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Michael O'Leary being incredibly rude is a key part of Ryanair's branding. If you're paying £19 for a two hour flight, you'll always have the sneaking suspicion
by jdietrich 7y ago
Michael O'Leary being incredibly rude is a key part of Ryanair's branding. If you're paying £19 for a two hour flight, you'll always have the sneaking suspicion that the airline is skimping on maintenance. O'Leary makes it absolutely clear that they save money by treating their passengers like cattle. He carefully cultivates the image of a man who utterly despises his own customers, but is far too miserly to allow an aircraft to crash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_O%27Leary_(businessman)#Controversy_and_reputation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_O%27Leary_(businessman...
- fortran77 7y agoI agree. Fellow "cheapskates" who just want to get from Dublin to Edinburgh on a cheap flight probably admire his thrift.
- isostatic 7y agoSuch cheap flights are possible because the airlines aren’t paying the externalities they cause. Ryanair don’t fly to London btw. Or Brussels.
- andrepd 7y agoThey do, to Stanstead and Luton.
- crispyporkbites 7y agoStanstead and Luton are 30-40 miles from London
- andrepd 7y agoThey're 45m-1h by train from Central London.
- isostatic 7y agoBirmingham airport is 1h06 from Central London Brussels itself is only 1h54 from central London!
- scarejunba 7y agoOkay, yeah, but if you were in London, you were flying out of Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, or rarely London City. It took longer for me to get from Tower Bridge to Heathrow than to Gatwick. I don't fly Ryan Air, though. Abhor the air line, but they let my parents take me to Europe when I was younger so there's that. And that distance stuff is normal, because on the longer distances you're going on high-speed trains. If you were a Millwall (a London team) fan who lived just south of The Den and by some divine chance you were to play Arsenal (another London team) at The Emirates (god forbid), it'd take you just as long by transit to get there as it would take someone who's commuting from Market Harborough (80 miles North) to St. Pancras (London's big international rail terminus). But it's laughable to claim that Market Harborough is part of London or that either of the Emirates and the Den are not.
- fyfy18 7y agoThey are less than 1 hour by train, which is about the same as to Heathrow from Oxford Circus. In terms of passenger numbers they are the 4th (STN) and 5th (LTN) busiest airports in the UK, and 22nd and 35th in Europe.
- sprafa 7y agoYou have no idea what you’re talking about and you’re embarrassing yourself. Going to those airports is piss easy and they are 2 of the 4 airports that serve this city.
- dantheman 7y agoWhat externalities are they not paying for that other airlines are? Or is this a complain against all airlines?
- avip 7y agoHe’s provably referring to ghg emissions, and sure no one pays that (it’s also not something we can conceivably pay for)
- isostatic 7y agoQuite possible for Europe to charge landing fees based on ghg emissions for all planes arriving/departing.
- avip 7y agoI’m all for charging fees (especially when the chargee is not me), but fees don’t put CO2 back in the ground.
- isostatic 7y agoThe point is they act as a deterrent. The money raised can be used to mitigate the effects of the emissions.
- benatkin 7y agoThat would be great. I think if they were being aggressive enough, there would probably be less demand for airport expansion, because there would be fewer flights. I don't currently see any way to curtail the carbon from the airline industry that wouldn't involve raising the price so drastically that people would fly less often.
- zaphod4prez 7y agoCap and trade does in fact make it so that polluters pay for ghg emissions. Why do you say that we can't "conceivably pay for"?
- jdietrich 7y agoThey don't serve that route, but they do fly from three airports in London (Gatwick, Stansted and Luton) and from Brussels. https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/cheap-flight-destinations https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/cheap-flight-destinations
- 7952 7y agoNone of those airports are actually in London.
- sprafa 7y agoLol wtf? Only one airport is “in” london and that’s London City. Which is an expensive thing mostly made for bankers to go to Frankfurt etc. I assure you all those airports serve London. I live here
- 7952 7y agoYeah, I know it's just semantics. I have wasted too much of my time in delayed trains trying to get into London to believe that. And based on travel times you could add some other airports to that list of London Airports. Southampton Airport is faster to get to than Stansted or Luton for a lot of Londoners. And with HS2 BHX could probably change its name too.
