Ryanair is shutting its frequent flyers members’ club after only eight months because customers exploited its benefits too much.
The budget airline said on Friday it was closing the scheme, which offered benefits including flight discounts, free reserved seating on up to 12 flights a year and travel insurance.
It said 55,000 passengers had signed up to Prime, generating €4.4m (£3.5m) in subscription fees but customers had received more than €6m in benefits, making it a lossmaker for the company.
The whole brand and customer loyalty eetc thing just doesn’t play there. Fair enough, that’s what their brand actually is…..
The thing about that “€6m in benefits” is that it is a guesstimate, depending on subjective valuations and which mathematical model, from back of envelope to principal component analysis, was chosen. Perhaps the cost is more than €6m, perhaps less. It’s unlikely that we’ll ever know. The subscription revenue OTOH is established.
My missus and I stopped flying Lufthansa when they made the rules about using the lounge ever more stringent, despite our gold cards.
I guess the airline frowned upon travellers filling their pockets and handbags with sarnies. It was always fun unpicking the fluff from them on board the flight.
Not following this – if you have LH Senator (gold) then you get every lounge everywhere, including a guest, regardless of their status, on any *A flight, regardless of travel class. Fringe issues on the cheapest “Eurowings” tickets, perhaps.
Actually achieving LH senator – that’s a whole different matter.
Also I suspect they’ve valued it based on what they would have charged for the ‘benefits’, rather than what it costs them to provide them. That assumes that all those people would have bought all those benefits if they hadn’t paid the annual subscription, which is unlikely to be true.
Yes I wonder if that was calculated using the nominal price for seats as opposed to what they were actually selling for.
The price of an empty seat when the door is about to close should basically be the price of fuel. Once that door closes you aren’t getting any more seats sold.
There must be an ever dwindling number of passengers left who have flown with Ryanair and haven’t said “Never again.”
I’ve flown around Europe a lot with them over the past few years and they’ve been spot on.
the only disappointing flight we had was one they’d subbed-out to Lauda….
My somewhat limited experience was fine, to the extent that I got what I paid for and expected and would use them again.
It was better than flying a lot of BA short haul business class, especially Amsterdam.
Problem with BA in my experience is that they give a RyanAir service at premium prices.
For short haul flights is it safe, roughly on time and do I get a seat?
I went from Bath to Wells on a bus last week and that takes longer than Gatwick to Amsterdam. I’ll put up with it being about bus level.
I often use RyanAir, and I find the service acceptable and well priced. I was recently stranded in Rhodes because of an ATC strike, and RyanAir handled the matter very well and smoothly. In similar circumstances, Easyjet were pretty hopeless.
I recently took a Jet2 flight to Athens – more legroom than Ryanair, more comfortable seats, better service – and, in this case, a ‘free’ breakfast. Jet2 is the best budget airline I have flown with.
Yes if your thing is being the cheapest it’s not really a brand loyalty . Easyjet having similar issues with cheap upgrades , fast boarding is to keep your luggage in the cabin for a fast exit , you just get to stand more in a queue earlier.
They tried to copy Wizz Air who do something similar, but Wizz isn’t quite so generous, and they don’t have the same sort of Western Europe coverage as Ryanair, because it’s really more about family travel to Eastern Europe. Someone from Bucharest living here going back home to see mum.
Wizz Air’s version gives you a fixed amount of money off all flights (might just be pretty much all?), which encourages you to buy more tickets. Ryanair’s seems to give you access to a monthly set of discounts on their selection of flights, which doesn’t seem as effective.
The point I’m making is that they don’t have so many sexy destinations, and even when they do fly to say, Rome, it’s not that frequent. The sort of people who want to do half a dozen places probably don’t think it’s a great deal (unless you really want to go to Cluj-Napoca and Kosice.
Oddly I did have to go to Cluj-Napoca earlier this year.
But yes, I take your point.
They seem to be assuming that no one has bought more flights because of the membership benefits.
