schrodingerdog

http://corporate.ryanair.com/news/ne...hts/?market=en

Ryanair, Spain’s No.1 airline, today (23 May) announced a new flight partnership with Air Europa, which will allow its 130m customers to book Air Europa long haul flights on the Ryanair.com website. From today, customers can browse and book Air Europa flights on 20 long haul routes from Madrid to 16 countries in North, Central and South America, including Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and the United States.

Lewis42

scary...but interesting.

Goldorak

as you say...

Zarmakuizz

First, Ryanair is interested in buying Alitalia, then this. Interesting...

Lewis42

Correction: Ryanair wants to buy Alitalia's routes, NOT the airline.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-rya...-idUKKBN18J2HL

Infact, so does IAG and Easyjet. All have stated they don't want to buy the airline.

irishguy28

Why scary?

As a forgotten member of Skyteam, its current "partners" do little in the way of feeding Air Europa. Ryanair has a large network from Madrid, of which there are few overlaps with Air Europa's own network - so can potentially deliver a lot of new customers to their network.

You can't "buy" routes. Ryanair doesn't need to do anything to run new routes from Italy - as an EU airline it can operate any routes in the EU that it wishes - all it needs are the slots at FCO/LIN, which should not be difficult to acquire if AZ fails.

I guess we know where some of the planes being moved from the UK market will end up!!!

C W

I'm having trouble expressing exactly why I dislike the notion of this so much.

Ryanair is a horrible company that treats its customers, it employees, safety, and the law with utter contempt. Air Europa is a crap airline, but nowhere near to the extend of Ryanair and they're ostensibly full service. Somehow their partnership is a legitimization of Ryanair's practices that I just don't like. The only things that airline is good for are keeping bachelor parties off real airlines and driving down prices via competition.

Goldorak

I couldn't agree more with you!

NickB

I do not particularly like Ryanair and there was indeed a time where I would refuse to fly them as a matter of principle for the kind of reasons you raise in your post but I think that they have moved on quite a bit from where they were 10 years ago.

Is Ryanair the company with the best customer service and the best employment relations? No, it is not. However, there is a gulf between saying that and saying that it treats its customers and employees "with utter contempt." I do not think, for instance, that there is a humungous gap between a full-service company like, say, British Airways and Ryanair in terms of attitude towards customers and employees. Nor is there AFAIK any serious evidence of Ryanair being any less safe than other European airlines.
If you think that the typical customers on Ryanair are "bachelor parties", you are singularly uninformed. I am sure that there are some destinations and some times of the week and of the year when you will encounter these on Ryanair (althgouh you will also encounter some on traditional carriers too for flights with similar times and destinations) but let us not grossly over-generalise. I can assure you that I have yet to encounter a bachelor party on my FR flights to MRS.

I think that we need to be a a little more measured in our assessment rather than relying on views that were pre-formed many years ago.

C W

The only major improvement I know of that Ryanair has made to its customer facing operations is moving the no travel insurance option out of that deceptive drop down. As far as I know they basically have no effectively contactable customer service to speak of and still use extraordinary legal maneuvers with regards to employment contracts. Nor have I heard anything to indicate that they are carrying more reserve fuel.

If any of these things have changed and I just haven't heard about it, well good for Ryanair and their stakeholders. I have never flown them and never will out of both principle and preference, it wouldn't matter if they were free.

And with regards to BA, I read their board quite a bit and am consistently stunned at the callousness and lack of customer service recovery reported over there. No compensation for plastic shards in food that caused injury or non-functional FC seats for example, I couldn't even imagine such treatment on Delta. Just because BA treats people badly too doesn't excuse Ryanair from anything.

C W

The bachelor party was more of a joke and general observation about LCC passengers rather than literally claiming that every Ryanair flight is full of bachelor parties.

I do seem to experience a stunningly high number of them whenever I fly LCCs in Europe though, maybe I'm just unlucky

All that said, I do typically find one consistent benefit in both Europe and the US of flying legacy airlines is more pleasant, quiet, and experienced fellow passengers.

NickB

I think that those two sentences side-by-side exemplify the point I was making. You have no direct experience, let alone recent experience, but you rely on hearsay to form very firm views as if you had an intimate knowledge of the subject-matter. I would suggest that a more measured assessment would perhaps be called for when one has limited knowledge of what one is talking about.

