Ryanair is one opinionated company
Michael O’Leary, chief executive of the European budget airline Ryanair, is hardcore about saying no:
Ryanair promises four things: low fares, a good on-time record, few cancellations and few lost bags.
“But if you want anything more — go away! Will we put you in a hotel room if your flight was canceled?” Mr. O’Leary asked rhetorically. “No! Go away.”…
“Will we give you a refund on a nonrefundable ticket because your granny died unexpectedly?” he asked. “No! Go away. We’re not interested in your sob stories! What part of ‘no refund’ do you not understand?”
Miss your flight because you had to wait too long at a Ryanair help desk? Too bad! Your luggage is slightly overweight? Throw away the excess, or wear it on the flight! Try to tote your duty-free purchases onto the plane in a shopping bag, when you already have a carry-on bag? Prepare to fork over $40 at the gate.
Sounds like a bad experience in many ways (Southwest manages to take a similar approach without coming off as hostile to customers). But a lot of people only really care about those four things Ryanair promises to deliver. By pleasing that core group, Ryanair is managing to do something that most airlines find impossible right now: It’s turning a profit and growing the number of passengers it flies.
Mike
on 05 Aug 09Ryanair are a paradox: one of the most despised companies – no-one ever has a good thing to say about them, and I never hear anything positive about them. But, you’re exactly right – they’re making a profit. And why? Exactly because of this attitude! This attitude is what enables them to advertise tickets at stupidly low prices. That will always attract people. If you read the small print and comply with everything in their terms and conditions, you get what you expect – no frills. I have friends who “hate” Ryanair, and yet still fly with them because they are cheap. You get what you pay for.
Peter
on 05 Aug 09they’re making a profit because they moved their planes to mainland europe where they can cut costs – not through saying no.
Jean
on 05 Aug 09Ryanair is the worst airline in Europe. They have absolutely no service. Flew with them once on a trip with friends, but never again.
Ryanair only competes via the price, nothing else counts. If you are fine with that, Ryanair might be a good example how to steer your company. If you want your customers to come back even if your prices are slightly higher than those of the competition, don’t make the price your only salespoint.
ps: Ryanair is flying to a lot of airports which are very remote from the next city you want to go to. Turns out you have to add up bus fees etc. So in many cases Ryanair is not cheap after all and you are much better off with an early bird special from Air France, Lufthansa, Swiss or another premium airline.
mart
on 05 Aug 09but here’s the thing – they often aren’t cheaper. People get hoodwinked (by their own ignorance not necessarily Ryainairs doing) into – thinking – that they are really cheap. Add all the other costs (inc a passenger fee – whats that if its not the ticket price!) and its often cheaper to fly others.
Prehaps of more relavance to this blog – is that their (and other budget airlines) website is a object lesson in obscurification and deliberately making sneaky usability tricks so they cash in.
Try – not – buying their insurance. It sucks. its a major battle to ensure that you just get your flight only. And there’s no way that’s not deliberate. Easyjet are the same and i am sure others.
Wouter
on 05 Aug 09People that want to complain about Ryanair should not bother; they don’t care. If you don’t like Ryanair, don’t fly with Ryanair.
I got about 15 roundtrips for 1 cent (that’s including ALL taxes) on Ryanair. I saw parts of Europe I had never seen before just because I could get there for free. I went on day trips to foreign cities 1000km away, just for fun. Pretty cool :-).
Just sign up for their news letter, and they’ll inform you when they have another promotion (nowadays, the cheapest roundtrips (including taxes & creditcard costs) is about 10 euro’s. Still cheap though :-)
mario
on 05 Aug 09I what Ryan Air are trying to do, trouble is that even when thry don’t keep one of their promises they still tell you to go away. As for their payment charge (£5/ per passenger/ sector) – that is just daylight robbery. Every other choice you can decide not to take, but you have to pay for your flight! Recently I had to pay 8 payment charges for what was one card transaction (return trip for 4 people). Yes, I could choose not to fly them, but that isn’t the point, it is about a comapny lying to its customers about its prices.