Amazon Prime I’m sure will lose money on that basis, because the number of free deliveries will greatly exceed the annual subscription. But they do it because once you’ve got Prime you order stuff from Amazon because the delivery is free.
I don’t have Prime – just get majority of my Amazon stuff delivered for free to the nearest hub – which is the post office 75yds away from me. And they hold it securely for seven days.
Yes, before I got Prime I would gather together lots so I could get the free shipping. Sometimes I couldn’t for an item and actually went out the the shops for it instead.
It depends on whether they want the sale or whether the profit is eaten by shipping. Pretty sure it isn’t, since they now use their own drivers in many cases. Which really wouldn’t pay if they were losing overall.
I wouldn’t pay for Prime just for the streaming. I’ve looked at some, but it wouldn’t be worth it overall.
So to state it explicitly because it’s merely been hinted at earlier up: if you pick an amazon hub or amazon locker as your delivery destination, then you get free postage with *no minimum order*, and the item tends to arrive on the same van as someone who’s paid for shipping or prime’s package.
So if you pick a popular locker, you can get shipping for absolutely nothing, and most of the time it arrives the same speed a prime order does.
O’Leary’s always good for a laugh, mind. He does tend to call a spade a spade in circumstances in which most others wouldn’t and he’s an expert troll. Airline of last resort for me, though but I haven’t flown Wizz. I don’t tend to go to places in Eastern Europe with loads of hairy stuff hanging off the letters in their names.
He tried to warn us
Have you ever been stupid enough to join a gym? I have, and their business model is convincing you to pay good money for something you’re barely going to use.
Because the girl signing you up for the deluxe membership package always looks like this, you can’t say no
I find gyms fascinating. I was watching a girl’s Whatsapp update of her using a machine that duplicates climbing stairs. This town’s full of 8 storey apartment blocks, one of which she lives in. Why not just use the stairs to the top floor & get the lift down? Like the woman in Crouch End used to drive from one side of Priory Park to the other, park, walk round the corner to the gym. Presumably to use the jogging treadmill.
I think it’s all about buying fashion exercise wear & looking at themselves in the mirrors. I include… if you can call them that… blokes. Why else are gyms full of mirrors?
Must admit I’ve never joined a gym, Steve.
Because I never thought they’d give me someone like her!!!
What I don’t understand about users of Ryanair is they spend the money they saved on the flight in the bar.
When I commuting backwards & forwards from here I used Norwegian. Planes were clean & comfortable, the staff & helpful & respectful. The baggage check-in is close to the departure gate. Why the hell would I want a half kilometer hike along the concourse both ways & to be treated like cattle over a mere 25 quid? Same as flying at some ungodly hour of the morning. Weird priorities some people have.
When the lass flew to Canada last I got her a 10AM departure from here for a connection in Schipohl. When lass organised it the time before, she saved herself 50€ by flying evening, the flight was late & missed the connection & 1:30AM I’m trying to find her a hotel room takes card over the phone because she hasn’t got plastic. Cost 220 + taxi
It’s an interesting psychology around cheap travel, because few people look at all the costs. Like Ryanair is a lot cheaper than BA to Milan. About £40 vs £140 round trip. But you get a suitcase thrown in with BA, so if you need that, it’s about the same price. And then Heathrow is a much easier trip for me than Stansted. And you save a bit at the other end because Linate is nearer to the city than Bergamo airport.
Same as flying at some ungodly hour of the morning
I like cheap evening flights because something I’ve learned is that flying, with all the end-to-end bits is a long day, and when I arrive somewhere I’m a bit knackered and I am not bothered about doing anything but having dinner and sitting in a cafe/bar. I’m not going off to see cathedrals or museums. So I am happy just getting in at midnight and going to bed and sleeping off the travel.
I really detest flying. Do anything to avoid it. It closely replicates the experience of being inducted into prison system. Total loss of personal freedom, comfort & lousy food.
Looks like I’m sentenced to a trans-Atlantic, January. I intend to overdose with diazepam & try & stumble through it in as close to a coma as I can get.