About Ryanair
 

Hello! I am currently reading for my Masters Degree in MSc Marketing. I am required to write a dissertation to complete this degree.

The topic of my dissertation is “The low cost marketing adopted by Ryanair. Is this approach likely to succeed among all age groups (young groups and old groups)?"

Would you please help me to answer the following questions for the dissertation research?


1. What’s your expectation of an airline travel?

2. How important do you think of the full services during the airline travel (free meal and drinks, entertainments, sleep marks, etc.)?

3. Can you tell me what impels you to travel by (or not by) Ryanair?

4. How do you like their services (such as on time, frequency, response of complaints)?

5. Do you have any comments on their customer service?

6. What’s your comment on the comfort of Ryanair’s airplanes (seats, corridors, hand luggage set, etc)?

7. Do you bother by Ryanair’s airports? (not convenient? etc.)

8. How do you think of Ryanair’s online booking?

9. Can you tell me what your reason is for taking (or not taking) Ryanair next time?

10. Are you going to travel by Ryanair when you are over 65? Why?

11. Can you tell me what your overall impression of Ryanair is?

12. Do you have any suggestions to Ryanair?

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer these questions!!

Stephen

Welcome to FlyerTalk. An interesting set of questions, if I may make a suggestion, if you are going to ask a lot of detail from other FT members it would be good if you filled in a little of your Public Profile here on FT so we know something about who we are addressing; I suspect you are not from an English-speaking country, for example, and it would be interesting to know which one you are from, or which University you are at.

I use Ryanair quite a lot each year, although not as much as BA, from London to various points as my various business trips arise. Some answers to your questions.

1. I expect punctuality, as direct a service as possible, minimum ground delays, etc. I also expect to get what I (or my company) pay for, so I am aggrieved by full fare tickets which lead to very discounted travel experiences. I think it is silly to say one expects things like safety because that is an absolute given on any air carrier anyway, thanks to the various regulatory bodies and thanks also to all the airlines themselves, whether full fare or discount, for invariably behind the PR front of the marketing and executive types you always find a group of knowledgeable and competent aviation professionals, in Ryanair just as much as at BA. This doesn't always go for things like ground services though.

2. Full service is important to me on business travel, because very often we have hectic days of rushing from meetings to airports etc; on the plane can be the only chance to get anything to eat during the day, even if travelling short haul, and the lounge is a chance to make productive use of time hanging round at airports. I never use in-flight entertainment, even going to Australia (apart from the Airshow on screen). Ryanair seem to have this about right because although they do not have free food and drink, they actively sell it on every trip. One of their hot cheese and ham rolls, a beer, and a packaged cake, costing about EUR 10 in all, can be very welcome. CEO Michael O'Leary once said his airline provided "the cheapest airfares and the most expensive cheese sandwiches in Europe".

3. Main reason to use Ryanair is to get where I am going. Their base at Stansted near London is more convenient to my house than Heathrow, and the processing time there is less too. They do an early morning flight to Dublin which is just not available early enough from my real local airport, London City. The secondary airports they tend to use away from the major ones can be more convenient for certain final destinations.

4. I find their punctuality is very good; in fact I am amazed they get such consistent on-time performance out of their old 737-200 fleet (now being withdrawn) which major airlines gave up long ago. The overcrowding at Heathrow, leading to queues for takeoff, holding for landing, waiting for a gate to become available, waiting for baggage, etc, cause such delays going through there (it always seems worse on short haul than long haul). This doesn't show in the official figures, at Heathrow which show landing times and exclude waits for gates, or for baggage. Ryanair's frequency is also good. There's a perception that they ignore complaints, but I've never found too much to complain about. They turned me away once when they changed their ID rules, which hacked me off.

5. Regarding their customer service, although they exude a "take it or leave it" attitude, and FAs (especially Dublin-based) can be grumpy or (London based) have poor English, and similar attributes, you must understand that Ryanair is an Irish airline and these are really just standard attributes of Irish businesses in general, with a fit-in-with-me attitude to their customers that is unusual in Britain, USA and other countries.

6. The seating pitch is that which has been known to generations of European travellers to Mediterranean holidays on charter flights, and at 6'0" it gives me no problem. Americans, who seem to be both taller and fatter than any other country, and becoming increasingly so, have a problem with it, but they make up such a small percentage of Ryanair travellers. And the unreserved seating does actually give me a greater percentage of window seats (my preference) than the Heathrow airlines, despite me often arriving late and getting a high boarding number.

8. Ryanair's website is fine for me, others in the office have difficulties with it, like booking for the wrong day, I guess it's average. I know my way round it now.

10. There have always been plenty of seniors on Ryanair ever since they started, old Irish gentlemen who still put on their old traditional shabby black suits and hats to travel to Britain in, or small groups of grandmothers, often with several generations of their descendents in tow and showing them the way round the airport ! I'm sure they appreciate the 1 hour plane trip over the old all day or all night train-ship-train lengthy and tiring journey they used to have to do if they couldn't afford high Aer Lingus fares (such surface travel has bitten the dust thanks to Ryanair). There's always been a tradition of cheap routes from Ireland to Britain going back to the days when vegetable pickers came over on the "cattle boats" with the cows; it's just an extension of that, appealing to all ages and incomes.

11. Ryanair, Easyjet, and a few others (but not all the recent upstarts) will become Europe-wide, and they have set the agenda for significant changes at the mainstream carriers, some of whom found carrying on with inefficient traditions put them out of business (eg Sabena, Swissair). The market is big enough for multiple types of service now. I don't think they will expand into long haul. They will stick at what they are good at.

12. No suggestions. They wouldn't listen anyway. Michael O'Leary thinks he knows it all. In fact, he does know most of it.

