Corballis Park
Dublin Airport
Co. Dublin
Ireland
Company Perspectives:
Ryanair is Europe's Leading Low Fares Airline: This year we expect to carry over 6 million passengers across 34 routes. We have recently added 7 new European routes to our ever expanding network. We operate a low fares, no frills policy, and have the lowest fares on all of the routes we fly whether from Ireland, UK or continental Europe. On Ireland - UK routes, Ryanair is market leader on every route where it competes with Aer Lingus. Ryanair is confident that Europe's high-cost and often state-subsidised airlines will be no match for its low cost, no frills formula. In addition to our routes between Ireland and the UK, 15 European cities now enjoy the benefits of truly low cost air travel and with Ryanair set to grow by 25% each year, and a US $2 billion order for 45 new aircraft in place, millions of European air travellers will feel the `Ryanair effect' in the years ahead.
History of Ryanair Holdings Plc
Ryanair Holdings plc, Europe's largest budget airline, has gone a long way toward making air travel a commodity in the United Kingdom. Operating on the Southwest Airlines formula, Ryanair often causes traffic to double or triple on the routes it enters. It is flown by about seven million passengers a year. The Internet has helped the carrier slash costs on the distribution side. The brash upstart constantly clashes with the Irish airports and advertising authorities and with its state-supported nemesis, Aer Lingus.
Familial Origins
Cathal, Declan, and Shane Ryan formed Ryanair with £1 million from their father, Dr. Tony Ryan, chairman and CEO of Guinness Peat Aviation, the aircraft leasing giant. Ryanair began flying a 15-seat Bandeirante on scheduled routes between Ireland and the United Kingdom in June 1985. It entered the Dublin-London market the next spring, competing with British Airways (BA) and Dan Air as well as Aer Lingus. One million passengers a year flew Dublin-London before Ryanair; that number would triple in the next decade.
To save costs, the airline used secondary airports, including four in the West Country. In the first year, Ryanair had two airplanes and five employees apart from flight crew. An official told Aviation Week & Space Technology how the company had borrowed a PC in order to claim its reservations office in Dublin was 'computerized.' The company broke even its first year, an impressive feat considering the paper-thin margins of the airline industry.
By 1988, Ryanair had grown to 600 employees and was fielding 40 flights a day. On two key international routes, Dublin-Manchester and Dublin-Glasgow, Aer Lingus matched fares and increased frequencies, forcing Ryanair into a hasty retreat from those markets. In addition, the company had reserved planes for European charter work that never materialized, Aviation Week reported. It learned the hard way about the costs of maintaining too many different kinds of planes--four types in a fleet of eight.
Ryanair lost IR £7.5 million ($11 million) in 1988. CEO Eugene O'Neill resigned over differences with the board of directors about how to proceed during those rough times. P.J. McGoldrick took his place as CEO, although O'Neill remained on the board of directors. At the time, the company was 90 percent owned by the Ryan family and ten percent by employees.
In November 1989, the Ryans injected another IR £20 million into the airline, allowing it to place an order for ten Aerospatiale/Aeritalia ATR-42 turboprop transports for $100 million. At the time, the airline operated six ATR-42s and eight BAC-111s.
Much as Southwest did in the United States, Ryanair's low fares brought a new class of traveler into the skies. Airline traffic tripled in Ireland between 1986 and 1989. Recognizing the carrier's contribution to tourism and wanting to maximize the use of Irish airline capacity, the Irish government banned competition between Ryanair and Aer Lingus from November 1989 until September 1992. As a result, Ryanair lost the Dublin-Paris route to Aer Lingus but gained time to reorganize. (France had not allowed Ryanair to offer fares as low as it had wanted anyway.)
New Management in the 1990s
By 1990, Ryanair was posting IR £40 million in revenues but losing IR £7 million a year. It had accumulated losses of nearly £19 since its founding, and the Observer reported that it 'came within hours of financial collapse.' P.J. McGoldrick quit his position as CEO early in 1992. His replacement, Conor Hayes, resigned as CEO at the end of 1993 and was to be succeeded by his deputy, Michael O'Leary. Formerly accountant for the company, his financial controls were credited with returning it to profitability. He had also been Tony Ryan's assistant. According to the Sunday Times, part of his terms were that he and the two other executive directors, Cathal and Declan Ryan, would share half the airline's future profits.