- tcharlton 7y agoLondon Ashford is closer to France. I wonder if the airport would close if the CEO admitted that...
- sprafa 7y agoI had no idea there was such a thing!
- sprafa 7y agoI’ve never had a Stansted Express be late more than 10 min, and I live in east london so it’s super fast to get to Liverpool St. I suppose your travel time varies a lot.
- georgiecasey 7y agoif you're saying stansted and gatwick aren't really in london, then neither is heathrow. it's a small list of airlines that fly to/from london city airport
- briandear 7y agoWhat externalities are those and exactly how much are they worth? What is the precise monetary amount and how did you calculate it? And did you price in the value of that traveler to the destination? How about the value of the resources not consumed if that traveler would have stayed home? It’s complicated. It isn’t so naïve as just “externalities of the airplane.”
- sprafa 7y agoThey don’t fly to london? I live in London and I fly Ryanair from london Stansted all the time
- peteretep 7y ago> Ryanair don’t fly to London btw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airports_of_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airports_of_London
- mytailorisrich 7y agoAnd they probably swear more than he does.
- smcl 7y agoNo, Ryanair passengers don’t admire anything about Michael O’Leary. They pay the fare (and the surcharges, and the charge to pay by card) and then tolerate the journey. No passenger thinks he’s a lovable scamp or a shrewd businessman. They just buy the fare they can afford and justify, if it happens to be Ryanair then ... grin and bear it.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoDidn't think they were allowed to charge extra to pay by card in the EU anymore?
- downandout 7y agoHe carefully cultivates the image of a man who utterly despises his own customers, but is far too miserly to allow an aircraft to crash. That image will keep them going right up until they have a fatal crash, at which point the press, the government, and victims’ attorneys will use every word he has ever said about being cheap to crucify him and the company. Given their volume of flights, a fatal crash is statistically likely to happen at some point. I would be very careful ever making such statements if I were in such an industry.
- blackflame7000 7y agoThey've never had a major crash in almost 35 years. Other budget airlines with few customer perks like southwest have survived crashes with a less stellar safety record.
- downandout 7y agoOther budget airlines with few customer perks like southwest have survived crashes with a less stellar safety record. True, but Southwest does not have a CEO that openly flaunts their being cheap either. They've never had a major crash in almost 35 years. I once won 15 hands of blackjack in a row, but then I lost a hand. Even the most expensive airlines eventually have fatal incidents, and it would be statistically improbable for Ryanair to not eventually have one as well. They may have an amazing safety record and stellar maintenance program, but the nature of flight is such that it is likely to eventually happen (perhaps through no fault of their own) if they are in business long enough. Whether “cheapness” will actually be a factor in that incident or not, people will take his prior statements and run with them. All I was saying is that making such statements in a high-risk industry is not a fantastic idea, as those words may come back to bite him.
- sprafa 7y agoYou’re making no sense. You’re saying Ryanair has an impeccable safety record, but so does every other airline, but when Ryanair gets a crash, people will assume it’s because it’s cheap? So your entire argument is people are dumb and they will make unwarranted associations. Brilliant
- notahacker 7y agoMore straightforwardly, the reputation for being massive cheapskates gets its target market of people who don't care about airlines at all and just want a good deal knowing who they are and going straight to Ryanair.com to buy tickets when they need to fly. Which means that (i) they'll lookup the price and be upsold a package on Ryanair.com rather than finding the price and a different hotel deal on some other price comparison site and (ii) they'll still buy tickets from Ryanair.com at non-promotional rates when they're actually not the cheapest airline offering a viable route and time. And of course (iii) he can fill his flights without sharing revenues with online travel agents and other affiliates, though other low cost airlines without the reputation for taking things to extreme lengths manage that. Although part of it's probably just his style. Not sure there was any strategy to his comments that "I don't care if no-one likes me. I'm not a cloud bunny or an aerosexual. I don't like aeroplanes. I never wanted to be a pilot like those other platoons of goons who populate the airline industry..."