Ryan Heneise
on 05 Aug 09I don’t think airlines can afford to be any more of a jerk than they already are.
ambrosen
on 05 Aug 09It’s interesting. I’ve been trying to analyse the factors that make Ryanair work. There’s a few that I can think of: 1) The massive press spend they have on advertising their prices; 2) The equally large number of column inches they manage to garner through PR such as the above (not to mention the charging for toilets idea); and 3) The incredibly powerful branding experience you’re subjected to throughout the flight.
I’d view the attachment that people have to Ryanair as a kind of cognitive dissonance, the idea being that because they’re so nasty, they must be cheap. And with every nasty thing they do, they re-asssert that they’re being nasty to save you money, thus making you grateful when they are nasty to you, because surely that means they’re saving you money. So even gratuitous nastiness gets rewarded by the consumer.
I think that in their favour, doing this turns a flight into more of an event, which works well in the European market, where most flying is international. So the fact that the flight experience is distinctive accentuates the feeling of being on a journey and makes the start and the destination less likely to blend into one.
Martin Pilkington
on 05 Aug 09Ryan Air is opinionated, but they are definitely not someone I’d recommend other companies emulate. They have one of the worst customer service records, they have questionable reliability (it is a running joke to many in the UK that Ryanair will fly you about 2/3rds of the way then bus you the rest) and while they have the cheapest prices they try to charge you for every tiny little thing. They’d probably charge you for the privilege of having a seat on the plane if they could.
The other major budget airline is Easyjet, who I hear very few complaints about. They cost a bit more but they fly from more useful airports, have better customer service etc.
Sven Clement
on 05 Aug 09Actually, Ryan Air has to put you in a hotel room if your flight is cancelled (if the flight departs or arrives in the EU) because of EU regulations, so one point he said is clearly wrong, but for the rest, I feel that Ryan Air delivers a service for those who like to fly remote airports and calculate the last cent of their price themselves.
But as many before me said, many european airlines are actually cheaper if you get early bird discounts and count all the other fees in.
Carlos Taborda
on 05 Aug 09You’re wrong.
I would never fly on this airline, and you’re crazy if you think they are ‘right’.
Just plain wrong, period.
Billy Waters
on 05 Aug 09Ryanair isn’t one business. This is why it works. It is segmented into point to point routes. Each route is run exactly like a franchise of the Ryanair model. If the franchise isn’t working the route gets yanked and the resources put somewhere else where it is working. The central overheads are low and the majority of effort and resources are put into providing the service and extracting cash from the customer.
You get what you pay for and some people above claim they are unreliable and have poor customer service. Its your choice to fly with them or not. Their attitude is unique but their business model is faultless and requires ruthless execution.
Even down to the detail of having three flight attendants per flight is down to them crunching the numbers. If they had 200 seats they would need another flight attendant per flight pushing up the costs. So they go as close to the limit as they dare and reap the benefits.
I fly Ryanair whenever I can.
Justin
on 05 Aug 09I love their business model! Service has a $ value when did everyone forget that.
Cezary
on 05 Aug 09Hello, welcome at Corporation X, we’ve got a nonstandard service ethics. Forget what you learnt at school and in the church. We just make your dreams come true if only they are mathematically correct. If not, sorry vinetou, no refund, fix your dreams. If you feel served badly, go to your MP with a complaint, hehe, but your MP has got more of our lobyists as his companions.
OK, OK, I get your point that at least we customers have got a steady low-cost airline instead of a bankrupt company.
Anon Cow
on 05 Aug 09Also, if you happen to be enroute to an airport when someone detonates a bomb near said airport (say Palma de Mallorca) we might re-route the plane to another airport (say Milano) and then after landing 500 kms for where your hotel is… we tell you to go away.
(This happened last week, not to me, but was big news here.)
I don’t hate Ryanair, I have used them a couple of times, but you should definitely know that you get exactly what you pay for.
