Ryanair was forced to fly planes with more than one in ten seats empty last month after Michael O’Leary’s budget airline was banned by a host of online travel agent websites.
The Irish carrier said its load factor – the proportion of seats filled – had slipped to 89pc in January, down two percentage points from a year earlier.
Load factor’s always the number to look at. So, down 2 percentage points because thrown off booking sites. Terrors.
Meanwhile, rival low-cost carrier Wizz Air also revealed its flights were less full in January, weeks after it was forced to pay out £1.2m in compensation to passengers in a row over cancelled flights and delays.
The airline carried 4.7m passengers last month, a 14.2pc increase on a year earlier.
However, its load factor fell by four percentage points to 82pc compared to January 2023.
The other airline not thrown off booking sites, load factor down 4 points.
Erm, maybe it’s not the booking site thing to blame?
Good news for the fatties who demand two (or occasionally three) seats
I think I saw that it was that nice Mr O’Leary who attributed the downturn to the booking sites and he probably knows a thing ior two. It would be no surprise if Wizzair lost all its customers, given that it’s even more horrible than Ryanair.
I’d have thought Ryanair was exactly the type of business that readers here would like. Self made man runs a service that provides cheap flights to many locations on new, clean aircraft (I would add safe but he buys Boeing!).
If mixing with pissed chavs isn’t your thing, there are other (much more) expensive options that are available.
Some of us are very grateful for the service that Mr O’Leary provides.
A few years back when my Dad was ill, I was a regular commuter between Birmingham and Dublin.
Couldn’t have afforded to do it without him.
Many of the complaints against Ryanair stem from people too thick to read the terms & conditions on the website or want to chance their arm regarding the luggage allowance.
That O’Leary is an abrasive arsehole that says what he thinks and gives no quarter to idiot journos & politicians only endears him to me.
I’m a huge fan of Ryanair, even though I seldom fly with them. For why? When I fly to Europe from the US, Ryanair’s price pressure on short-hop flights means that my second flight, booked with the major transatlantic carrier – from major hub to regional airport – is cheap as chips. Delta and Lufthansa know that when Ryanair offers $10 flights to Prague or East Midlands or wherever, budget-conscious travellers (= anyone paying for their own ticket) will happily put up with a little inconvenience for the stunningly-low fare. Free markets – how do they work?
llater,
llamas
There’s one thing that fascinates me about Ryanair customers. And I meet more than a few. They get up at some ungodly hour to travel to some shithole airport like Luton & endure Ryanair’s conditions of use to save about 30 quid. Which they then blow in a bar in ten minutes on overpriced designer drinks.
BiS
LOL, and whatever the thumbs up emoji is…
Sis is flying with them shortly to Bongo, but only on the basis that I’ll happily pick them up from the back end of nowhere (rather than an expensive taxi alternative), so in that case it does work…
My first question when booking flights is “can I fly direct”? If I can, that’s who I’m going with , and for quite a few destinations in Europe, Ryanair (or similar) fly direct when the big boys make you change planes. My particular example was Aarhus, but I’m sure there are plenty of others. The fact that it was £22 quid each way, rather than 10x that to change at Kastrup, was an added bonus.
Ryanair is transformative even if you don’t fly with them, they’ve forced all the other airlines to stop price gouging, irrespective of what you think of the clientele.
And then there’s BA: sky-high prices, yet still Ryanair levels of customer service.
“The other airline not thrown off booking sites, load factor down 4 points.”
Yes, but total volume up 14% – so that load factor is because they’ve not quite called it correctly and added 18% more capacity.
As to the rest of it, they’re still on skyscanner so who cares about anything else – it’s like saying your site doesn’t show up on alta vista’s search results. Meh – they’ve lost 2 points worth of booking site coverage, and lost 2 points of load factor. That jsut says that the booking sites that have dropped them have only got 2 points of coverage.
If skyscanner drops them, that’s something else. MO’L had better be nice to CCP…