The question is not whether Ryanair needs to be "excused" from anything but rather whether there is that huge gap between Ryanair on the one hand and full service airlines on the other that you post was premised on. I took BA as an illustration of the misconception that,. it seems to me, underlies your post, based on what looks to me like an archaic view of the low-cost and full-service airline sectors, at least as far as the European airline industry is concerned.

You want there to be a big bright line between the two. That bright line simply does not exist any more in Europe. There is a continuum. If you want to say that Ryanair is towards the lower end of the spectrum, you will not find me disagreeing much.

But you make a rather more extreme claim of Ryanair being in a class of its own in terms of customer service, employee relations, etc... and I do not think that there is much evidence to support such an extreme claim.

OK: do tell us, then: how many flights on LCCs have you taken in Europe in the last 6 months and on which routes and how many of these were rammed with bachelor parties?

C W

There are a number of things that do distinguish Ryanair distinctly from its competitors and put it squarely at the bottom of the heap in many categories.

EasyJet, Wizz, Eurowings and of course all the legacy airlines have telephone customer service which Ryanair does not.

Ryanair still engages in outrageous employment schemes and has such bad labor relations that major pension funds will no longer hold their stock.

Ryanair to employ German-based pilots through Dublin firm


Seven European pension schemes ditch Ryanair stock


Ryanair closes Denmark operation to head off union row


Ryanair contract practice ‘a threat to safety’


In fact their practices are sufficiently suspect, not to mention morally corrupt, that they have placed their own pilots in legal jeopardy.

The Ryanair Contactor Employment Model


Prosecutors raid Ryanair staff rooms at 6 German airports


German Prosecutors Conduct Searches in Ryanair Offices in Six Airports


Ryanair bases raided by German tax authorities


German Ryanair Bases and Pilot Homes Raided

Can you imagine working for a major company with practices so corrupt that you end up getting your home raided because of it?


There are many reports of them treating customers not only with disregard, but with literally punitive measures. Here are a few examples.

Hundreds come forward to complain about Ryanair seat allocation


Is Ryanair deliberately splitting up passengers who refuse to pay for seat selection?


Ryanair denies deliberately separating passengers to make money


Ryanair seating policy


Ryanair accused of deliberately assigning middle seats to passengers who don't pay reservation fee


They continue their dishonest and deceptive practice of calling airports the names of cities that they are nowhere near, such as "Dusseldorf-Weeze" and "Frankfurt-Hahn". They can fly to these airports all they want, but they are blatantly deceptive about their actual nature and location.

I have not been able to find any indication that they have improved their reserve fuel practices. If you can provide such an indication I would be happy to see it as I certainly don't wish disaster on the passengers of any airline.

Now, I can't definitively claim that Ryanair is "in a class of its own" and I never did. I claimed that they are "a horrible company that treats its customers, its employees, safety, and the law with utter contempt" and I stand by that statement.

Honestly, I think that anybody who chooses to fly with Ryanair implicitly endorses their practices and that potential customers should consider this before booking.

I've taken about 20 LCC flights in that time frame, almost all ex-DUS. Most to Eastern Europe but a good handful elsewhere such as UK, Switzerland, and more. I've had at least 5 very disruptive bachelor parties on those flights. Maybe the timing is the problem as I often fly outbound on Saturdays or maybe, like I said, it's just bad luck. Fingers crossed it'll change. That said I've never experienced this problem even one time on a legacy carrier on any continent.

All this said, it's all anecdotal and I can only account for my own experiences. Even if I were to list every flight and my observations that really isn't statistically meaningful, however I think it's pretty widely accepted that there is a general difference in the type of passenger between LCCs and legacy carriers, although it can certainly be route and schedule dependent.

NickB

I don't buy the customer relations dimension nor the safety arguments: as regards CR, talking of "utter contempt" strikes me as massively overblown hyperbole just for criticising the change to the seat allocation system. As regards safety, all that I have seen is little other than rumours propagated by individuals or entities with an axe to grind rather than solid, reliable evidence of a systemic problem.

On the other hand, you have convinced me on the employment front and I must thank you for bringing this to my attention. While I was aware of some previous practices, I had not realised the degree of prevalence of so-called 'gig economy' type practices to avoid the application of social legislation. Ryanair thus goes back to my list of airlines to avoid.
I do hope that you are equally vocal in your criticisms of other companies that have adopted similar and/or identical dubious employment practices, like Uber or Amazon.