Erroneous Ryanair Cancellation Announcement

The ash cloud, oh my God, the ash cloud - would it ever simply move off and leave us alone?

I had an interesting encounter with the big baddie at the weekend.

We were to travel from Gothenburg in Sweden back to Ireland via Stansted. Having nothing better to do we decided to make our way to Gothenburg City Airport early to return our car and have a bite to eat at the airport before takeoff. There had been no indications of any delays or cancellations so we were pretty comfortable in the knowledge that we were to leave as scheduled. Travelling back to Ireland was, literally, a problem for another day.

Having checked in my bag and had something to eat we still had some time still to spare so I decided to check my email. Imagine my surprise to receive the following:

Important Information Regarding your Flight

Dear Customer   We sincerely apologise for the cancellation of your flight departing the 08 May 2010 The flight has been cancelled because of the closure of Spanish/French airspace due to the ash cloud caused by the volcanic eruption in Iceland   TO REBOOK FREE ONLINE:  Click on the link below to rebook to the same destination airport on an alternative flight free of charge, subject to availability. Customers can access this link up to the 11/05/2010 for travel on flights up to the 20/05/2010.  PLEASE NOTE: If your booking has a return flight included and you have already checked in for this flight you will NOT be able to transfer your flight to a different departure airport online.  If you wish to do this you will need to call our reservation centre on the following number. Alternatively, go to the airport ticket desk and they will transfer you onto an alternative flight.  We have instructed airports that passengers affected by these flight cancellations may not be able to check-in online and therefore airport staff will reissue boarding passes at the airport free of charge.  TO APPLY FOR A REFUND ONLINE:  Customers who are booked on any of the below flights, who wish to cancel and claim a full refund on the unused flight(s) can do so directly by clicking on the link below and entering the required details. Refunds will be processed in 30 working days back to the form of payment used to pay for the booking. 

Slightly bemused, I had my partner go around the corner to check (Gothenburg City airport isn't exactly Heathrow) where the lady on information said that it was "an IT mistake" on the part of Ryanair. The flight, she said, was definitely running - and on time at that.  

A pretty serious "IT mistake" it has to be said. If we had got the email before we left the hotel we would still be busily running around Gothenburg looking for accommodation and re-booking flights to Ireland.

Is the dreaded ash cloud not enough of a distraction for air travellers without Ryanair's IT system firing out cancellation notices willy-nilly?

I sent full details of my problems with the notification by email - but I wouldn't be holding my breath for a reply from Mick and Co. 

Ryanair Removes Airport Check-in

Irish low cost carrier, Ryanair, has announced that it will remove airport check-in completely from October 1st 2009.  According to a Ryanair News Release: "This move will allow all passengers, including those travelling with checked baggage, to check-in online thereby avoiding time wasting queues and delays at airport check-in desks."

Check-in removal will be phased as follows:

Phase 1: From 19th March 2009, Ryanair’s web check-in service will be extended to (a) non EU/EEA citizens, (b) passengers travelling with checked baggage and (c) reduced mobility customers. 

Customers choosing web check-in and travelling with only carry-on bags will continue to enjoy this service free of charge. A web check-in fee of £5/€5 per person/per flight will apply to passengers travelling with checked baggage, while customers who wish to use airport check-in will be charged an airport check-in fee of £10/€10 per person/per flight at the time of booking.

Phase 2:  From 1st May 2009 all new bookings will be required to use web check-in, and the use of traditional airport check-in desks will be phased out over the summer months. The web check-in fee of £5/€5 per person, per flight will apply to all new bookings (except promotional fares) from 1st May 2009. In order to dissuade passengers from using airport check-in desks, the fee for airport check-in will double to £20/€20 per person/per flight at the time of booking.