You might also be interested in his plans for cross Atlantic business class services...
They may be successful right now, but their customers generally have a loyalty factor of zero. Their success is most likely due to the apparent complete incompetence by most of the ‘normal’ airlines.
Benjy
on 05 Aug 09I don’t see how focusing on those 4 key things and not being such jerks are mutually exclusive… while I can see how cutting some of the overhead fat traditional airlines offer even if not required by law (ie. hotel rooms are often provided when weather, etc. causes cancellation), some of the rudeness seems unnecessary. Southwest seems to have found a way to keep costs low, remain on better financial footing than its peers, and yet still have the nicest staff of any airline. BTW, isn’t Ryan Air the one who was considing fees to use the restroom in-flight? they’re like an absive spouse, who keeps pushing and pushing to see how long before the relationship ends.
djd
on 05 Aug 09Owwww… this is hitting a sore spot with me at the moment… http://davidjduran.com/2009/07/29/ryanairs-outrageous-visa-check-policy/
I fully agree with Benjy that service and being jerks shouldn’t be impossible to rectify in one nice package. Plus, how far is too far… Walmart pushed ‘low low’ prices to the brink and has had to scramble the last few years to rebuild their image for example.
For me, you may save a few pounds on tickets but it’s a gamble that you won’t regret it in the end.
Sam - @samsworldofno
on 05 Aug 09I don’t care about their service – this post misses the point in another way.
In a troubled airline industry, RyanAir has a few core value that a few others don’t – it’s still in business and it is offering seats where nobody else is able to.
The medium haul UK destinations, and therefore the travel agents that depend on them, were absolutely screwed over by the collapse of the XL group last year. Hotels lie empty as there simply aren’t enough flights to get the people abroad to fill them. RyanAir is still running, at massive losses, routes and therefore are the ONLY option for getting to places where sterling is comparatively strong.
They are very much a tolerated evil, and their stated core values have no relationship to their current market position.
They are also really good at putting out ‘controversial’ (but nonsense) publicity statements that get picked up and go viral – presumably like this one. The bathroom fee (mentioned above) is one such thing – a controversial rumour that went all around the internet and got their name known, that they themselves started.
In particular, their CEO is noted as publicity hungry in the industry.
Mike
on 05 Aug 09Stop comparing them the American and British Air and start thinking about them as what they are: a city-to-city cab service! Their service seems on par with most of the cabbies that I have ridden with, but I keep using cabs…because they fit the particular need I have at the time I have it.
Ian Waring
on 05 Aug 09Turning a profit of… minus $239m! See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8078349.stm
A recent Viz Top Tips on Twitter suggested that Ryanair should get you mugged physically before each time you use them, so you get used to what they’ll do to you financially a little later. Each to their own…
Nathan L. Walls
on 05 Aug 09Southwest has made about removing unnecessary frills while preserving everyone’s general decency.
And while no, Ryanair doesn’t have to do anything other than fly from point A to point B, there are frequent advantages (intangible ones at that) of being preemptively courteous and helping customers, particularly when you’re not required to.
If the airline industry is on a pendulum of cost/quality and the old mainline airlines like British Airways, United and such are too onerous to compete, Ryanair is the pendulum at the other end of the swing.
SvN has previously argued against nickel and dime-ing customers, particularly for reasonable and predictable costs, which is precisely what Ryanair does.
It’s almost as if 37signals was a completely different company and decided to say “hey, we’re encrypting all of our Basecamp traffic,” except free accounts got rot13 and a “decrypting charge.”
Clearly, there are people who fly Ryanair, and may they continue to be happy doing so.
Andy Stewart
on 05 Aug 09Ryanair has nothing but contempt for its customers. It’s also more expensive than the competition, as others have pointed out, since the prices exclude check-in, bags, water, and even getting to where it says on the ticket—they fly to the middle of nowhere and you then have to spend lots on public transport to get to where you actually want to go.