O'Leary was in his early 30s when he took over. A charismatic figure, he played soccer on the baggage handlers' team even as he cut wages 25 percent. He spoke of an unrestrained admiration for Southwest Airlines CEO Herb Kelleher and sought to emulate not only his operational strategies but the spirit he inspired in employees. 'We must amuse, surprise, and entertain,' he quoted. At Ryanair, like Southwest, managers (including O'Leary himself) helped in other jobs (such as loading baggage and passenger check-in) when needed. Air Transport World reported Ryanair was carrying 3,077 employees per passenger, more even than Southwest, which carried 2,443.
Although McGoldrick had wanted to partner with a U.S. airline with sights on Europe, O'Leary did not want to enter a strategic alliance for fear of losing control over costs. He kept the company focused on point-to-point flights, avoiding complicated code-sharing and Fifth Freedom deals. With profits of just 92p per passenger, Ryanair claimed to be the lowest-cost airline in Europe. Margins were so low that on short flights Ryanair made most of its money from duty-free sales. After a couple of years of breaking even, Ryanair posted a pretax profit of £1.7 on turnover of £75 million for the 1993-94 fiscal year. The next year, profits rose to IR £5 million.
In the mid-1990s, Ryanair had 500 staff and 11 Boeing 737s and was carrying more than two million passengers a year. In contrast, Aer Lingus had three times as many aircraft and ten times the staff, but flew only twice the passengers. Ryanair sold round trip tickets from Dublin to the United Kingdom for as little as £59, and its share of the London-Dublin route eventually exceeded Aer Lingus's 40 percent. Both Ryanair and British Midland complained of the Irish state carrier's perceived predatory pricing policies to European Community regulators.
Britain had the most liberalized air market in all Europe, and competition had emerged in the form of EasyJet, which was selling one-way fares between London (Luton) and Glasgow or Edinburgh for £29. EasyJet did not work through travel agents or computer reservation systems. Ryanair, however, relied on travel agents for 70 percent of bookings. Unlike EasyJet, it still issued paper tickets, but did away with assigned seating.
In November 1996, an American investment group lead by David Bonderman bought 20 percent of the carrier. Bonderman, who had been associated with Southwest, also remained a director of Continental Airlines, which he had helped revitalize. In a series of complex transactions, a new company, Ryanair Holdings plc, was formed.
In the 1996-97 fiscal year, the company posted pretax profits of IR £25.6 million on turnover of IR £136.4 million. Ryanair looked to the newly liberalized (deregulated) skies of Europe, aiming for 25 percent a year growth. The continent was a relative stranger to budget air travel. Several factors, however, promised to be particularly costly on short, cheap flights, such as standardized fees for computer reservation systems, hopelessly inefficient air traffic control, and costly landing fees at congested European airports. Ryanair planned to use London's Stansted Airport rather than Dublin as a base for flights to the continent because of its lower costs. Ryanair cut agents' commissions from nine percent to 7.5 percent, following a growing industry trend, while opening its Ryanair Direct telemarketing center, Ireland's largest.
O'Leary had told the Observer that while other carriers spent years developing markets into profitability, Ryanair 'will not enter a route if we cannot break even in three hours and grow the market by at least 100 percent.' In 1997, Ryanair launched routes to Paris (Beauvais) and Brussels (Brussels South) with fares as low as IR £79. It expected to double traffic between Dublin and Paris. It had gained a 37 percent market share on Dublin-London, which in 1997 surpassed Paris-London as Europe's busiest air corridor.
Public in 1997
In the 1997-98 fiscal year, Ryanair flew more than four million people, generating sales of £182.6 million. In May 1997, the company listed shares on the Dublin and Nasdaq stock markets. The Ryan family owned about 40 percent after the offering, worth £100 million; they had pulled £110 million from the company to that point. O'Leary owned 14 percent, and employees received bonuses from £2,500 to £5,000. Through the flotation, Bonderman maneuvered a £1 million investment into a £50 million shareholding, according to the Sunday Times.