Phase 3: From 1st October 2009 airport check-in desks will no longer be available at any Ryanair airport. All passengers will be required to web check-in and those who have checked in bags will use the airport “bag drop” desks, if required. From this date, children under the age of 16 will no longer be able to travel unaccompanied and passports and national ID cards will be the only accepted forms of photo ID on Ryanair flights.

Ends

This is the latest move in Ryanair's unrelenting bid to remove its reliance on services at airports which it deems to be costly (for passengers, it says, but anything that is costly for passengers is obviously costly for Ryanair as well and these costs get passed on to passengers). 

For a company which is so anti-charges (particularly the new government introduced departure tax of €10 which induced a serious Michael O'Leary hissy-fit) the standard £5/€5 per person web check-in fee seems particularly retrograde and in direct opposition to company policy. Essentially the company is now charging for something which was, up to now, completely free, and which passengers cannot avoid. 

Big Null Points on the competition front there Micko. 

Apparently charges are fine as long as they are introduced by Ryanair, but not if they are introduced by anybody else. As usual the company is a law unto itself. 

See the full story on our website.  

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Ryanair Bid for Aer Lingus

OK, so the Ryanair bid for Aer Lingus is old hat at this stage, even the second offer, which, based on Aer Lingus' current share price of €1.45, is obviously a long way short of its original offer, which was made at €2.80. It is a sign of the times and the amazing change in fortunes of the Irish government in the intervening two years that the government is now 'contemplating' accepting an offer that is almost 50% of the last one, which it deemed to be inadequate.

In case you're out of the loop on the current Ryanair bid for its rival Irish airline, here is a brief recap from France 24.

"Irish low-fare airline Ryanair said Monday it had launched a 748-million-euro (950-million-dollar) offer for rival Aer Lingus, in which it already has a near 30-percent stake.

The offer is a renewed bid by Ryanair after the group was refused ownership of Aer Lingus in 2006 on competition grounds.

"The board of Ryanair proposes to merge the two airlines into one strong Irish airline group under common ownership," Ryanair said in a statement.

It added: "Both airlines would operate as separate companies, with distinctive brands, thereby preserving the best features of both."

Ryanair failed in a bid to buy Aer Lingus in 2006 after the latter had been partly floated on the London and Dublin stock exchanges.

The bid had faced stiff opposition from major Aer Lingus shareholders, including the Irish government, company employees, pilots and their pension fund.

In December 2006, Ryanair withdrew its takeover bid after European regulators launched an in-depth competition probe.

The European Commission vetoed the takeover on the grounds that the merger of Ireland's two biggest airlines would have given the combined carrier a crushing grip on 35 routes."

The question we would have to ask, as an overseas property portal, is obviously whether a merger of our two main airlines is in the best interests of Irish travelling consumers or not. When all is said and done it is difficult to see how a single airline entity, particularly one as focussed on cutting costs as Ryanair is, could do anything other than remove all that is good in Aer Lingus and leave just a hollow shell.

You have to hand it to Michael O'Leary, he's a hell of a businessman - whether you love him or loathe him. He and his team probably deserves a lot more credit than they've ever been given for taking Ryanair from the bottomless money pit that it had been into one of the world's most profitable airlines (one of very few that actually makes a profit). But for all that you would have to remember that, being such a canny businessman, O'Leary isn't chasing Aer Lingus for the good of his health or simply to offer more people cheaper flights. It is widely known that all he wants out of this deal is access to Aer Lingus' more lucrative landing slots, particularly at currently impregnable UK and US airports.

O'Leary understands better than anyone that an airline only works if it's got a 'destination'. In Dublin, and particularly London, he's got two such destinations that will attract traffic. He also understands that Dublin will probably attract proportionally less traffic in the coming years, whereas cities like London and New York will hold their own a lot better. In tougher economic times Ryanair could actually make hay offering cheap flights to main hub airports as no other airline can match its low cost base. Unfortunately for O'Leary, his current London hub is Standsted, which with the best will and cheapest flights in the world is not the London airport to which most people wish to fly. He needs access to Heathrow, and Aer Lingus is the key to this access. At current market valuation this would seem like a very opportune moment to make a predatory bid. Although Ryanair has been absolutely slaughtered on its 30% stake in Aer Lingus, most of which was purchased between €2.50 and €2.80 per share, it has very deep pockets and will simply write it off as an investment in the future. If O'Leary can convice the government to sell its 25% share close to current values he would consider that Ryanair has, overall, made a very wise investment. And he'd probably be right.

