ryanair-pilots-concerned-about-passenger-safety" rel="nofollow">http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/dispatches-ryanair-p...</a><p>Look into Michael O'Leary and what he's said and done, and then ask yourself if you think he's someone you trust your life with.<p>I don't, and I'll fly anyone but RyanAir out of the UK. The difference in price is often a few pounds at most, and for me I'd rather cut costs elsewhere.
Ryanair can be viewed as the "extremist" budget-airline. Although this article may propose a great dichotomy, I think it illustrates the direction for lots of low-cost airlines. Ryanair is controversial and has a business model that is being duplicated across the world. Even Southwest created a pledge in 2012 to drastically increase ancillary revenue.
I don't understand how one can vilify things like requiring the customer to print out a boarding pass when the business model in question is to offer the cheapest possible flights.<p>Ryanair operates to the maximum possible efficiency, and whenever you fail to comply with their procedures you cost the company that efficiency. Something as simple as printing a boarding pass requires printers at the desks, a person or machine to print the pass, and disrupts the process flow. Yes charging ludicrous penalties is profitable, but it certainly deters people from not following the rules.<p>I would sooner complain about not being able to present my boarding pass as a QR code on my phone screen. That would require some capital investment on part of Ryanair, but would not cost them in efficiency. If my phone dies or I can't open the email, well thats my fault and I probably owe them the 60 pounds (or whatever it is)
Having had the pleasure of working for RyanAir myself I can only say that they run a very efficient operation. Every part of the process is structured for time efficiency (yes, this includes the pre-queue ;-)).<p>Can't say anything bad about them actually, never had any horrible experiences while flying with and/or for them.
Have had decent experiences with RyanAir to be honest; I think Wizzair is worse - not only this but they have much strayed from the concept of "low cost" that made them famous.<p>In many situations it is cheaper to just fly with BA, Lufthansa or other European companies.
pure scamming is clearly not a long-term strategy. Hard to argue with current profits but Ryan Air has been in business quite awhile. Perhaps they do know what they are doing.
For all the vilification of Ryanair, most US airlines combine British Airways prices and Ryanair service + charges.<p>Ryanair is what US airlines would be if they charged appropriately.