He has made it part of the Ryanair style to taunt passengers’ appetite for the 50p flight with what are amusingly called ancillary charges. That is, anything that isn’t the seat on the plane. These generate 20% or more of the airline’s multibillion-pound profits.
Where does that multi- come from?
The Irish airline made a profit after tax of €1.3bn (£1.1bn) in the year to the end of March, even though it slashed ticket prices to fill almost 14m seats added during the period.
I’ve seen one number which says they’ll carry 130 million odd people this year. So, profit is around the £7 or £8 a flight level. Looks a pretty tight margin business to me.
“Ryanair flights are full of people who swore they’d never fly with us again.”
True, dat.
Might explain the Guardian’s yearly mega losses.
Being pedantic, “multi” means “more than one”. 1.1 might only be slightly more than one, but it’s still more than one.
I should have thought multi-billion meant more than one “billion” – that is, at least two of them. One and a bit doesn’t qualify. Maybe on the basis multi is short for multiple.
“I don’t like it, so it’s wrong.” I fail to understand why Guardian writers, particularly the wimmin, have such strong desires to ban or change things they don’t like but which don’t affect them.
I don’t fancy flying Ryanair either. So I don’t.
Being pedantic…
You’re new around here, aren’t you?
Well, no, they don’t create those profits. You can say “here’s £200m being charged, they make £1bn profit”, but that doesn’t mean they’re connected.
The ancillary charges on Ryanair are about costs.
“He shamelessly tests his passengers’ tolerance with novelties such as charging for airport check-in, or for printing a boarding pass, or for calling to find out where your plane is – and we sign up for more.”
I doubt they’re running any of that at a profit. If you have to have a printer at an airport and someone manning the desk, and someone in IT supporting it, and all the network infrastructure, that’s a cost. Divided between the tiny number of people who think they can ignore the clearly stated requirements, that works out to be a lot each. And I have a lot of respect for O’Leary telling these people to fuck off when they complain. There’s nothing sneaky about this. It is stated very clearly in large type.
And some things really are optional. I’ve had arguments with people complaining about baggage costs, but I’ve done trips with just a laptop or the minimum for an overnight change.
Even more pendantically, any number is a multiple of any other number except zero.
I’ve just flown with them to Dublin and have another journey booked with them in December. Each flight cost me around 30 quid return.
With Ryanair you get exactly what you pay for, no more, no less. The terms and conditions are clearly stated as are the charges. Anyone who’s flown with them a couple times know what to expect. I have little sympathy for people who complain about not receiving a first class service for bargain bucket prices.
And why oh why do they let retards on the plane who block the aisle and need 10 minutes to sort their baggage while a queue of 100 people wait for them to finish?
The silly cow probably confused profits with revenues. It’s the Groan, innit?
@Chris Miller
“Ryanair flights are full of people who swore they’d never fly with us again.”
That includes me. More seriously for him though his planes are being flown by people who swear they’ll never fly for him again if they can get any other job. Hence the current fiasco.
I haven’t sworn never to fly with Ryanair. However, it is always the bottom of my list of practical options.
Unfortunately, sometimes that also makes it the top 🙁
On iata’s pressroom facts and figures page, the airline industry as a whole is estimated to make a mere 7.7USD per departing passenger in 2017 with a 4.2% margin. Ryanair thus are ahead of the industry curve, even with their rock-bottom rates.
Instead of £34 RyanAir to Dublin in a sardine tin plus £15 coach ticket to get to the airport, I expressed my preference for a £40 sea-train ticket instead on what felt like to me a luxery cruise liner with a cinema, two restaurants, two bars, and about 150square feet all to myself.
I like the Rail+Sail and have done it very often in the past, however Ryanair gets me from door to door (Birmingham to Dublin) in exactly 5 hours.
It also lets me leave straight after work on a Thursday and gets me back before work on a Monday without having to book time off.
Convenient when you have an ill relative that you need to visit often without it breaking the bank.
If you book the aircoach online it costs 14 euros return.
Of course your personal priorities may be different.
The only other alternative (flying) is to use Aer Lingus which I have done in the past, however they aren’t much of an improvement quality wise, having lowered their standards to compete with Ryanair.
Short version : Ryanair offer a bargain basement no frills service. But it does do exactly what I need it to do : get me from A to B for the lowest price possible in the shortest time possible.
That people have greater expectations than that continually astounds me.
I think it is also interesting that despite all the bitching and moaning and virtue signalling being done, people’s revealed preferences show that Ryanair are doing something right.