The timing seemed great: the airline industry as a whole was recovering, and a healthy economy in the British Isles was encouraging more vacationing. The share price doubled within four months of the offering. Another share placement on the London Stock Exchange raised £50 million. Wary analysts, however, remembered how many budget airlines had failed in the United States during the preceding decade.
Ryanair looked for a hub in continental Europe to find respite from Aer Rianta's high costs and threw its support behind a proposal (Huntstown Air Park) to build a second airport in Dublin. Ryanair was pitching proposals to build or fund its own terminal there in exchange for reduced landing fees. Dublin Airport had fees nearly three times higher than average. Aer Rianta, which also owned eight Great Southern hotels, was slated for 2002, and the government seemed wary of doing anything to devalue this asset (via breaking its monopoly) before its sale.
BA launched a low-cost offshoot, called simply 'Go,' in early 1998. Go had little effect on Ryanair's market share when it entered the London-Rimini and London-Venice routes in the winter of 1998-99. During 1998, Ryanair carried more passengers than Go, EasyJet, and Debonair combined. Regulatory authorities in Europe took a more aggressive stance regarding the predatory pricing tactics that major airlines in the United States had used to eliminate competition from budget carriers. Ryanair continued to open new routes in Germany, France, and Italy, and in the 1998-99 fiscal year, posted after-tax profits of £45.3 million on operating revenues of £232.9 million; both figures were up substantially.
Two U.K. upstarts, Debonair and AB Airlines, folded in late 1999. Both had tried to incorporate traditional perks into a budget fare system. Both KLM and Lufthansa were considering forming low-fare subsidiaries, although Go had already lost £20 million in 17 months and BA posted its first loss in the dozen years since its privatization. Both BA and Aer Lingus had repositioned themselves toward more lucrative business traffic.
In the winter of 1999, an off-peak season, some carriers offered fares as low as £5 or £6 on Dublin-Liverpool and Dublin-London (although taxes brought the final cost up to more than £30). Still, only two percent of Europeans were flying low-fare airlines, compared with 28 percent in the United States, according to the Irish Times. Probably Ryanair's most viable competition came from Virgin Express, which began a Shannon-London (Stansted) route in late 1998 and began Shannon-Brussels in December 1999. It also was considering routes from Dublin and Cork.
Taking a shot at its old rival Aer Lingus, Ryanair ran a controversial ad reading, 'It's not just the Bank of Ireland that gets robbed at Dublin Airport,' referring to an event that had in fact just happened. This brought censure from the Advertising Standards Authority.
Ryanair continued to expand its European network, investing $200 million (£124 million) in five new planes and adding 250 jobs in London and Glasgow. It expected to carry seven million passengers, passing Aer Lingus, and hoped to be carrying 12 million passengers a year by 2004. A new hub on the continent was planned by 2002.
Ryanair launched Ryanair.com in January 2000, leapfrogging over Aer Lingus, which had an Internet presence but not online booking. The new web site soon became the busiest one in the country, logging 14 million impressions a month. E-commerce proved to be a low overhead way for the carrier to sell 50,000 tickets a week, more than double the amount sold on Travelocity.com, the next most popular travel site. Ryanair sold $130 million worth of tickets online in the first year. It planned to exploit its potential as a portal to other travel services.
Principal Competitors: Aer Lingus; British Airways plc; Virgin Express Holdings.
Related information about Ryanair
Ryanair (, , ) is an Irish airline headquartered in Dublin. It is one of Europe's largest low-cost carriers and one of Europe's most
successful airlines, operating on 362 routes to 22 countries.
Ryanair is one of Europe's most controversial companies, praised
and criticised in equal measure www.rte.ie/comments/ryanair.html. Its
supporters praise its commitment to low fares, radical management,
and its willingness to challenge what Ryanair calls the
'establishment' within the airline industry (similar to its
American counterpart, Southwest Airlines). Critics, meanwhile, have attacked
its trade union
policies www.eiro.eurofound.eu.int/2003/12/inbrief/eu0312204n.html,
hidden "taxes" and fees, and limited customer services, and charged
that it practises deceptive advertising.