1. Primarily, to get where I want to, when I want to. Comfort and convenience of airports are, well, luxuries. I make the call at the time of booking as to whether or not I want to buy them (by travelling on a different carrier).

2. Well, Ryanair are short-haul, and European short-haul rarely has IFE, so I only take the food/drink service as the comparison. For leisure flying, I couldn't care less. Most FSCs' food, I don't bother with, as it usually consists of a sandwich I don't like (why do they put mayonnaise in everything) and a can of something I don't like (I don't drink).

3. Price and destination. As I live in London, there are few places I want to go to where there's not a good choice of routes. Some more obscure ones are served by Ryanair, and the direct flight may be more convenient (that said, a trip to London City, followed by a transfer at, say, MUC, is more convenient for me than a direct flight from STN). As for price, well, I shop around. Given my leisure travel patterns (weekends away, late booking), Ryanair turns out to be the cheapest about 1 time in 3 (taken in account cost of transport to/from airports). And I'm personally happy to pay, say £10 more to be on an FSC. For business, I don't fly on LCCs unless there's no alternative. As far as I'm concerned, the LCC 'cheapness' has nothing to do with lack of in-flight sandwich and everything to do with lack of contingency. If things go wrong, I want it sorted out there and then. And the deal with the LCCs is: you're on your own.

4. On time is very good compared to LHR (although I seem to escape the worst of LHR - I've only had one delay past an hour in 3 years of weekly flying). Never had cause to complain. As for frequency, well, the places I've flown to with them have been rather obscure. I'm not expecting 7 daily rotations from STN-RHE, for example.

5. 'Meets expectations'. I've never paid much to fly with them, and I don't expect to be treated like I'm in SQ F. In fact, I've had very little interaction from staff other than "here's your BP" and "would you like to buy a drink".

6. I have long legs... And so find it a bit tight. For an hour's flight, it's fine, but I'd think twice about doing a STN-RIX with them. So, well, if I want to be comfortable, I turn up early, get an low SEQ number, and queue to get on for an exit row. Managed to bag one for the last 4 flights I've had with them. I've probably been rather unlucky that all my Ryanair flights have been on their museum-piece 732s, which leave a little to be desired in terms of noise and cleanliness.

7. Well, STN is not that convenient for me. It's not too tricky a journey, but LCY, LGW and LHR are all more convenient. But the cost of getting to/from STN is something I always factor into a journey price when doing a comparison. As for the destination airports, well, I've tended only to fly Ryanair to small airports where that airport serves my destination city (I haven't flown to HHN or CRL to visit FRA or BRU, for example). Generally, my leisure travel patterns are time-limited, Fri-Sun jobs, so this is not desirable for me.

8. It works. Many FSCs could learn from its simplicity, and the ability to change bookings online in particular.

9. Leisure only, but if they fly where I want, and are the cheapest (full journey cost), I'll take 'em.

10. Why wouldn't I? I'm assuming I'll have more free time, and less money than now, so I would be easily able to get the real bargains.

11. My impression is that it's found its niche as the absolute cheapest way of flying. If I'm paying £1 for a flight, I don't have high expectations, and they've proven themselves acceptable every time I've flown. Better for me, however, is their impact on the FSCs. It means I can fly BA and BD affordably for leisure trips, which is something I prefer.

12. Not really. They've found their niche, do what they do well, and are sticking to it.

Hi, WHBM, stut, thanks a lot for your great help!

Best wishes!

stephen

Hi, WHBM, i am from China and studying at Leicester University. Now my dissertation topic has change a little bit which not only concerns about the particularly low cost airline company but the whole low cost airline industry. It still concerns the expections and satisfictions of airline from young people and old people. The questions are changed as well:

1. What’s your expectation of an airline travel? Why?

2. How important do you think of the full services during the airline travel (free meal and drinks, entertainments, sleep marks, etc.)?

3. What kind of customer services do you expect?

4. Do you prefer to travel with a low cost no frills airline such as Easyjet and Ryanair or full service airlines? Why?

Hopefully more nice people will response me. Thanks a lot!

Airline service for me depends on the length of th route and the price I pay. If I am flying Ryanair STN-DUB for one p than I really don't mind, it is a short flight on which so long as the plane is safe, I don't care what the service is like. I have always found ryanair's service good. Nothing special, but perfectly acceptable for the price. My problem with Ryanair comes from flying to airports that are often many miles from anywhere I want to be. STN, DUB, SXF (Berlin Schoenefeld) are just fine. Places like HHN and MMX (Malmo Sweden, aka Copenhagen) start to become a little far, particularly if you final destination is not the city advertised by ryanair (they do a decent job of providing coaches to a destination like at Paris and Glasgow-Preswick). This is where a company like Easyjet does a better job. I don't mind paying 20-30 EUR more to fly EZY to fly to Copenhagen CPH rather than Malmo because the money I save. MMX requires traveling by coach to Malmo, then taking a train or bus across the Oresund bridge to Copenhagen which can cost quite a bit more in terms of both money and time. I have never used HHN, but knowing that it is 120 km from Frankfurt is not much of an incentive to fly there, even if th price is very low. FR has done a good job of providing air service to places that do suffer from lack of competition such as Tampere Finland, Salzburg, and many French destinations. And their very cheap flight ex Ireland have given most irish travelers an inexpensive way to travel arcross the irish sea and beyond. Overall, FR provides a good low cost alternative when the price and the destination is right, yet Easy Jet, Air Berlin and others still beat them out when it comes to major and convenient airports.

Hi, magyarflieger,

Thanks for your great reply!! ^

All the Best!

Stephen