Ryannair

[PhilDernerJr]

So, Ryannair has been rated the worst airline, and they just received their 150th 738. It's clear that though disliked, they are filling a very forced demand, where people are desperate to pay low fares and sacrifice everything else just to get to where they are going.

wever, I read that they are to take on well over another 100 planes. I wonder if they are growing too fast, or if they'll be able to handle such a massive operation, suffering the same issues that others like jetBlue have and still are experiencing.

Even though they are an LCC, I'd think that especially as they grow to such a large operation, that it must get tougher to keep costs low, as so much more is required of your business.

Do you think that they will be able to handle their operations well in the coming years? Do you think their bad reputation will catch up to them, or will people always fly them no matter what?

[Midnight Mike]

Ryan Air is like Southwest, they have good management & a good business plan....

As much as people love to hate Ryan Air, they have one of the best load factors.

Growth? Even though they have accepted their 150th 737-800, they have also retired their older aircraft, so, they are not really growing.....

[Nonstop2AUH]

Ryanair will do fine as long as they keep costs down and are careful in deciding where and how to grow. Doing maintenance and training in Eastern Europe and flying to secondary airports has been key to keeping costs down, so if labor in Eastern Europe became more expensive (likely), if cost of operating at secondary airports went up (not likely), or if they felt a need to enter more expensive 'main airport' markets like LHR or FRA (probably unlikely), those would be problematic. Part of what enables them to keep fares down is apparently their marketing partnerships with other companies, in fact O'Leary has said that if they got enough sponsorship they could fly people for free. That's probably typical MOL hyperbole, but if they had less partner marketing money, that would eliminate some of their cost advantage and I'm sure they'd have to charge more. Not quite sure what to make of O'Leary's "Ryan Atlantic" plan but don't imagine they can expect to bring the level of cost savings to longhaul service that they did to flying within Europe, they should probably stick to what they know best which is low cost flights within Europe on 738s.

As for growing pains and operational issues, they have had a few, including some highly publicized incidents, but none of this has apparently scared any significant number of people from flying Ryanair. With respect to bad service, I think people have come to expect it as the tradeoff for extremely low fares. Many of their pax are people who in the past would have had to take a train or ferry or bus, and they're just happy they can fly at that price point. That said, they've won over some business travelers too, because the value is so compelling. One of my former colleagues who now lives in Germany flies LH business class when he comes to the US but flies Ryanair to the UK, because the price is so low and the flight's too short for service to be much of a deciding factor.

Given that Europe's a big place and Ryanair has quite a few base cities around the continent, I don't see why it can't grow to be at least half the size of Southwest in terms of fleet size, but they have to be smart about it and keep costs in check.