History
Early years
Ryanair was founded in 1985 by Christy Ryan (after whom the
company is named), Liam Lonergan (owner of an Irish tour operator
named Club Travel), and noted Irish businessman Tony Ryan, founder of Guinness Peat
Aviation. The airline began with a 15 seat Embraer turboprop aircraft flying
between Waterford and
London Gatwick with the
aim of breaking the duopoly on London-Ireland flights at that time held by British Airways and
Aer Lingus. flying
Dublin-London Luton in
direct competition to the BA/Aer
Lingus duopoly for the first time. The Irish government at the
time refused its approval in order to protect Aer Lingus, but Britain,
under Margaret
Thatcher's pro-free-market Conservative
government, approved the service. By 1995, after the consistent
pursuit of its low-cost business model, Ryanair celebrated its 10th
birthday by carrying 2.25 million passengers.
Deregulation and flotation
EU deregulation of the air
industry in Europe in 1997 gave carriers from one EU country the
right to operate scheduled services between other EU states, and
represented a major opportunity for Ryanair. After a successful
flotation on the Dublin Stock
Exchange and the NASDAQ
Stock exchanges, the airline launched services to Stockholm, Oslo (Sandefjord
Airport, Torp, 110 km south of Oslo), Paris and Charleroi near Brussels. Flush with new
capital, the airline placed a massive US$2 billion order for 45 new Boeing 737-800
series aircraft in 1998.
The airline launched its website in 2000, with online booking
initially said to be a small and unimportant part of the software
supporting the site. Later that year, the airline ordered 155 new
Boeing
737-800 series aircraft from Boeing at what was believed to be a substantial
discount, (taking full advantage of the downturn in aeroplane
orders after the slump in air travel following the September 2001
aircraft attacks in the United States) to be delivered over eight
years from 2002 to 2010.
In 2002 Ryanair launched 26 new routes and established a hub in
Frankfurt-Hahn Airport, its European expansion firmly on
track. In 2003, Ryanair announced the order of a further 100 new
Boeing
737-800 series aircraft from Boeing, and in February a third continental base was
opened at Milan-Bergamo in Italy.
In April 2003 Ryanair acquired its ailing competitor Buzz from KLM, at a knock-down price.
Expansion continued apace with the launch of a base at Stockholm (Skavsta),
Sweden. The airline
launched two more bases in the first half of 2004, at Rome (Ciampino) and
Barcelona
(Girona), increasing the total to 11 hubs.
Recent history
During 2004, Michael O'Leary warned of a 'bloodbath' during the
winter from which only two or three low-cost airlines would emerge,
the expectation being that these would be Ryanair and easyJet. However, the enlargement of the European Union on 1 May 2004 opened the way to more
new routes as Ryanair and other budget airlines tapped the markets
of the EU accession
countries.
Growth and expansion
Ryanair has grown massively since its establishment in 1985,
from a small airline flying the short hop to London from Ireland into one of Europe's
largest carriers. Revenues have risen from ? 231 million in 1998 to some ?843 million in 2003, and
net profits have increased from ?48 million to ?239 million over
the same period. In an industry where the survival rate is 1 in 10
and where even the giants such as American Airlines and
Delta struggle
to keep in the black, Ryanair's success has confounded many
industry analysts. However, it has been consistent with the growth
of other no-frills airlines, such as Southwest and
JetBlue, since the
terrorist attacks in the United States of America on the 11th of
September, 2001. In August 2006, Ryanair succeed in an appeal to
Nominet to gain control
of the domain name that the Ryanair Campaign website was using. The
owners then moved the site to www.ryanaircampaign.org/.
x="article/asa">ASA Complaints have been registered with the
Advertising Standards Authority over Ryanair 5 Million seat offer of
'Free Flights'.
Customer service
Critics have accused Ryanair of poor treatment of customers
whose flights have been cancelled www.airlinequality.com/Forum/ryan.htm.
The airline formerly refused to provide accommodation or meal
vouchers when flights were cancelled or delayed, a practice which
became illegal within the EU on February 17, 2005 europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32004R0261:EN:HTML.
