Dispatches...."Ryanair: Caught Napping"

[Baz]

With so much recent discussion about Ryanair, this is advanced notice about Channel 4 current affairs series "Dispatches" being transmitted on Monday 13 February at 8pm UK time.

" A major undercover investigation into the way in which low-cost airline Ryanair operates, revealing security lapses, dirty aircrafts, pilots complaining about the hours they have to fly and exhausted cabin crew. The cynical staff attitudes towards passengers and their welfare are also unmasked"

Baz

[Ron Avery]

What exactly have you got against Ryanair Baz, you a BA shareholder?[:)] 

I'm sure that many people who actually LIVE in France and have businesses linked to tourism here will attest how much we all have to thank Ryanair for.   Frankly, I could not care a toss what a bunch of TV reporters who get business class fares on expenses, found out or made up to make Ryanair look bad   I saw an Air France stewardess asleep at the check-in at Toulouse last week does that make Air France a bad employer or was the girl just overdoing her love or social life?  If you interviewed enough staff from any company you can always find one who will be dissatisfied and willing to dish the dirt or make up yarns.

Personally I have never had anything but first class service for a 5th class fare from Ryanair or its staff, OK none of us like the boarding scrum but for £20 who cares?  I just wish the knockers, most of whom have never used the airline, would get off their backs.  Long live Ryanair ...........and Easy Jet come to that.

 

[Baz]

[quote user="Ron Avery"]

What exactly have you got against Ryanair Baz, you a BA shareholder?[:)] 

[/quote]

Ron, the purpose of my posting was purely for information only, so any interested parties could watch and contained no personal comments from me. Perhaps your comments may be better placed after the transmission of the programme should you choose to watch.

I have nothing against Ryanair but  generally  Dispatches have produced  good current affairs programming in the past and surely it is up to the viewers to decide on the truth of the content be it either negative or positive.

Baz 

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="Ron Avery"]

I'm

sure that many people who actually LIVE in France and have

businesses linked to tourism here will attest how much we all have

to thank Ryanair for.  

[/quote]

Yes and no. Our business is based around the summer months. A family

four looking at the Stansted - La Rochelle route for the end of July

got quoted £853 return for the party off Ryanair's site, net of drinks

and crisps. Fortunately (for us) they contacted us before rejecting the

idea of a family two weeks soaking up the sun in France to see if we

had any bright ideas. "Check BA," we said - £602 inclusive of nuts. We

got the booking.

I've not got anything against Ryanair as such, just that people

naturally assume that they are going to be the cheapest all the time

(its called advertising, I think) and are starting to not bother

checking the competition when they get quoted the inflated summer fares

that Ryanair need to stay in business.

Instead they might go and holiday somewhere other than France. For us,

that is not good. For businesses that take their earnings outside of

the main season (and for me on the odd 99 cent winter cheapie) its

bloody brilliant. Any program or advertising that encourages people to

go and check out alternatives that might be better value rather than to

desert a destination is good.

[Ron Avery]

Jond

BA offer a very limited alternative to Western France so I don't see how that helped youir party if you are near La Rochelle,  Nantes or Bordeaux in the west is the limit to BA's destinations and to Bordeaux you can add BMI baby into the mix.  You must be one of the few who have a business that has not benefitted by Ryanair flying to La Rochelle and other small airfields opening these areas up to more and more tourists who don't want a ferry and a 10 hour drive.

Ryanair do not have sunmmer prices so I do not know where you got that idea from, Their prices are based on demand, so as there is more demand in the summer,  prices are higher, your party either booked too early or too late.   Unless you really have to be on a flight, anyone booking more than 60 days  in advance is quite frankly a mug , because before that date is when Ryanair "pay" for the flight by high fare bookings from "must fly" passengers.  On 60 days from departure they review the flight and if paid for, they now just fill the plane, that is when the bargains are released and the £5 flights become available, as  the flight fills up the price goes up until 14 days before departure, the web fare comes off and standard fares apply and the price goes right up and catches the late bookings.  So the advice to your prospective customers should be "The Independent's  Travel correspondent recommends that you do not book your fllight until 60 days befote you want to fly"[:)]. 

