Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Is Ryanair worth the hassle?
IT changed the way we fly, and Ryanair became a budget airline success story.
But in a new TV show Fiona Phillips asks if the cost-cutting has gone too far and risks hitting passengers and staff.
Like anyone, I love a mini break in the sun. With no-frills, low-cost airlines, it’s something we can all enjoy a lot more. I’ve heard of cancelled flights, queues for priority boarding and a cost that turned out to be a lot dearer than when first advertised on the booking site.
Ryanair seem to be the worst offender. In a recent Which? survey, they were voted worst short-haul carrier operating in the UK for the sixth year in a row.
The airline say consumer surveys do not reflect reality and point to an 85% satisfaction score. But turn that around and it still leaves a lot of unhappy flyers.
This year, Ryanair will fly 140 million passengers. But it looks like the shine may be starting to come off their business model. They have already had to announce two recent profit warnings, and this week reported a loss on their last quarter’s trading figures.
With most airlines, we used to expect to be taken from one airport we’ve heard of to another we have also heard of.
Within the industry, Ryanair won a lot of credit for persuading us to fly from airports we may have heard of, to ones we have not. The beauty of that approach is obscure little airports tend to charge a lot less for landing and turnaround fees. Happy days for Ryanair.
Not so much for the customers, who find themselves with considerable distances to travel.
Or, in the case of passengers who headed to Copenhagen in Denmark, in a different country after landing in Malmo, Sweden.
To disguise the problem Ryanair persuaded these small, secondary airports to change name to that of a nearby big city. Or, in the case Frankfurt-hahn, a city 120km away.
To test out this experience for my programme Ryanair: Britain’s Most Hated Airline? on Channel 5, I asked the Cameron family, from Manchester, to fly to Venice.
Mum Kerry and daughter Alicia went Ryanair. Other daughter Caitlyn flew easyjet with grandma Johanna.
On the day they travelled, the price for two adult Ryanair tickets including luggage came in at £68. Substantially cheaper than the £102 for easyjet.
But Ryanair landed at Treviso airport, a 40-minute coach trip from Venice that cost another £20.
And with Ryanair, priority boarding involved a 25-minute queue – while those who hadn’t paid extra walked straight onto the plane. So, was it worth the £14 saving?
Mum Kerry said: “Definitely not. I would rather go to the centre of Venice, save time and get to Venice sooner and pay a little bit extra.” Is another part of the problem chief executive Michael O’leary’s ability to pick fights with practically anyone?
I’ve been speaking to people who have got on his wrong side.
When Suzy Mcleod complained at a £236 charge after she forgot to print her boarding ticket, O’leary was not only unsympathetic, he also called her stupid.
Former Ryanair pilot Jim Atkinson had a long-running dispute with the airline over working conditions.
He was eventually fired by the employment agency he worked through when he tried to set up a rival crewing company. He told me that pilots at Ryanair feel constantly detested.
“If they could replace pilots with a computer, replace cabin crew with a machine, you know when you’re working there they would do that,” he says.
Ryanair say they will continue to offer the lowest fares in Europe and the best customer experience. If they pay a little more attention to the second half of that promise, the sky could be truly the limit for their business.