The upshot would be that we would initially end up with a schizophrenic Ryanair, keeping costs down assiduously in its original entity and firefighting the unions on the Aer Lingus side. This would obviously not be good for the Aer Lingus side of the equation and you can be sure that this portion of the company would be radically restructured. Eventually it would be subsumed into Ryanair, with the excuse that it was not profitable as it stood. Aer Lingus would exist in name only and Michael O'Leary would have achieved the object of his unquenchable lust - Ireland's flagship carrier - the bane of his life in his early years at Ryanair. What a trophy.

With the best will in the world there is a certain cheapness and nastiness about Ryanair, which O'Leary admits probably reflects his own personality somewhat. Having that ethos seep into Aer Lingus would not be an attractive prospect. At the moment we have a balance - cheap and cheerless v's more expensive but with at least a passing nod to customer service. The two can, and should be allowed to, survive side by side.

Aer Lingus is by no means perfect, but for all that it is Aer Lingus and if its ownership should ever transfer to Ryanair it will be Aer Lingus no more, and that would be a huge loss to Ireland. The country needs a strong Aer Lingus as much as it needs a strong Ryanair. What we need is for the two of them to compete viably for routes to bring extra passengers to and from Ireland.

As an aside, Ryanair will be absolutely cock-a-hoop that it has won its battle against the European Commission (another of O'Leary's foes) on the terms of its agreement with Waloon regional airport, Charleroi (usually referred to by Ryanair as Brussels). You can see a report on this from RTE here.

"In its judgment the Court of First Instance said: 'The Commission's refusal to examine together the advantages granted by the Walloon region and by Charleroi Airport, and to determine whether, taken together, those two entities acted as rational operators in a market economy, is vitiated by an error in law.'"

Hats off to Ryanair

OK, some good news, at last. 

We've been quick to criticise Ryanair on a number of fronts but, you have to give credit where it is due. Kudos to the airline for offering one of its planes to take home some of the stranded passengers after the collapse of XL Leisure.

This has been seen by some commentators as merely a PR stunt but, lets be honest, even if it is fair play to the company.  Ryanair is no shrinking violet and isn't slow to blow its own trumpet, as you can see below, but it is good to see that there is still some common decency in corporate Ireland. The company probably had the plane lying around doing nothing as it has been contracting its routes somewhat of late, but this is beside the point, it didn't have to offer to lift a finger to help XL's misfortunate passengers, but it still did so. 

From Ryanair's website: "Ryanair, Europe’s leading low fares airline, today (12th September 2008), in response to their request, offered the CAA the use of one of its aircraft for the next two weeks in order to secure the return of stranded holidaymakers abandoned by the closure of bankrupt airline XL Airways. Ryanair is using one of its spare 737-800 aircraft to help the authorities in the UK and Ireland provide services for outgoing and returning passengers who have booked with the now defunct airline.

 

Commenting on the collapse of yet another bankrupt airline, Michael Cawley, Ryanair’s Deputy Chief Executive, said, in typical 'sit on the fence' Ryanair fashion:

 

“This is proof positive that passengers should not book their holidays with flaky, financially stretched airlines such as XL. Passengers should only book reservations with financially strong airlines such as Ryanair whom they know will be here for the long term. We are pleased to be able to rescue these passengers and facilitate the CAA in their efforts to repatriate them. We strongly advise passengers to be more discerning when they book their holidays and look first at the financial position of the airline with which they book.”

