(U)Ryanair

The Mouth of the West

Checking into Ryanair Flight FR118 at Dublin to London Gatwick the other evening I noticed a familiar face in the security line in front of me at Dublin Airport. It was none other than Michael O’Leary the outspoken Chief Executive of Ryanair, widely known as “The Mouth of the West” in Ireland. I asked him where the bodyguard was and he smiled and said he could look after himself. I don’t doubt it and there he was going through the ordinary line in jeans, check shirt and leather jacket having his luggage x-rayed with all the other passengers. The flight to London he was on (he sat in the front row and was first off the plane) had a number of innovations, namely it was enabled for mobile use in the air at “only” £3.00 a minute and you could get a “Ryanair Flame Grilled Cheese Burger” for only 9 euros. Strangely I resisted both temptations and the Sage’s zero purchase on Ryanair policy was maintained.

Now Ryanair gets a lot of knocking copy (sometimes from me) but those of us with longer memories remember what a restrictive cartel European air travel was before Ryanair. BA and Aer Lingus operated a cartel on the Dublin / London route and charged £230 return for a trip 20 years ago. Cheap fares could only be bought with stupid restrictions like being re-endorsed by a travel agent (What! Why!) for the return leg which led to British Airways stranding me in Dublin for 3 days and don’t even get me started on how exploitive Aer Lingus was with its so called “Compassionate air fares” designed to "help" customers travelling for bereavements or family emergencies. I remember in 1987 when Dublin / Oslo cost £564 (£2,000 in today’s terms) and Dublin / Geneva cost £380 in 1976. What a contrast when In 1999 I flew London / Lubeck for £5.00 return all in and laughed when I saw Ryanair fly in with a plane with “Aufwiedershen Lufthansa” on the side. Well, nobody is laughing today as Ryanair is the biggest and most profitable European airline with 170 Boeing 737-800’s in the air.

So I do admire what Michael O’Leary has achieved and his simplification of the business model and operation will be thought to Business Course drones for many years to come, no doubt to O’Leary’s great amusement. However Michael has the same problem as Oliver Cromwell had in Ireland, he doesn’t explain his mission too well and sometimes he revels in going too far. For the next morning he was at it again, pissing off his customers, if you’ll excuse the pun; “One thing we’ve looked at in the past and are looking at again is the possibility of maybe putting in a coin slot on the toilet door so that people might actually have to spend a pound to spend a penny in the future,” Chief Executive Officer Michael O’Leary said in a televised interview with the BBC. His comments were confirmed by the carrier.



Ryanair may charge passengers to use toilets on its planes, adding to fees already imposed for beverages, stowed baggage, airport check-in and preferential boarding. Ryanair generates about 20 percent of revenue from so-called ancillary income, the money it makes aside from ticket sales. The Dublin-based company this month introduced technology allowing passengers to use their own mobile phones on aircraft.

Mr O'Leary said this would not inconvenience passengers travelling without cash. "I don't think there is anybody in history that has got on board a Ryanair aircraft with less than a pound," he added. "We're all about finding ways of raising discretionary revenue so we can keep lowering the cost of air travel."

Mr O'Leary has a reputation as a cost cutter, expanding Ryanair by offering low headline fares and charging extra for items such as additional luggage. The move has been criticised by air passenger groups. James Freemantle, industry affairs manager at the Air Transport Users Council, said while they supported some charges to drive down ticket prices, a lavatory fee was a "step too far".


One pound to spend a penny?

He said: "There's a limit on these extra charges and they shouldn't be putting them everywhere." Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara said: "While this has been discussed internally, there are no immediate plans to introduce it. Passengers using train and bus stations are already accustomed to paying to use the toilet, so why not on airplanes?" True but they don't pay ON trains and once asgain Ryanair is not thinking how this would impact on older and disabled passengers and families or indeed the dignity of all passengers - I pay to travel, not to enjoy ritual humiliation? Last week, Ryanair announced it was to shut all its European check-in desks by early next year and have passengers check-in online.