Norwegian consumer authorities have fined Ryanair 贈43,000 for this
practice forbruker.no/reise/article1216910.ece.
Having complained about having to compensate customers for
cancelled or delayed flights Ryanair is now suing the UK government
for compensation for losses it claims it incurred through cancelled
or delayed flights over the recent (August 2006) security
alerts.
In common with other airlines, Ryanair also sometimes makes changes
to its flight times at relatively short notice. However, two
factors make this particularly problematic in the case of low-cost carriers in
general and Ryanair in particular:
- the company notifies affected passengers by email rather than
by telephone, so there is sometimes a delay before the passenger
learns of the change;
- because Ryanair does not provide connecting flights, many
passengers make their own connections by booking separate
tickets. If the Ryanair flight time change makes the connection
impossible, the passenger loses the cost of the connecting flight
unless this is covered by travel insurance.
The airline has come under heavy criticism in the past for its
poor treatment of disabled passengers. In 2002 it refused to
provide wheelchairs
for disabled passengers at Stansted Airport, greatly angering disabled rights
groups www.drc-gb.org/newsroom/newsdetails.asp?print=true&id=773§ion=1.
news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article319157.ece
Airports
Ryanair has been accused of flying to regional airports which,
while cheap, are usually very far away from the cities they claim
to serve. For example, the airline used to advertise a service to
Malm旦-Sturup Airport, in Sweden, as "Copenhagen", Denmark (65 km away).
In some cases the names were eventually changed by legal action
(e.g. this was the case for Frankfurt-Hahn
Airport, over 140 km (83 miles) from central Frankfurt, or San Javier
Airport (Alicante sur) , in Region of
Murcia, over 100 km from Alicante city.
In February 2005 Ryanair published an advertisement in Norway's
Aftenposten erroneously featuring flights from Oslo to
London Prestwick: Prestwick Airport is near Glasgow, 600 km from London blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/2006/02/09/a_wee_trip_to_london.html#morewww.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/09/nryan09.xml.
Union issues
Ryanair has come under fire from unions representing workers in
the airline industry for refusing to recognise trade unions and
allegedly providing poor working conditions (for example, staff are
banned from charging their own mobile phones at work to reduce the
company's electricity bill news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/beds/bucks/herts/4471833.stm).
Ryanair has attempted to pressure employees not to unionise,
according to the Ryan Be Fair website www.ryan-be-fair.org/news/current_situation.htm, set up
and run by employees to improve working conditions.
Ryanair does not recognise the Irish Airline Pilots' Association
(IALPA), although it is the largest pilots' union in Ireland
archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2000/10/22/story853138.asp.
On 25 January
2005 the Irish Labour Court
guaranteed an investigation into allegations of victimisation of
staff who wished to join a trade union www.ryan-be-fair.org/news/ialpa.htm.
In July 2006, an Irish High Court judge found that Ryanair had
bullied pilots to force them to agree to new contracts, and that
some Ryanair managers had given false evidence in court home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/topstories/8514314?view=Eircomnet.
The EC believes that subsidies from state-owned airports are
potentially in breach of European Union competition rules unless
they follow strict guidelines.
In February 2004 the European Commission ruled that Charleroi airport gave Ryanair
illegal subsidies and ordered the airline to repay roughly ?4
million of subsidies.
Disguising fares as taxes
The UK newspaper The
Guardian has alleged business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1769707,00.html that
the insurance fee which Ryanair charges each passenger (charged on
every passenger booking together with other additional travel taxes
and charges) is unreasonably high.
The insurance surcharge amounted to more than 10% of Ryanair's
average fare, the newspaper estimated.
Ryanair declined to disclose its exact outlay on insurance. Ryanair
is the only major airline operating in Britain to impose such
charges.
The UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph estimates that in 12 months up to
May 2006 Ryanair received nearly 贈12 million through the
levy.
The Telegraph quoted Michael O'Leary defending Ryanair's position:
"We estimate it costs 贈25 per person to transport disabled
passengers at Stansted, and we carry 1.5 million such passengers
every year."
British Airways
said it had absorbed cost to transport disabled travellers into its
ticket prices.