We did start off on a positive note on this blog but it is still difficult to ignore BA CEO, Willie Walsh's statement that, on top of the 30 airlines that have already gone belly up this year he expects 'up to 30 more airlines will go bankrupt before Christmas.' This is allied to previous statements that the 'era of cheap travel is coming to an end' (see our blog on same previously). It appears that the era of choice in the travel industry is also rapidly grinding to a halt if Mr. Walsh is to be believed, and he's in a better position to judge than most to be honest.

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Ryanair Flight Scare

Ryanair has suffered its second flight scare in less than a month as a Stansted bound plane was forced to return to Dublin airport after its tailskid touched the runway on takeoff.

The first scare occurred last month on a Bristol to Barcelona flight when a loss in cabin pressure forced an emergency landing in Limoges. 16 people were brought to hospital and there were claims that the oxygen system didn't work properly. The claims were fiercely denied by Ryanair's Michael O'Leary. Full details of the first incident can be found here. 

This latest incident could prove very embarassing, and potentially expensive, for the airline. O'Leary admits that the one thing the airline could never recover from is a poor safety record. Following many years with no reported incidents the last two occurrences happening in such close proximity may make passengers wary of the airline. This is a perception that no low fares airline can afford to carry, as it is only as safe as public perception deems it to be. 

This last scare must have been bad, apparently Ryanair offered 'free' refreshments to the passengers from the flight when they returned to Dublin airport. What is the world coming to?

The story on the latest scare can be found from BreakingNews.ie here and there is a slightly more in-depth report from RTE here. 

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Ryanair Website

As I tend to use online flight reservation websites quite a bit all the hoopla about Ryanair's new website was of some interest. I did try it out on Monday and it was pathetically slow, so much so that I left it in frustration a half an hour after I'd tried to book a flight to Fuerteventura without a single page loading.

I tried it out again today (Thursday) and it seems to have ironed out a lot of its bugs (as its bombastic leader Mr. O'Leary claimed it would with some ferocity on the radio), but I still have a gripe (sure I wouldn't be Irish if I didn't). The cost to fly two adults and a child return from Shannon to Fuerteventura, admittedly in July/August, comes out at the princely sum of €1,378.41. From the home of the 'low cost flight' I'd have expected a little better. The equivalent Dublin to Lanzarote flight for the same period with Aer Lingus came out over a hundred Euro cheaper, and I considered that to be extravagantly expensive. Let's be honest, you can get an entire package holiday for less than that.

Don't get me wrong, I have significant admiration for Mr. O'Leary and his airline and what they have done for travel in our island nation, as well as the rest of Europe. But they can be full of it sometimes and charges of this magnitude give lie to the fact that they are a low fares airline at all.

If you want to be flown to 100 km outside some Godforsaken destination that no-one else would touch with a bargepole on a Tuesday morning in November at 7am then you will most certainly get a low fare but if you wish to fly to a popular destination during a peak period just forget about it. In this instance Ryanair will be, if anything, more expensive than any other option you can find.

It is good to see that the consumer watchdog is hauling them over the coals over their alleged '1 cent' flights offer which are, apparently, nearly impossible to obtain. Although Ryanair have opened up many destinations to both Irish and UK travellers, it can act like a spoiled child on occasion and most institutions are afraid to stand up to O'Leary. It is a shame because the company could easily execute its exceptional business model without stepping over the line and aggravating everyone in the process. It would make life so much easier for everyone involved.

If you want a bit of a laugh you might get your hands on a copy of Paul Kilduff's new book, "How To Be Treated Like Shite In 15 Different Countries... And Still Quite Like It". It is based on his experiences with the airline he refers to as "Ruinair" (book pictured above). You can get it on his site, http://www.PaulKilduff.com/. Apparently it costs just 1 cent, not bad value.

Of course you need to add costs and taxes of €12.98 which bring your total outlay to €12.99 - boom, boom.

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