[Ron Avery]

Baz it was a joke, I apologise for any perceived offence.  Having been on the receiving end of one of these fly on the wall programmes in the past,  I am well aware that if they found nothing wrong the programme would be very dull.  Imagine the trailer " We investigated Ryanair and found everone doing their job".  So they seem to have a nose for sniffing out the mouthy gits and troublemakers who will give the company a bad name and be stupid enough not to even realise how stupid they look and how much they are letting down their colleagues for 15 minutes of fame.  Add to that a bit of clever editing and you have a sensationalist story, not withstanding the fact that for every stewardess asleep there are another 100 doing their job properly, but doing the job properly is not news is it?

[BJSLIV]

Unless you really have to be on a flight, anyone booking more than 60 days  in advance is quite frankly a mug ,

Unfortunately many  people are tied to school holidays,holiday rotas fixed month in advance etc etc and are obliged to book months in advance if they want any degree of certainty in their holiday arrangements.

[Owens88]

 >What exactly have you got against Ryanair Baz, you a BA shareholder? I'm sure that many people who >actually LIVE in France and have businesses linked to tourism here will attest how much we all have to >thank Ryanair for.  

Hey up. Ease off a bit. I can remember being an enthusiast of Camra and feeling able to suggest that some Watneys output was ''less than delectable'' without being accused that we were shareholders of competitors.

True the low-cost operators introduced a new 'paradigm' (IT word for 'a new idea' I think ).

True we should readily accept some downgrading of the pampering if we are paying less.

BUT

Safety shouldn't have a price gradient.

AND

(my opinion only) even amongst the low-cost operators Ryanair seem to be the one that will more readily allow customers to suffer rather than the airline be put out at all.

AS somebody with a business in France and benefitting from the low-cost operators I have an interest in Ryanair and others having a sustainable mix of service/price and NOT a hit & run attitude.

 

Having vented all of that. I agree that you don't believ all you see on TV.

Cheers

 

 

 

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[quote user="Ron Avery"]

Jond

BA offer a very limited alternative to Western

France so I don't see how that helped youir party if you are near La

Rochelle,  Nantes or Bordeaux in the west is the limit

to BA's destinations and to Bordeaux you can add BMI baby into the

mix.  You must be one of the few who have a business that has

not benefitted by Ryanair flying to La Rochelle and other small

airfields opening these areas up to more and more tourists who don't

want a ferry and a 10 hour drive.

Ryanair do not have sunmmer prices so I do not

know where you got that idea from, Their prices are based on demand, so

as there is more demand in the summer,  prices are higher,

your party either booked too early or too late.   Unless

you really have to be on a flight, anyone booking

more than 60 days  in advance is quite frankly a mug , because

before that date is when Ryanair "pay" for the flight by high fare

bookings from "must fly" passengers.  On 60 days from departure

they review the flight and if paid for, they now just fill the plane,

that is when the bargains are released and the £5 flights

become available, as  the flight fills up the price goes up

until 14 days before departure, the web fare comes off and

standard fares apply and the price goes right up and catches the

late bookings.  So the advice to your prospective customers

should be "The Independent's  Travel correspondent recommends that

you do not book your fllight until 60 days befote you want to

fly"[:)]. 

[/quote]

Captain Insomnia here!

Ron - I didn't say that we hadn't benefited: if you read my post, what

I said is that people need to check the competition, and that

competition can move around with the seasons quite dramatically.

I am well aware of the geography - La Rochelle is 35 minutes south, Nantes and hour north. Much of a muchness really.

"Ryanair do not have sunmmer prices so I do not know where you got that idea from. Their prices are based on demand, so as there is

more demand in the summer,  prices are higher, your party either booked

too early or too late."

Well,  they got the idea from the

Ryanair website - the dates were 22nd July / 5th August. I see from

this now that the price for the four on the daytime flights is now

£1013 "regular" fare. Maybe Ryanair don't have a summer pricing policy,

though I see that a two week Saturday to Saturday break in September

for 4 comes out at £374 on their "regular" fare, so I could well

understand someone thinking that they had.

"...anyone booking more than 60 days  in advance is quite frankly a mug"

Or they are bound to school holidays, as someone has

already pointed out, and the mugs frankly are those who believe that

any one carrier is always going to be the cheapest and don't bother

checking.

"So the advice to your prospective customers should

be "The Independent's  Travel correspondent recommends that you do not

book your fllight until 60 days befote you want to fly""

I would never be so presumptuous as to suggest to anyone that they

followed a journalist's advice! They might hit me! Have you met some of these people who

work for newspapers???

Back to bed [|-)]

[Iceni]

If "hit and run" means stay in the game while you are making money and then pull out when you don't - that's an excellent idea for all businesses surely ?

