...and I know for sure they have a lot of "NONE time" customers, based on their total lack of responsibility or customer care in case a flight goes non-op. As mentioned above, it has happened too often that flights were canceled resulting no refund and passengers having to arrange their own alternatives, or buying a ticket or “upgrading” their ticket to a different flight. (even though their Conditions of Carriage state otherwise). Sometimes these occurrences have made it to the press.

If this happens, not only do you loose out on money, but possibly also time (extra vacation days...)

The most crass story I know of (happened to a colleague and her friends earlier this year) on Ryanair was the cancellation of the last flight out on a Sunday evening Rome Ciampino (CIA)-Charleroi(CRL)(aka "Brussels South" in Ryanair terminology). This was only found out by passengers as they arrived at the airport. The alternatives offered to my colleague and her friends were:
1) flight next day (arriving midday in CRL) paying extra, to cover the price difference between their tickets and the lowest available fare.
2) next Ryanair flight on same day with seats available to the airport nearest to the original destination: turned out to be Frankfurt-Hahn (HHN) also for extra money.
3) try to get seats on another airline and/or other airports, entirely at your own cost and effort.

As one person in the group of friends absolutely needed to be in Belgium the next morning (job interview I think it was) and it seemed no other same day options were to be found at such short notice, they all decided to take the 2nd option and help their friend get home in time.

For those of you who don't know, Hahn is about 400km=250 miles=4hours driving from Charleroi, where their own cars were parked, then another 45-60 minutes to Brussels (1 car) or 60-75 minutes to Gent from Charleroi (the second half of the group).

So they proceed with the second option: Ryanair gladly takes the price difference + another admin fee for payment (no cash accepted, but you do have to pay a fee for using credit or debit cards), booking of Hertz car through the Ryanair agents in CIA (Ryanair earns a commission on those). Add to that of the original return flight’s airport taxes, which Ryanair gets to keep, as the flight did not take place.

This is how Ryanair makes a cancelled flight into a revenue generating situation.

All in all they all got to their bed by 5.30 AM, instead of the original midnight.

The next day, the rental car was returned to Hahn (not sure if they did not think of a one-way rental, or whether it was not available), so the rental car and another car drove back to Germany to drop of the Hertz car and then drive back to Belgium... additional cost: 2 times 1 vacation day + fuel cost for 2 cars.

So if you have enough time to risk such an occurrence, fine by me. Of course I know that the bad stories stick more then the good, which is why it is very important for any business, but even more for an airline, to treat bad situations as good and correct as possible, which all too often Ryanair does not.

I did not intend to make this a "Ryanair sucks" post, but I did, so to end on a positive note, I am interested to see the success of the AVOD device Ryanair is currently testing. http://www.ryanair.com/press/2004/no...-011104-2.html Of course it will depend very much on the content they will put in it (and knowing Ryanair, they will have advertising on there, another revenue post!)
The device itself looks very promising (http://www.digeplayer.com/ ) and if proven reliable, I expect to see this or similar machines on more and more airlines, either as a hire option in Y or on LCCs, or as a complementary service in Business and First class (and possibly costing less in operations and repairs than fixed, central server IFE systems).

Perhaps more interesting for your paper: Ryanair is generating 14% of their revenue on secondary services (in-flight options; commissions on bookings for hotel, rail, hotel and car rental; organizing in-flight raffles…) and is aggressively looking for more revenue possibilities. As you might have heard, Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary has announced that he foresees dropping fares all the way to zero, and only generating profit on these services and commissions. It is not clear to me whether this will be all seats or a limited amount of seats per flight. Taking into account that currently Ryanair’s operating cost per passenger is €33.5 and it is uncertain whether this can be further lowered (as mentioned at the financial press briefing 2 November 2004 by COO Michael Cawley) I expect these zero fare rates will be promotional only.