Other criticisms
Also criticised are what are seen as vitriolic attacks on
opponents, notably former Irish Minister for Transport Mary O'Rourke
(1997-2002), who was personally ridiculed in a series of
controversial newspaper advertisements when she refused to break up
the state monopoly which then ran Irish airports, Aer Rianta. Michael O'Leary
often states that the airline goes to extremes to make a point, an
approach which has resulted in Ryanair's advertising occasionally
being considered offensive www.brandchannel.com/features_effect.asp?pf_id=49
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3456423.stm.
In 2002 Ryanair reneged on a promise of free flights given as a
prize to the airline's one millionth passenger, Jane O'Keeffe.
www.rte.ie/news/2002/0228/ryanair.html www.ananova.com/business/story/sm_611142.html
In the first quarter of 2006, a substantial number of Ryanair
flights were cancelled, with passengers receiving refunds or being
rebooked. Ryanair's explanation was that these cancellations were
the result of late aircraft deliveries due to the Boeing
machinists' strike www.ryanair.com/site/EN/news.php?yr=05&month=dec&story=gen-en-201205.
Dispatches programme
On February 13,
2006, Channel 4 broadcast a
documentary as part of its Dispatches series, "Ryanair caught napping". Staff in
training were falsely told that any Boeing 737-200 (no
longer in service with Ryanair) impact would result in the death of
the passenger sitting in seat 1A, and that they should not rely on
these passengers for assistance during an emergency. www.ryanair.com/site/promos/dispatches/02.%20Original%20letter%20from%20Dispatches%20to%20Ryanair%20%5B2006-01-12%5D.pdf
Ryanair denied the allegations and published its correspondence
with Dispatches on its website. www.ryanair.com/site/promos/dispatches/14.%20Dispatches'%20misleading%20advertisement%20in%20media%20%5B2006-02-13%5D.pdf
Much of the subsequent coverage of the programme in the media
considered that the documentary was overblown and failed to make
substantive claims against the airline, with some going so far as
to label the attempted expos辿 as a vindication for Ryanair.
www.examiner.ie/pport/web/business/Full_Story/did-sg0X5zaq4lRsssg7OWirIStPSk.asp
Following the documentary, Ryanair launched new services and a free
flights offer. business.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=233162006
Accidents and incidents
- The Boeing 737-800 aircraft operating Ryanair Flight 296
from Dublin to
London
Stansted caught fire shortly after landing on February 27, 2002. The UK Air Accident
Investigation Board recommended changes to training procedures
for air-crew to allow better handling of similar situations in
future.
- Ryanair
Flight 685 from Stockholm's V辰ster奪s airport to London Stansted on
September 1
2002 was delayed by
several hours after a Swedish man of Arabic origin was detained
after attempting to board the aircraft with a loaded gun.
however, no confirmation of these allegations was found in the
following police investigation and trial www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=147&a=73153.
- On March 29
2006, an Eirjet A320 plane on wet lease to Ryanair, flying
from Liverpool to City of Derry Airport, mistakenly landed at the
nearby Ballykelly Army Camp airport some 8 km away. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4859716.stm
- On 12 April
2006 a Ryanair from Paris
to Dublin was diverted to Prestwick Airport in Scotland under
instruction from the UK Department for Transport, after a note
was passed to cabin crew claiming a bomb was on board. The Boeing
737 was escorted by RAF Tornado fighter jets to landing, and the airport was closed
temporarily. Despite the suspicion of a bomb being on board,
security forces apparently prevented the passengers from leaving
the plane for several hours news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4904124.stm.
- On 22
September 2006 a
Ryanair Boeing 737-800 flying from Venice Treviso (Italy) to
Dublin (Ireland) had to divert to Brussels South Charleroi
Airport (Belgium) due to a medical emergency. Despite the fast
reaction of the medical teams in Charleroi, the passenger finally
died in the aircraft.
Competitors
Among Ryanair's main low-cost competitors are easyJet, bmibaby, Air
Berlin, Germanwings, Transavia, Jet2,
SkyEurope, Vueling, Wizz Air, Flybe, Thomsonfly and HLX.com. Despite traditionally
being a full-service airline, Aer Lingus moved to a low-fares strategy from 2002,
leading to much more intense competition with Ryanair on Irish
routes.
