No, Ryanair passengers don’t admire anything about Michael O’Leary. They pay the fare (and the surcharges, and the charge to pay by card) and then tolerate the journey.

No passenger thinks he’s a lovable scamp or a shrewd businessman. They just buy the fare they can afford and justify, if it happens to be Ryanair then ... grin and bear it.

Didn't think they were allowed to charge extra to pay by card in the EU anymore?

Such cheap flights are possible because the airlines aren’t paying the externalities they cause.

Ryanair don’t fly to London btw. Or Brussels.

They don't serve that route, but they do fly from three airports in London (Gatwick, Stansted and Luton) and from Brussels.

https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/cheap-flight-destinations

None of those airports are actually in London.

Lol wtf? Only one airport is “in” london and that’s London City. Which is an expensive thing mostly made for bankers to go to Frankfurt etc. I assure you all those airports serve London. I live here

Yeah, I know it's just semantics.

I have wasted too much of my time in delayed trains trying to get into London to believe that.

And based on travel times you could add some other airports to that list of London Airports. Southampton Airport is faster to get to than Stansted or Luton for a lot of Londoners. And with HS2 BHX could probably change its name too.

I’ve never had a Stansted Express be late more than 10 min, and I live in east london so it’s super fast to get to Liverpool St. I suppose your travel time varies a lot.

London Ashford is closer to France. I wonder if the airport would close if the CEO admitted that...

I had no idea there was such a thing!

What externalities are they not paying for that other airlines are? Or is this a complain against all airlines?

Well, the issues I'm aware of: Ryanair pay their staff poorly. And that is not cheap enough, so they also employ them under employment law from "cheap countries", to try and circumvent income taxes and other charges of the local countries they service.

Ryanair demand subsidies from local governments to fly to far-flung airports. They can hold these governments hostage, as often the airports fail if they stop their service. Of course, this could be seen as simply "bad management" by our local governments.

And to finish, though this is something that applies to all airlines : no VAT or "eco" tax, that the rest of us have to pay.

People seem to be using the economic word “externalities” as “things I don’t like”.

That is what externality means -- "a side effect or consequence of an industrial or commercial activity that affects other parties without this being reflected in the cost of the goods or services involved." (unless this person is affecting the cost somehow as a result of this dislike)

In a sense, economics is entirely about what people like and dislike.

No, an externality is an impact you create that isn't a part of your business model. It can be positive or negative. Most of the time people talk about negative externalities these days, especially with airlines, they're talking about profiting from climate change. (Although I don't know that Ryanair is worse than anyone else.)

So if we priced airlines in regards to all of their externalities, they would have to pay for climate change but would get a portion of the all revenue derived by business trips (ie. the time saved traveling by air compared to other modes of transport and what the employees traveling would have been able to produce during that time). I wonder if they would end up better off under that system.

They’re already capturing those benefits - they are among the reasons customers buy tickets and thus contribute to the price.

I’m sure positive externalities are a thing, but direct benefits to one party in a transaction aren’t externalities.

In the same sense the climate change effects are also priced in as most people in the west use air travel or add enough carbon via other means to have to be personally responsible for any ill effects.

In the OPs example, hiring low wage labor, is in fact reflected in the price.

Can you explain more about how Ryanair refusing to fly to far-flung airports without a subsidy is an externality?

Someone else is paying for something they are using. Better still:they're getting paid to use it.

Of course, nobody is twisting the arm of these politicians. But the fact remains that Ryanair is exploiting this weakness to avoid paying themselves.

Type "Ryanair airport subsidies" in google and have a look at the first couple of titles. It's a mess that has been going on for 10 years now and is only now slowly being called a halt to.

https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/24-ryanair-airpor...

He’s provably referring to ghg emissions, and sure no one pays that (it’s also not something we can conceivably pay for)

Quite possible for Europe to charge landing fees based on ghg emissions for all planes arriving/departing.

That would be great. I think if they were being aggressive enough, there would probably be less demand for airport expansion, because there would be fewer flights. I don't currently see any way to curtail the carbon from the airline industry that wouldn't involve raising the price so drastically that people would fly less often.

I’m all for charging fees (especially when the chargee is not me), but fees don’t put CO2 back in the ground.

The point is they act as a deterrent. The money raised can be used to mitigate the effects of the emissions.

Cap and trade does in fact make it so that polluters pay for ghg emissions. Why do you say that we can't "conceivably pay for"?

if you're saying stansted and gatwick aren't really in london, then neither is heathrow. it's a small list of airlines that fly to/from london city airport

Heathrow is in the London borough of Hillingdon, in TFL zone 6 on the underground, and served by London buses 24/7

You’re having a laugh. Living in east london I can get to Stansted far faster than Heathrow or Gatwick.

They don’t fly to london? I live in London and I fly Ryanair from london Stansted all the time

They do, to Stanstead and Luton.

Stanstead and Luton are 30-40 miles from London

They are less than 1 hour by train, which is about the same as to Heathrow from Oxford Circus. In terms of passenger numbers they are the 4th (STN) and 5th (LTN) busiest airports in the UK, and 22nd and 35th in Europe.

You have no idea what you’re talking about and you’re embarrassing yourself. Going to those airports is piss easy and they are 2 of the 4 airports that serve this city.

They're 45m-1h by train from Central London.

Birmingham airport is 1h06 from Central London

Brussels itself is only 1h54 from central London!

Okay, yeah, but if you were in London, you were flying out of Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, or rarely London City. It took longer for me to get from Tower Bridge to Heathrow than to Gatwick. I don't fly Ryan Air, though. Abhor the air line, but they let my parents take me to Europe when I was younger so there's that.

And that distance stuff is normal, because on the longer distances you're going on high-speed trains. If you were a Millwall (a London team) fan who lived just south of The Den and by some divine chance you were to play Arsenal (another London team) at The Emirates (god forbid), it'd take you just as long by transit to get there as it would take someone who's commuting from Market Harborough (80 miles North) to St. Pancras (London's big international rail terminus). But it's laughable to claim that Market Harborough is part of London or that either of the Emirates and the Den are not.

> Ryanair don’t fly to London btw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airports_of_London

And they probably swear more than he does.