"Fares aren't low."
I paid 16 Euro for a Ryanair flight from Belgium to the UK, I'd say that's pretty low.
There are one-off promotions of course. And you can get them in any airline. Sure it can happen. But it's not the norm.
If you look at current "offers" you get a 12£ Bratislava flight (chosen at random - really)... if you click "continue" enough times, it's actually: Adult @ 12.99 GBP, Taxes/Fees details 28.27 GBP, Coming Back (Web Fare) 1 Adult @ 12.00 GBP, 1 x (Web Check in) 5.00 GBP
Total Cost of Flight 58.26 GBP
Yay - that's really almost 12£ ;) And you have to pay for the payment too, so it's ~68.26£
I don't fly, but friends who've used Ryanair have tales of people going down the aeroplane aisle with catalogues, scratch cards, lottery tickets and all sorts of other junk for sale right through the flight. I've even heard an apocryphal story of someone being woken up so they couldn't sleep through the salespeople!
Yes, that happens on every flight. Catalogue after ~1h in the air, and lottery ~1h before landing. The prices are usually lower than on the airport, but higher than in shops.
Re:Ryanair is one opinionated company
by marcusbooster on Friday August 07, 2009 @07:18AM
(#747402)
I read an article that discussed the CEO's vision of having completely free flights... by turning the plane into a flying casino.
This article is all about a company (does't matter much that this is RyanAir) that chooses to identify itself by four promises, and they keep them. They deliberately choose not to value things that other companies will value (customer support) in order to attract customers.... and guess what? It works.
Startups should think about their core values and choose a set that they think will work the best.
Hey.... wasn't Hacker News that website with news-links of interest to hackers and startups?
I've flown on both Easyjet and Ryanair many times - I'm Irish living in UK and no other low-cost airline will compete with Ryanair on its home turf - and I cannot agree with you. Easyjet are usually 10-50% more expensive, but I normally pay the extra for the reduced stress level, fewer ads and higher convenience of destination airport.
Maybe it depends on a route... I'm flying Bristol -- DE and Bristol -- PL. The only reason I'm using ryanair instead of easyjet is that they fly to my exact destination - with easyjet, I'd have to be the next 3-4h in travel (so together with the flight I'm losing a whole day). I'm prepared pay additional ~70£ to avoid that.
"Ryanair promises four things: low fares, a good on-time record, few cancellations and few lost bags."
Fares aren't low. Easyjet beats them most of the time. Their prices are low only on the front page. It's only 30£ both ways... just add 50£ airport fees (I wonder why other airlines charge only <10£ for the same airport) each way, 20£ if you want to add even 1 piece of luggage, 10£ if you don't opt-out of fast boarding and we're going to ask you to select your nationality many times (only slightly indicating that by doing that you agree to buy insurance). Oh, and 10-15£ fee for handling any credit card at the end. And other things...
So you end up paying ~200£ for a flight that's advertised as 30£. They also wanted to be excluded some time ago from services that listed their real prices.
Oh and on-time flights... that's easy - just say that a 3h flight will take 3.5h - this way they're always 'on time' and passengers can wait some time at the airport (I'm used to arriving 30 min. early on my usual flight)