- Angostura 7y agoI used to use Ryanair... until I found out how they treated wheelchair users. I'm happy for myself to be treated like a piece of meat. Not other, more vulnerable users. Screw Ryanair.
- HyperTalk2 7y agoNo one knows what you're talking about. I'll hazard a guess. Is it the SINGLE INCIDENT ONE YEAR AGO where someone broke the rules by not folding their wheelchair because they didn't know how to do it? Something that no one else has ever complained about because people typically know how to fold their own wheelchair? Something that WASN'T EVEN A PROBLEM because the woman was later able to figure it out and was rebooked to the flight the next day for free?
- juped 7y agoCan you provide details? It seems likely that this incident was overblown in the press but I'd like to know more.
- tim333 7y agoAs an occasional Ryanair user they don't really treat you like cattle and he doesn't seem to despise his customers though if certain ones piss him off he won't necessarily cover that up. People are so snobby about it - I'd never fly a cheap service with cheap people - I'm better than that kind of vibe. Ryanair is run kind of like a bus service really - pay modest money and they ship you from A to B.
- sprafa 7y agoPretty much. They don’t even disguise it - their whole marketing is “if you want to fly cheap fly Ryanair” that’s it.
- ant6n 7y agoI've never had a bus service as bad as Ryanair. You get WiFi, and it's usually to & from downtown, it is cramped but reasonable, and the customer/business relationship usually dies not feel adversarial.
- alexhutcheson 7y agoCome to the US and ride a Greyhound then.
- ant6n 7y agoThat's a bit presumptious, isn't it. Half my experience is on Greyhound, and a couple of years ago they started using a new bus fleet with more legroom, wifi, leather-ish seats, plugs at all seats.
- alexhutcheson 7y agoSorry I meant it jokingly. Last time I rode them (which was admittedly some time ago) their operational practices were still a complete mess. If they’ve improved that’s nice.
- rwmurrayVT 7y ago
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y agoTIL. I remember seeing incredibly rudely worded Ryanair signs at an airport. That was the final straw to make me not consider the airline for future flights. I am fine with cost-cutting, but rudeness does not save money. Ironically, I was extremely happy with everything after baggage drop-off. The flight itself was no worse than any other airline, in my eyes (I don't consider ads to meaningfully worsen a flight). The airport (Hahn, serving almost only Ryanair back then) was amazing, with super-friendly airport (not airline!) staff and short walking distances. But their atrocious web site (AFAIK checking in required you to concatenate two random values and enter them in one form field, in the one working flow out of the 3-4 that were offered) and their outright, aggressive rudeness left a much stronger permanent impression than the (probably low) price, the two-hour bus ride to the middle-of-nowhere airport, or the flight itself.
- Scown 7y agoThis isn't really the case anymore. Can't remember when but he was thoroughly reined in a little while ago. All the shock troll PR about standing seats and paid toilets worked for a while til it didn't. They're just a cheap, no-frills airline now.
- vmurthy 7y agoThere's a wonderful book out there called "Different" by Professor Youngme Moon [1] which details a few cases like what you said. Her book is about how companies can be different One case that comes to mind is Ikea with this DIY approach. Is it the most convenient way to buy furniture? Not really given the work you need to do. Prof Moon argues that this paradoxically creates a stickiness to the brand because you have invested something (time and effort). Another one is the "In-n-out" burger joint(Forgive me if I have gotten the name wrong). Apparently, it takes a full 15-20 minutes to get a burger here but it is thriving in-spite of this difficulty because people know they're not getting some frozen processed food. [1]https://www.amazon.in/Different-Escaping-Competitive-Youngme-Moon-ebook/dp/B0036S4CNE https://www.amazon.in/Different-Escaping-Competitive-Youngme...
- st1ck 7y agoRyanair goes quite farther than just no-frills. They are actively preying on unprepared travellers for additional charges: 48-hour online check-in window, seats allocated in a way that you don't sit together with your partner/family, non-EU citizens must _print_ boarding passes event if airport and other LCCs don't require this.