The more the media rants about the extra charges at Ryanair, the larger the airline grows. I find Ryanair’s approach, both to its expansion in Europe and its search for ancillary revenues, fascinating and, obviously, effective.
Personally, I have never heard an actual passenger complain about a Ryanair flight. I have heard plenty of second-hand complaints. It is similar to the media’s litany of complaints about Southwest Airlines’ “cattle call” boarding process, that in the end was what passengers actually wanted, faster and what they expected.
A lot of the success of Ryanair and Southwest is due to the fact that it is honest with passengers. Everyone knows what they are getting. Their expectations are a flight from Point A to Point B in a clean, safe aircraft for an affordable rate. Where virtually every legacy airline on both sides of the Atlantic seems to focus on their luxurious service to the shrinking group of business travelers with lots of disposable corporate money, both Ryanair and Southwest keep honing their marketing message and delivering what they promise, consistently and well.
Ryanair, in Europe, has been opening the continent to air travel just as Southwest did for years by starting scheduled service to smaller, out-of-the-way, but not too-out-of-the-way airports. These are the airports ignored by the major legacy airlines that serve hundreds of thousands of travelers.
Ryanair has air service or is starting it to Altenburg, Reus, Memmingen, Ancona, Brindisi, Pau, Tampere, Lodz and Brest. Heck, after living in Europe for 20+ years, even I don’t know where some of these towns are. But, Ryanair has begun serving these airports, bringing new air service and they are filling up their planes.
Not only is Ryanair making flying geographically available to these out-of-the-way population centers, but it continuously is searching for ways to make flying economically available for its passengers. Over long distances, flying in Europe on low-cost carriers is far less expensive than taking the train.
Plus, Ryanair doesn’t take their image as a fee-happy renegade airline too seriously. After their CEO declared (tongue-in-cheek) the airline may look at charging for using the toilets, the airline launched a passenger contest searching for the additional fee.
Launching the competition, Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said;
“Ryanair is Europe’s largest low fares airline and we plan to continue to reduce costs and fares by stimulating ancillary revenues. We have always provided passengers with choice, if you don’t want to pay for food – don’t buy it, if you don’t want to pay checked in bag charges – don’t bring checked in bags, if you don’t want to pay handling charges – then just use Visa Electron entirely free of charge.
Since we confirmed that we are considering a toilet charge we have received a huge number of ancillary revenue suggestions from passengers and we want more. We are asking passengers to submit their ideas with the most creative winning €1,000 cash. Some of the best suggests to date are:
· Charging for toilet paper – with O’Leary’s face on it,
· Charging €2.50 to read the safety cards,
· Charging €1 to use oxygen masks,
· Charging €25 to use the emergency exit,
· Charging €50 for bikini clad Cabin Crew.
Passengers can submit their ideas by email to competition@ryanair.com to enter their idea before the 30th March 2009. The winning idea will be chosen by Ryanair and our decision will be final.”
This spoof of a Ryanair emergency instruction card is proudly displayed on Ryanair’s website.
I’ll be interested to see Ryanair’s final list of new extra charges and their next out-of-the-way but in the midst of major population destination.