I’m amazed a company that treats its customers so badly is still in business. Maybe it’s Stockholm Syndrome.
Harry Llewelyn
on 05 Aug 09Ryanair are terrible. Aside from the prices, their staff seem to continue with this attitude, and are rude and very unsympathetic no matter what the issue is. In my experience anyway.
Easyjet, Ryanair’s main competitor seem to get things right. They are a little bit more expensive, but their planes are clean, staff friendly, and give you a better experience on the whole.
James
on 05 Aug 09You obviously haven’t flown Ryanair.
I think you mistake complete and utter loathing and disregard of the customer for being opinionated.
Other budget airlines manage just fine without being such royal assholes.
Jean
on 05 Aug 09Yeah, thumbs up for Easyjet. They are not more expensive, but definitively more customer oriented than Ryanair. Easyjet shows how to offer cheap flights AND have a good reputation, whereas Ryanair shows how to offer flights with lots of hidden costs (no good usability of their pricing scheme so to speak) and earn the probably worst reputation among European airlines.
BTW the Ryanair CEO said they were thinking about FEES FOR USING THE LAVATORY. How ridiculous is that?
Billy Waters
on 05 Aug 09@Sam. There is no way that Ryanair tolerates loss making routes.
Their publicity works. People talk about them and people fly with them.
So what if they don’t love you. Get over it.
Dahuk
on 05 Aug 09Everyone hates Ryan air. I always try to fly with other carriers when possible. But am I willing to pay £150 for a ticket when ryanair costs £30(which is what a flight advertised for £0.01 tends to actually cost)? No!
Easyjet does seem to get the balance right between price and service though, and they’re nearly as cheap.
One thing these airlines don’t rip you off on though is one way tickets. If I don’t know when I’ll return from a trip I can just buy two or three one way tickets for practically nothing. A normal carrier will charge hundreds for an amendable ticket.
Patrick
on 06 Aug 09Honestly, I’ve never found Ryanair to be cheaper once I’ve factored in the extra time and cost to get to/from the remote airports they fly to, the extra fees for checking luggage, and the knowledge that they have basically the worst flying experience possible.
But people look at the ticket price and forget to take everything else into account. At the end of the day, sure, I might be able to save the equivalent of $50 on the ticket, but flying another carrier and saving 4 hours getting to and from airports is worth it to me.
Rick
on 06 Aug 09My number 1 reason for never flying Ryanair is that they draw the kind of passengers I really don’t want spend an hour in a confined space with…
Neil
on 06 Aug 09+1 for Easyjet too above Ryanair. Honestly, they used be not bad and Ive been to Italy for 1p several times with only 3 other people on the plane but now they really are trying to charge you as much as possible without you knowing. Their flights are inevitably late or cancelled and their idea of proximity is laughable, so the cheapness of the initial sticker price is soon gone.
They do fly to some more unusual places but as air travel is a pain nowadays anyway, id say choose Easyjet if at all possible. After all the extras it usually costs the same and youll be there much quicker.
Alvin
on 06 Aug 09Ryanair is not as cheap as O’Leary said Ryan loose my luggages Ryan is not on time Ryanair missed 700 passengers flights at Stunsted !!!
RocketScientist
on 06 Aug 09I flew Ryanair Bristol to Dublin and back yesterday for a day out on my daughter’s birthday. Total cost for 4 people £8 including all taxes and charges. I don’t pay for luggage (didn’t take any) or credit card fees (used the zero charging card type). This was way cheaper than a day at Alton Towers theme park and much more fun.
If you want/need a cheap flight then you have to obey the rules set out in the terms and conditions. I have had many flights with Ryanair over the years and to be perfectly honest their flights were far more pleasant than the hell flight I suffered from Birmingham (UK) to New York with Continental. They claimed to be full service.
Robin Morris
on 06 Aug 09They may seem to be single minded, opinionated and have good corporate direction… but their web experience is precisely the opposite, going for the every-thing-and-the-kitchen-sink approach.
