Turmoil in the skies: misery for travellers
In its 50th year, Monarch Airlines discovered quite how tough it is to compete in “the most ferocious air travel market in the world”, said Simon Calder in The Independent. This week, the British carrier became the third victim so far this year – after Alitalia and Air Berlin – of a cut-throat short-haul European market. Monarch, founded in 1967 during the early days of the package tour era, failed to adapt to the “low-cost revolution” ( see page 49). It went into administration on Monday, and the Government began flying home 110,000 Monarch customers stranded abroad – an operation described as the biggest ever peacetime repatriation.
Meanwhile, Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier was facing troubles of its own, said Gwyn Topham in The Guardian. Ryanair’s chief executive, Michael O’leary, announced the cancellation of a further 18,000 flights: some 400,000 passengers’ bookings were cancelled, on top of 315,000 announced earlier last month. O’leary tried to pass it off as a “management cock-up” – messing up the holiday rotas and finding themselves short of pilots. But this wasn’t an aberration, it was “a visible culmination of the logic of low-cost economics”. As consumers, we’ve been “hooked by bargains that come at a cost” – one often borne by the staff. Ryanair boasts that its staff costs per passenger are half those of even its no-frills rivals. “Its workers are apparently miserable,” said Tom Welsh in The Sunday Telegraph. Some 700 of Ryanair’s 4,200 pilots, fed up with the airline’s employment terms, have quit this year.
Ryanair is entitled to do what it can to keep costs low, said The Times – as long as it stays within the law. But airlines are legally required to rebook passengers whose flights are cancelled, with other carriers if necessary; to pay reasonable expenses; and to make these rights clear to those affected. It initially fulfilled none of these obligations, trying to fob customers off with cheaper alternatives, such as Ryanair vouchers or even train and bus tickets – before the Civil Aviation Authority issued a sharp reprimand. The firm must face up to its responsibilities. “There is no such thing as an airline that is too big or too cheap to fly by the rules.”