Now Michael O’Leary has the same weakness as Oliver Cromwell had, he is very bad at bringing the public with him for the simple reason that he is too confrontational and travelling with Ryanair can become a hassle filled obstacle course with the carrier waiting in a predatory manner to bite your bum financially! The result is it alienates a whole section of passengers, including older flyers, those with children and those who have impaired mobility. Other carriers do it differently, for instance, if you miss an Easyjet Flight and are at the airport within two hours they will put you on the next flight for £40. By contrast I have seen a Portuguese family at Stansted when they missed their flight by minutes because the so called Stansted Express had a signal failure being in tears after being quoted £220 for a one way leg to Oporto on the next Ryanair flight.



Similarly toothless regulators have allowed Ryanair to laugh in the face of British and European Disability legislation by playing “trick or treat” by only allowing 4 people with mobility impairment or special needs on each flight, and these have to contact an impossible to contact Call Centre (at a cost) the same day and take the risk of being bounced off the flight. 10% of the population is in the mobility impaired category but 4 out of 186 seats on a Ryanair plane equates to 2.15% availability of seats for these vulnerable people. Altogether apart from the moral and legal equations it makes little sense to turn your back on such a large pool of customers. So Michael stop doing a Cromwell and work on making the Customer Interface less confrontational and more friendly and inclusive. Who knows the Business School drones of the future could be doing a module on how Ryanair transformed its image, rediscovered its customer and became “The Friendly Skies of Europe.” Not a bad way to go in a recession?

Ryanair on December 2nd. 2008 raised its net income forecast for the year ending March 31 to 50 million euros, saying the falling price of oil has more than compensated for the lower fares it’s offering to stave off a traffic drop. Passenger numbers rose 11 percent in January from a year earlier. Ryanair was trading up 15 cents, or 0.5 percent, at 3.02 euros as of 12:26 p.m. in Dublin. The stock has added 1.5 percent this year, giving a market value of 4.44 billion euros.

See also; “Ryanair, The European Airline?”

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/08/ryanair-european-airline.html

Ryanair Press Conference about Trans Atlantic Service.

The "Mouth of the West" Michael O'Leary explains the frills (sic) available in Business Class when Ryanair launch their Trans Atlantic Service!

Up, up and away with BAA?

Last Friday 14th March 2007 when BAA opened Terminal 5 at Heathrow should have been a day of celebration for the company but on the same day a committee of MPs has called for the break-up of BAA, saying that its dominance has proved stifling for competition. BAA, owned by the Spanish brick company Ferrovial, runs London's Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Southampton.

MPs said BAA's dominance is "bad for passengers" and the aviation industry. BAA said a break-up would only delay "the provision of extra runway and terminal capacity". However the MP’s committee has stated "BAA's monopoly position in the UK airports sector is unnecessary. Indeed, it is bad for passengers and bad for the aviation industry.

BAA was bought by Ferrovial for £12 Bn, mostly borrowed as the Spaniards put in only £460 of their own money and £10.5 Bn. of this debt still sits on its balance sheet. The real winners were BAA’s former shareholders who happily accepted their absurdly inflated bid. Now Ferrovial with the connivance of the so called regulator, the CAA, is saddled with these huge debts which it would like us, the travelling public to pay off. The company serves almost 150m passengers a year but in the past year has been attacked by the public and airline industry alike for its mismanagement of airport operations with third world style camp outs in its terminals and horrendous security queues.

The criticism of BAA is that it should have predicted the predictable and planned accordingly but basic infrastructure has been dismal such as the inadequate luggage handling system at Terminal 4. It also turns out that Terminal 5 has been built as a result of a succession of broken promises by BAA which has consistently lied about its intentions over the years.

BAA’s recently departed managing director Stephen Nelson admitted to MP’s that, 12 years ago BAA had given public assurances that proved to be false, saying that a third runway would not be needed.

In 1995 BAA stated in its official newsletter: “BAA has said repeatedly that Terminal 5 will not lead to a third runway. BAA has said repeatedly THERE WILL NOT BE A THIRD RUNWAY. And BAA has been proved right. The Secretary of State has accepted the BAA view. The issue has been settled; people’s concerns have been met. What now of those who claimed BAA was not telling the truth?”