I suspect their single mindedness is not good corporate vision but just the result of having a tyrant in charge.
pht
on 07 Aug 09Or maybe ryan air works because :
A) they successfully trick people into thinking their tickets are cheap (but hiding all the costs)
B) they circumvent (aka blatently break) working regulations to avoid paying staff what they should
C) they target a kind of customer that thinks they have no real choice (it’s either ryanair and pseudo-cheap flights, or a nationnal company that shows you the full price first)
D) every one has bad stories about ryanair, but unfortunately, every one has bad stories about every fracking airline company. Whereas not every one can say “I travelled with XXX for 10€”, for any given value of X (regardless of the fact that airport taxes costed you 5 times the price of the ticket)
So ryanair’s success might be based on “in a world where everyone is blind, expensive and evil, be one-eyed, slighly less expensive and evil”.
And, seriously, dude, how can you talk good of a company with such a website ?? This is SvN, for DHH sake ;)
Patrick K
on 07 Aug 09Michael O’Leary has stated that he wants to turn air travel into a bus service with wings…. you dont expect superior customer service from a bus service, so why should you expect it with an airline that trims costs to the bone? He reckons travellers expect too much “service”, which is a hangover from the days when flying was glamorous and it cost a month’s wages to fly transatlantic (at least it did in Ireland up til the 90’s).
I flew to from Cork to Edinburgh with the small Irish airline Aer Arann, return flight was about €250 on crap turboprop plane, I was sitting over the wings it was like using a jackhammer with the vibrations in your legs! Flew Shannon to Edingurgh a few months later, cost around €120 I think, leather seats, much faster flight (even if I got hassle for too much hand luggage). Ultimately you get what you pay for. If you can afford a Mercedes, go and buy it, if not shut up and get your Toyota Corolla serviced.
I’d agree with the comments above, if you don’t like Ryanair, don’t fly with them instead of complaining. On a side note, Ryanair are the second most profitable airline in the world (per capita traveller, I believe), not bad for a relatively small airline that only operates in Europe.
lubos
on 07 Aug 09Flew with them once. Their ticket was so cheap that you just ask “why not”. Of course, only in the plane you realize how much for granted you take additional services offered by other companies so it was a bit of a shock but they delivered what they promised. they got me from A to B on time.
Tom
on 07 Aug 09Once they’d snuck loads of extra charges into their flight price I didn’t actually find them that cheap.
nobody
on 07 Aug 09You always get in life what you paid for…
Derek Organ
on 07 Aug 09Flying is so over glamorized. I want to get from A to B. If the flight is less than 3 hours; I expect low prices and the same service I’d get on a bus. Speed up check-in and getting out of airport and give me a seat. What else do you want?
All this complaining about it being a bad service comes from judging against the glamorized view of flying. Try compare the service to getting a train or bus. You’ll find they do a damn good job of running this service.
I’m a big admirer of his business and strength to follow through on what is the right way to do things. This doesn’t mean there isn’t room in the market for comfortable long haul flights with meals and nice service etc. but for less than 3 hours or so, the less fuss the better i say.
Arethuza
on 07 Aug 09I’ve flown with Ryanair a few times between Scotland and Sweden – I thought they were perfectly OK. Pretty similar in many ways to the charter flights you get with your package holidays where you typically have to pay for everything and which are just as fierce about baggage weight limits etc.
I actually rather like the fact that they are honest about what they want to do – rather than other companies which claim great service and then don’t deliver.
Anonymous Coward
on 07 Aug 09MOL and Ryanair are great.
Sure I prefer easyJet to them, but that’s mostly because it flies from and to places relevant to me, not because they don’t have Ryanair’s arrogance.
But there is a mistake – actually Ryanair doesn’t make a profit anymore too – it reported it’s first annual loss in June.
