Reliability of Ryanair

I was advised by a colleague that Ryanair pilots are East European and paid less than the crew. HE had concerns about the safety of Ryanair aircraft and said never ever use them.

In message , Little Bills writes

Why do they all speak with irish accents then?

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The owner of Ryanair is such a s**t that I wouldn't use his flying cattle trucks even if he paid me.

Where would they be hiding lots of debt?

Jim.

I reckon Ryanair make all their money from no-shows,and late minute desparate people. I flew out to Germany last week, £50 return all-in including taxes - we got to the airport for the return 12 hours early as we finished the job sooner than planned, and asked if we could be advanced to an earlier plane. Yes, we could for £150 each! despite the next plane (in an hour) being half-empty and they would never sell tickets for it, whereas they could have resold ours more easily with 12 hours notice.

I think it the behavior of the airports that doesn't make sense.

It appears that airports' charges to Ryanair don't cover the airport's costs. Ryanair operates to a lot of publicly owned airports and has convinced the local authorities to charge low fees (and sometimes give other support) in the belief that the Ryanair flights will result in increases in other taxes.

This may be correct in cases where flights would not happen without the low fees to Ryanair. However, the situation at Newquay airport is interesting.

1) Newquay airport was operating with BA CitiExpress operating flights to London (These used to be to Heathrow and from 1997 to Gatwick). There were 4 flight a day in each direction using 50 seat turboprop aircraft that also served Plymouth. 2) In April 2002, Ryanair starts operating flights to London Stanstead. It pays lower airport charges than BA. 3) In Dec 2002, speculation starts about the BA flights to London. 4) In May 2003, BA says it will withdraw its flights in Oct 2003. 5) Another low cost airline based in Plymouth is started to operate the flights previously operated by BA. It also pays lower charges than BA did. 6) Sept 2003, Newquay airport faces cash crisis 7) Currently there's a real scandal about Newquay airport The BBC produced stories about this in January. Last week the local MP went public with his feelings. He said: "At the moment we are paying a huge amount to subsidise Ryanair's profits and their passenger fares and the only people that seem to be benefiting is Ryanair.

"I am sure we would get another low-cost airline to come in, but bribing an airline to give us a cut-price deal doesn't make long-term sense for the county.

"What we need are viable airlines with viable services and a viable airport. We don't want a subsidised airport which pours money into the profits of any one particular airline."

They don't. There are indeed quite a few East Europeans. Spanish (or S American) too.

As well as the Irish.

Why, what did he do to you?

Or maybe Ryanair's chief exec is just a sharper tool than his state owned competitors? Ryanair appear to have realised and have proved that most people do not want to fly from a hub airport to another hub airport. Prior to Ryanair, I had to take a route that was: local airport to Paris or Amsterdam, then on to Rome, then change a third time to get a local flight to the nearest airport to home.

One chance of making all of the connections, and on the several times I did it, I could guarantee that my luggage would be lost for up to a week and that I woudl ahve to spend at least one night in a hotel. It was actually faster and cheaper to drive door to door.

Now I can drive to Stansted and fly direct to one of two airports that are close to my destination - actually not true, I can meet all of my business and personal travel needs using Ryanair because they fly to Rome (Ciampino - better airport than Leonardo da Vinci), Bergamo (handy for Milan and skiing), Bologna, Ancona and Pescara and Bari.

There's no such option from BA or Alitalia/Air France.

It also shows at the other end of the route. The airports that I fly to are all booming and all from Ryanair's operation. It makes sense to the local chambers of commerce in Pescara and Ancona (for example) to underwrite the landing fees for Ryanair because they get the money back ten times over.

Why else are the hypermarket chains racing to build new stores just beside the airports? Why else are hotelleiers investing big time in updated facilities? And why else has hire car provision exploded at each airport from one local company to seven or eight competing franchises?

I would suggest that "Little Bills" is talking shit. Every pilot I've had on every Ryanair flight I've taken (and I'm flying most months 2-4 journeys with Ryanair) has been Irish or British.