Airlines which attempt to compete directly with Ryanair are treated
harshly, with Ryanair reducing fares to significantly undercut
their competitors. Go was
another airline which attempted to offer services from Ryanair's
hub at Dublin to Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland. archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/11/30/story361140301.asp
In September 2004, Ryanair's biggest competitor, easyJet, announced routes to the
Republic of
Ireland for the first time, beginning with the Cork to London
Gatwick route ? within two weeks Ryanair also announced it would
withdraw its own service on the Gatwick-Knock and Luton-Shannon
routes.
DFDS Seaways cited
competition from low-cost air services, especially Ryanair (which
now flies to Glasgow Prestwick and London Stansted from Gothenburg City
Airport), as being the reason for its scrapping the Newcastle-Gothenburg ferry service in
October 2006"DFDS scraps
Newcastle-Gothenburg line", The Local, 7 September 2006: "Danish shipping
company DFDS Seaways is to scrap the only passenger ferry route
between Sweden and Britain, with the axing of the
Gothenburg-Newcastle route at the end of October.". It was the only
dedicated passenger ferry service between Sweden and the United Kingdom, and had been running since the
19th century (under various operators).
Destinations
Ryanair serves 362 routes between 130 airports in 20 European
countries and three in Morocco. Ryanair has other hubs throughout Europe, at
Dublin (its
headquarters, despite not being the largest), Charleroi Brussels
South, Cork, Frankfurt-Hahn, Girona,
London
Luton, Liverpool, Milan Orio al Serio, Pisa,
Nottingham East Midlands, Glasgow Prestwick, Rome Ciampino, Shannon, Stockholm
Skavsta and has announced a new hub at Marseille
Provence.
Most regional airports from which Ryanair operates to are located
very far from the city centres than their main airports, with
Frankfurt-Hahn perhaps the most notorious example,
140 km west of Frankfurt. There are however rare exceptions: Gothenburg City
Airport is 11 km closer to Gothenburg than the main Landvetter
Airport, and Ciampino Airport is 17 km closer to Rome than the main Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport, although the
latter is better connected.
The airline's first new routes outside Europe start in October 2006
when Ryanair plan to begin flying from Frankfurt-Hahn to Marrakech and Fez, both in
Morocco. These
non-European routes will be further complemented from November 2006
when Ryanair begins flights from Marseille to Fez,
Marrakech and Oujda (all in Morocco). Ryanair also announced
it would begin flying 10 other routes from Marseille and that it
would make Marseille its 16th operational base, with 2 Boeing 737-800 to
be based there.New flights to Morocco
News Release
Of all Ryanair's routes, the Dublin-London city pair remains both
the busiest and the most profitable. Citation needed
Ryanair also flies to eight cities in Poland (Bydgoszcz, Gda?sk, ?坦d?, Krak坦w, Pozna?, Rzesz坦w, Szczecin, Wroc?aw), and has been a
significant facilitator of Polish workforce migration to Ireland
(over 160,000 Poles as of 2006) and the UK.
Ryanair negotiates extremely aggressive contracts with its
airports, demanding very low landing and handling fees as well as
financial assistance with marketing and promotional campaigns. In
April 2006, a failure to reach agreement on a new commercial
contract resulted in Ryanair announcing that it would withdraw
service on the Dublin-Cardiff route at short notice news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/4944784.stm. The
airport management rebutted Ryanair's assertion that airport
charges were unreasonably high, noting that Cardiff charges were
already below Ryanair's average, and claimed that Ryanair had
recently adopted the same negotiating approach with Cork Airport and London Stansted
Airport info.cwlfly.com/en/news.asp?id=203.
Ryanair was forced to give up its Rome Ciampino-Alghero route after the route
was allocated to Air One
as a Public Service Obligation (PSO) route. The European Commission
is currently investigating the actions of the Italian Government in assigning
PSO routes and thus restricting competition.
It September 2006 it announced new routes including the airline's
first to Malta and also to
the Canary
Islands, which will be among the airlines longest sector.
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