Mike
on 07 Aug 09the comments here are pretty funny, mainly cause most everyone doesn’t know how ryanair was started and how o’leary went from being a small timer, to the CEO who saved the company when the ryan empire (their main business was leasing planes) was in shambles.
mike o’leary is ron paul who curses a bit more. ron paul didn’t want to congress to buy an award for rosa parks… not because he’s racist, but because he doesn’t think that tax payers should have to pay for this. paul’s quote was something to the effect of if everyone in congress wants to pass around a collection, i’d chip in. o’leary’s the same way. why should bag handler fees be passed on to 150 people when 80 people were the only ones who checked their bags? why should 150 people have to pay extra so that 30 people can enjoy free coffee and another 70 people can have a soda? yes, people who buy a 9E ticket are pissed when it becomes 100E, but guess what… you’re the ones using all of the resources.
o’leary changed europe. he’s forced airports to lower their outrageous taxes passing the savings on to everyone. people can work remotely and see their families more now that a roundtrip ticket can cost 30E rather than 300E. he’s forced every other airline to lower prices, even the full service ones. at the end of the day, ppl who have gotten screwed will always complain and swear to never use ryanair again… but more often than not, ryanair or easyjet is where you’re going to turn when you want to fly from dublin to rome. and if you’d rather pay 10x more for your ticket to have the piece of mind that you’re not on ryanair, then that’s fine too. just remember that you’re paying for everyone else’s good time as well.
mike b
on 07 Aug 09advertising flights for 1 euro (which is actually 30 euro with taxes) is just disgusting, but mindless, greedy people seem to like it, because they don’t care about environmental costs.
Michael Rosenau
on 07 Aug 09One thing Americans have a hard time understanding: Europeans aren’t always interested in bending over backwards for every possible problem or issue consumers dream up.
I think accountability is much needed on the consumer side and Ryanair is asking for just that. Instead of tip toeing around the issue, they’re making a stance and in my opinion—building a brand.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they built a whole creative ad campaign around all the excuses that they won’t put up with from customers. If done right, it could win some awards. (Ryanair if this comment give you insight, I’d be happy to be involved in the creative process) :)
Christian
on 09 Aug 09I’ve had my share of bad experiences with Ryanair and will avoid them in future, but I generally agree with those who say – if you don’t like them, don’t fly with them.
However, there are some issues that I think are just not acceptable. For example, the policy that you have to pay a fee if you don’t use the online check-in puts disabled people as well as people with non-EU passports at a disadvantage (because these are not allowed to use the online check-in). That in my opinion is discrimination that should not be acceptable.
Chris
on 09 Aug 09I love this guy. In a recent newsletter they sent around a survey asking for your opinion about free flights if not in a seat but standing (with kind of a rollercoaster bracket over your chest) for short flights. Perfect! I believe they really get it the way Europe is coming together at the moment with new migration flows from the east to west (UK) and so forth. It’s about an easy commute and not travelling with luggage etc.
Airobserver
on 10 Aug 09If you think that Ryanair is the cheapest company in Europe check this link : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article6788813.ece
So if Ryanair is not the so cheapest one why should i fly with this no morals company ?
Sarah
on 10 Aug 09I flew with Ryan Air a few weeks ago and swore we would never fly again they made us miss our flights due to only one person being on the check in desk and then printing our boarding cards incorrectly!
We have two children – one a baby and that seemed not to matter in the slightest!
I am a big believer in manners cost nothing and like to think I am always polite. I found all the ryan air staff to be the rudest by a long shot, they treat you like you are the lowest of the low and never seemed to smile. On the way home we decided we didn’t want the hassle of flying with them again so we booked a new flight with BMI Baby – the difference was unbelievable. They had plenty of friendly staff working so the que at the check in was great they didn’t charge us any extra for having a car seat as well as a pushchair or for being slightly over in our luggage.
Whereas the ryan air que (which we were meant to be travelling with) was horrific and again they were short staffed.
I think when you add up all the extra charges I don’t think they are as cheap as you think. We will never fly with them again as it’s just not worth the hassle and upset, I would rather pay double. Think twice before you book with them!
This discussion is closed.