In 2001 BAA and the Government accepted the recommendation of the planning inspector who approved Terminal 5 that the number of flights at Heathrow should be capped at 480,000. However, despite those BAA assurances in 1995, ministers now support a third runway and a plan was published in November that would increase the capacity to 702,000 flights.

The double standard has led to a rash of broken promises on Heathrow. Terminal 4 was approved in 1978, subject to a cap on annual traffic movements of 275,000. Two years later BAA recorded 287,000 movements and 376,000 in 1990. When Terminal 5 was approved in 2001, the planning inspector and BAA stated that a third runway would be “totally unacceptable”, and set a new cap of 480,000 movements. But by 2003 a White Paper aimed at 700,000.

But BAA has not misled the public on its own but has had a collusive relationship with central government with its current head of Public Affairs being Tom Kelly, former press secretary to Tony Blair. Take the current Heathrow greenwash first. Ministers repeat the mantra that “Heathrow's expansion will only go ahead within strict environmental limits”. But they know full well that the absence of legal standards on noise leaves communities defenceless. New EU air-quality standards had looked like an insuperable hurdle to a third runway, but are being fudged with ropey claims that road traffic emissions will fall. Two weeks ago the Advertising Standards Authority ordered British Airways to withdraw the claim, made by its CEO in an e-mail to Executive Club members, that the third runway would reduce carbon dioxide emissions because aircraft would no longer have to waste fuel queuing to take off or land. This flatly contradicted Whitehall models, which assume that the new runway will raise CO2 emissions by 2.6 million tonnes a year from the 200,000 extra flights. When I lived on the Great West Road in Hounslow directly under the landing approach a mile from the airport the houses had triple glazing and soudbox ventilators to cope with the environmental fall-out. Walking outside you inhaled air that smelt and tasted of Avjet, as modern aircraft are particularly inefficient at burning fuel when the engines are throttled back for landing.

Secondly, take the arguments about capacity. BAA's figures demonstrate clearly that Heathrow is not full. Not remotely. The appendix to the government consultation on the third runway states that 67 million passengers used Heathrow in 2006, and that this could rise to 122 million if a third runway were built. But it also shows that 95 million people could use Heathrow if “maximum use were made of existing runways”. At one stroke we are looking at a deception, perhaps the greatest ever perpetrated on the British people by the optimistically named Department for Transport. For BAA itself is telling us that 28 million more people could use Heathrow without a new runway and without breaking the cap on flights.

How? By using larger planes and filling more seats. Jeff Gazzard, of Airport Watch, says that if Heathrow were not allowed to expand, it could spur the airline industry to invest more rapidly in larger aircraft like the A380, on which some are already hedging their bets. Bigger planes would not solve climate change, although they would reduce local pollution. The point is that we have been told that Heathrow is full when it is not. That kind of distortion suggests that the DfT has ceased to function as an arm of government and has become a mere subsidiary of BAA.

The justification is the importance of aviation to the economy. It would be foolish to argue that air travel is not important to business. But some of the mythology is misleading. The growth in air traffic is overwhelmingly from leisure travel, not business. More than 80 per cent of international travellers at UK airports, and 60 per cent at Heathrow, are holidaymakers. Outbound tourism outstrips inbound, creating a whopping £18 billion balance of payments deficit. Only this week, the Travelodge chain of hotels called for an end to unfair tax breaks for budget airlines, which it said were “the single biggest cause of decline in traditional [UK] tourism resorts”. It is one thing to treat the air industry as a special case; it is quite another thing to distort the facts. And here the Government's collusion with the industry is a problem.

No where does this collusion seem more dramatic than with the unfit for purpose “watchdog” the Civil Aviation Authority, the CAA, and its passenger watchdog, The Air Users Council which has been so inept in enforcing air passengers rights under EU Law. 261 that the EU has threatened enforcement action against them and Ryanair actually give passengers a leaflet saying the law is stupid and they won’t comply with it. I must remember this defence the next time I’m stopped by a police officer! I’m sure I would receive a succinct response.