For some of us Ryanair is the most convenient as well as (usually) the cheapest though now that the A20 is finished around Cahors Toulouse Blagnac is as close in time as Limoges. At the mo we do not rely on cheap flights to bring us customers, just a way for Di to visit England once a year so we can choose the really cheap time to fly.

As regards customer service pls remember that this is a means to an end not an end in itself.

Safety ? If R breaks the rules they may/may not be punished and we all have to go sometime. With the ever increasing number of flights there will be "incidents" and mid air crashes at some point. Perhaps reducing the "n times a day between LHR and wherever irrespective of how empty" planes would eliminate some risk but I am sure that I am more likely to be injured driving in and around my local area tahn in an occasional cheapie flight.

Sadly I don't own a bit of Ryanair or any of the others but I do applaud what cheaper carriers have done to open up rural France and allow us to travel cheaper and more often than we ever could when BA, Air France etc ruled the roost and charged BF rates.

John

not

[Quillan]

The guy who lives over the road (here in SW France) works in London, he works seven days on, seven days off. I thought he would have big problems in the summer due to the increase in flight costs. He told me he books his flights one year in advance flying from Carcassonne, Perpignan or Gerona depending who offers the best deal. He told me a couple of interesting things, firstly he could get cheap flights all year depending on which courier he used and to where, secondly he discovered that a certain amount of special offers (£1 flights etc) were actually pre programed in to the booking system, you just have to start at Jan 1st then tab 'next' till you find them. Personally I don't have the time for all that but I guess when it's important like with him you make time. The within 60 days thing is not always correct because when buying flights for our daughter we have noticed they go up and down (well down and up actually)  as you get nearer the date you want ot fly.

[Will]

I think - from the trailers I have seen - that the whole point of the programme, and the original post, was the highlighting of safety issues with a particular airline. The fact that it offers cheap flights (and expensive ones as well, by all accounts) is probably not that relevant. I am sure that if a safety expert looks closely at the day-to-day running of many full-fare scheduled airlines they could find similar concerns.

I can't say much more, as I use ferries rather than air travel wherever possible. But I do know a little about maritime safety issues, and feel sure I could go on, let us say, Speedferries, and find something to question. But that's not because Speedferries is a sort of floating equivalent of Ryanair, I found several 'issues' with P&O's ships, particularly the Portsmouth-Cherbourg fast ferry and certain Dover-Calais ships (one of which is now running Portsmouth-Le Havre). Slightly off topic, I know, but I have never seen anything to cause me any concern with the way Brittany Ferries 'ships are run. People think I'm mad to pay their fares so frequently - but I have my reasons, and staying alive is one of them.

Attitude to customers, which I think the programme is also investigating, is another issue entirely (and again P&O springs to mind, though BF doesn't always score too highly either).

[The Riff-Raff Element]

"People think I'm mad to pay their fares so frequently - but I have my reasons, and staying alive is one of them."

This is a very good reason to use ferries. I have been able to swim for

more than 35 years. In contrast, all attempts I have made to get myself

airborne by flapping my arms (even with bits of cardboard attached),

whilst highly amusing to my daughters, have been singular failures.

[Owens88]

[quote user="Iceni"]

If "hit and run" means stay in the game while you are making money and then pull out when you don't - that's an excellent idea for all businesses surely ?

....

As regards customer service pls remember that this is a means to an end not an end in itself.

[/quote]

Perhaps 'Hit & Run' is the wrong term to use for a transport operation (smile) but I was trying to avoid business-school speak.  However. I would sooner that Ryanair and others sorted out a 'position' where they can sell reasonably cheap, and give appropriate customer service, yet be as safe as is needed - and still be around in years to come.

For 'Hit&Run' we might think of the guys selling out of suitcases on street corners .

Beyond that there are cheap shops, corner shops, supermarkets, department stores etc. They are not all giving the same levels of service, but a sandwich from any of them must adhere to standards.

Generally speaking a succesful business is NOT one that gives out the impression that it is only there for the short-term gains.

I want Ryanair to succeed. I think that its important they get things 'right' and if a bit of public criticism helps, well I go back to my example of Camra. (though with my local selling at £2.80 a pint that's a completely off-topic thread).

p.s. They ain't going bust anyway

'Ryanair saw third quarter profits rise 6% to 37 million euros (£25 million) despite "the drag on profitability of very high fuel prices". '