The "safety concerns" are also bollocks. I've worked in aviation for several years and with the excpetion of one fault that I notified to the cabin crew (broken catch on a table). I've seen nothign on a Ryanair flight to cause me concern. Indeed their fleet of aircraft is newer than most of their competitors and in better condition.

The reason being that when the market bottomed out for Boeing, Ryanair cut themselves a very sweet deal for the purchase of aircraft. One reason that they can operate cheaper than the competition is that the aircraft are bought for less than one third the price that the competition pay. To Boeing it's worth it just to keep their staff employed and to save them from the shame of having to stack unused aircraft in the desert.

Other measures that O Leary has introduced include using the plane as advertising space - for the last year the ones I fly have been in "The Sun" livery, and eliminating the costly provision of free booze and food. Who ned in-flight catering on a journey lasting just 90 minutes? And is there anyone in the world that actually likes the slop served up by Swissair/Air France/BA?

I am sure safety-wise they are just fine, but as a pilot myself who often hears them on the air I can confirm that at least some of their pilots have an accent suggesting the Middle East or perhaps some parts of very eastern Europe. On occassions the radio work is a bit sloppy too; perhaps that was the FO getting some practice.

What, worse than the French?

Not really a fair comparison; the French tend to not use the radio :) Especially ATC, during early afternoon after a bottle of wine.

There is a widespread misunderstanding of the EU ruling on Ryanair. They had to pay back part (not all) of their 'subsidy' because it is illegal if a) it isn't available to competitors, and b) it means the airport makes a loss.

Generally the ruling seems highly sensible as it should make other low cost airlines more competitive and make the cost of flights closer to their actual cost (though arguably flights are still subsidized in other ways - for example by not paying full security costs or for pollution).

Thom

Which competitors? On the vast majority of routes that Ryanair has been running, no other airline operated a scheduled service from London (any airport) to the destination. The issue of whether a competitor was able to obtain a similar discount was a non-issue in particular at Charleroi where no other airline chose to run scheduled flights at all, nor even to discuss the possibility.

Do you sincerely think that Charleroi made a loss as a result of the Ryanair operation? Or indeed any of the airports to which Ryanair flies? The farce at the hearing was the noxious sight of an EU commissioner chanting out lists of landing fees at Charleroi before Ryanair flew there and the fee structure applied to Ryanair. Yes, Ryanair paid vastly reduced fees. OTOH *before* Ryanair flew to Charleroi very few aircraft were landing. The fees could have been EUR 100,000 per aircraft and Charleroi would still be taking less money than it was with the discounted fees offered to Ryanair.

My arse. It's protectionism of the worst sort and I detect signs of someone's hand in someone elses back pocket. It's the same dirty tricks that were applied to Laker's Skytrain.

Utter bollocks, the only reason for the complaint was that the massively subsidised state airline Air France had it's nose put out of joint that Ryanair could operate profitably despite selling tickets for less than Air France and despite showing that that the large airlines "hub and spoke" model is antiquated and irrelevant to the real needs of travellers.

The EU should be ashamed of itself for this ruling. Sadly shame is not an emotion that politicians are capable of.

Well, you might be right - I haven't seen any evidence to that effect reported in the news. I was commenting on the reported reasons for the ruling - which do seem sensible. You allege that neither elements of the ruling applied in fact to this case - if so Ryanair should appeal the judgement.

It was noticeable, however, that Michael O'Leary didn't mention (in the interviews that I saw) that the court had got the facts wrong - only that the judgement was bad because consumers would pay higher prices. (Personally I don't see why air travel should be subsidized by tax payers given how polluting it is relative to other modes of travel.)

Thom

And they use safer airports.

But over 50% of foreign planes inspected in Sweden had a serious safety fault. They didn't give details but Ryanair has a hub in Sweden.

Indeed, if it is too good to be true, maybe it is not. And suspicious when other low price carriers are not following Ryanair's fleet strategy.

Swissair is known as Swiss after their bankruptcy?

Good question. Parmalat demonstrated that hiding debts is no problem. The world is full of banks willing to help.

Years ago I was told to watch the fleets of low price carriers.

Receiving money for growth but spending it on daily operation would be the classical trick.