Anybody who has used Heathrow’s clapped out facilities over the past 5 years has helped pay for the gleaming new Terminal 5 but as it is reserved for British Airways customers they will not have the benefit of it if they fly with another airline. Despite this they will get to share the burden of a 23.5% increase in airport charges next month as in a dramatic award for failure the CAA has allowed BAA to double charges over the next 5 years. What does BAA have to do other than sit back and count the cash?

As for Terminal 5 when the Queen opened this terminal of broken promises on Friday this was a “soft” opening with a hand picked and screened audience lest Her Majesty, Government Ministers and BAA’s exceptionally talented and remunerated management be exposed to the gratitude of the travelling public. It will start to open to real people on the 27th March. One surprise is that 54% of gates will not have air bridges and consequently step free access as provided for under phase 3 of the Disability Discrimination Act which became law in October 2006. Indeed under our wonderful regulator disabled people are effectively excluded from UK airports unless they book “assistance” in advance, which is not what the Act says. Perhaps the Government could pursue its “Respect” agenda by respecting its own laws and ensuring its regulator enforces them?

Ryanair - The European Airline?

Once again here is Ryanair, the main beneficiary of European de-regulation, pretending that European law does not exist and, in effect, sub-contracting its non compliance to “Service Agents” at small airports who have no training, no briefing and frequently no method of communicating with Ryanair.

Whatever about the Stanstead connection, the delay at Aarhus clearly comes under European Regulation 261 and the passengers should be offered assistance (meals, phone, calls and internet access) and help without charge by the airline in getting to their FINAL destination. It is all on

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/air_portal/passenger_rights/information_en.htm

And the EU operate a Freephone Helpline on 00 800 6789 10 11. Ryanair’s Operations number is 003531 8121238 as you will be told by airport service agents they have “No way” of contacting them to do anything. Their head of Customer Services is cgreen@ryanair.com .

The European Commission has given National Enforcement bodies 6 months from 01/04/2007 to enforce the regulations or face sanctions – passengers should always complain in writing.

Let us be clear. Ryanair is hugely profitable company with over 1 Billion euros in the bank and is largely owned by US Private Equity funds. There is no way they should be allowed ignore European Law and abuse passengers when the European Law has made this profitable business possible. So Michael O’Leary, Tony Ryan and David Bonderman, do business ethics and complying with your regulatory framework count?

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Irish Independent
Children stranded in London after Ryanair hold-up
By Paul Melia
Tuesday August 07 2007

The soccer players, aged between 12 and 16, were due to travel from Denmark to Dublin with the low-cost airline but a technical fault at Aarhus airport delayed them for over five hours.

When they arrived in Stansted for their connecting Ryanair flight home, they were told they were too late to board the plane, despite being just a few minutes late.

The only offer from Ryanair was to fly the group home on Thursday morning, said a spokesman for the group. But the flight was going from the East Midlands Airport - almost 200 km away - and the boys would have to pay all their accommodation and expenses in the meantime.

"There's five or six parents here in my house and we're all very upset," said Eamon Casserly, whose 14-year-old son James is stranded.

"We're now trying to get them onto a bus and get them to Holyhead so they can get a ferry. They've no food. They've nowhere to stay. They're all young fellas and they're away for a week. A week is a long time to be away from their parents."

Last night, Ryanair confirmed that the Aarhus flight had been delayed.The airline said there was no record of the group going to the ticket desk and asking for a flight out, and that there was availability last evening. The airline said it would try to get the group put on standby in the event that seats became available today.

The group, all soccer players with Mervue United, were attending the Allborg Youth Games in Denmark for the last week. They flew out Dublin-Stansted-Aarhus with Ryanair.

The Deputy Mayor of Galway who was with the group, Cllr Declan McDonnell, said the group arrived at Aarhus at 8.30am butthe flight was delayed.

"The group was split into two, and the first group of 20 arrived in Stansted two minutes late and were not let through.

They were told they could fly out from East Midlands on Thursday but they'd have to make their own way there and pay their own expenses in the UK until Thursday.

"In their time in Aarhus they were given a token which was enough to buy a bag of chips. They (Ryanair) didn't want to know." Aarhus Airport confirmed last night that the scheduled Ryanair flight to London Stansted had been delayed for just over five hours.

- Paul Melia