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> It's actually absurd that it costs me ~£15-25 to fly from London Stansted to Hamburg (1 hr flight) This isn't really fair. You're looking at the cheapest pos

> It's actually absurd that it costs me ~£15-25 to fly from London Stansted to Hamburg (1 hr flight) This isn't really fair. You're looking at the cheapest possible fare - a loss leader - that few people actually pay. And those that do pay it end up paying significantly more in ancillary fees. You pay ~$30 for a personal item onboard, ~$50 for a checked bag. The right way to figure out more or less what folks are actually paying to get between Stansted and Hamburg is looking at PRASM (passenger revenue per available seat mile) but I can't seem to find a published number for European LCCs.

bowsamic 4y ago
> You're looking at the cheapest possible fare - a loss leader - that few people actually pay. And those that do pay it end up paying significantly more in ancillary fees. Not at all. My parents visited and they didn't bring a bag. Just because Ryanair pressure you into paying more, doesn't mean that you have to. When I went home I took one carry on bag between my wife and I, so I payed the extra £20, still WAY cheaper. It's a fair comparison EDIT: I can't reply because rate limited (as always). Fuck HN. You can't seriously compare flying on Ryanair with just a carry-on rucksack to swimming the English channel. That's absurd. And even with the added baggage it is still way cheaper. You can still bring a carry-on rucksack on your Ryanair flight for that base price, and many people do. You get one carry-on for free, and have to pay for the additional carry-on and/or a checked bag. A carry-on rucksack is easily enough for a weekend visit, or even a week if you stretch it. Why are you treating it like some kind of insane thing to do? > How much time and money did you pay to get to and from the airport? How early do you need to be at the airport for check-in/boarding? How long does it take to get out of the plane and out on the street? 2 hours for check-in, and maybe an hour to get out. It doesn't cost anything to get to and from the airport for me. So sure that's a reasonable amount of time, but in the end it's still way cheaper, and I'd arrive at the HBF in advance anyway. The point is that Hamburg -> Munich should be cheaper than London -> Hamburg
- arcticbull 4y ago
  It doesn't matter what you or your family did, it matters what folks do on average. It's possible to swim the english channel free of charge, but that doesn't make $0 a fair comparison against the train. You don't benchmark Costco by the price of its rotisserie chicken. Ryanair isn't flying planes just for you, they're flying them for average customers, so it makes sense to compare average fares. What if there's only two $15 tickets made available per flight? The problem is you don't know how many they're making available at a given price point or how they're distributed - it's a trade secret. That doesn't make cherry-picking the lowest possible value a fair comparison point.
  - InCityDreams 4y ago
    What would you consider a fair comparison? Oh, i and all my friends often go no-bag. I have clothing in four different countries. My mother has a wardrobe of things at my place and my sisters. She flies with nothing, too.
    - arcticbull 4y ago
      Again these are anecdotes. I've certainly done that too but I've also paid $200+ for a short hop on Ryainair when it was the cheapest option, picked an extra legroom seat and checked a bag too. The point is that expensive fares and ancillary fees subsidize cheap loss-leader fares. It's a complex system and you have to consider it as a whole instead of looking just at the subsidized loss-leaders when making a cross-mode comparison. I would consider a fair comparison point to be for a given flight: 1. Sum total spent on airfare by all passengers on a flight - PLUS. 2. Sum total spent on ancillary services by all passengers on a flight. 3. Divided by the number of passengers on a flight. And average it out across all flights between the city pair over a year to eliminate the effects of seasonality and timing. Without having access to Ryanair's revenue management data this is the best we can do.
- rglullis 4y ago
  How much time and money did you pay to get to and from the airport? How early do you need to be at the airport for check-in/boarding? How long does it take to get out of the plane and out on the street? There is no such thing as "one-hour flights".
- rglullis 4y ago
  If you don't see the reply button, please just wait a bit instead of editing your own answer. It helps to give you (and your interlocutor) a chance to have a more thoughtful discussion. But if you really can't wait to write down your witty comeback, here is a trick: the reply button is only hidden when it's a thread, if click on the link to the comment that you want to reply to, you will see the text area for replying. Anyway, back to the regular schedule... > It doesn't cost anything to get to and from the airport for me. Of course it does. At the minimum, it is the price of the train ticket to get you back to the city. If someone is picking you up at the airport, they are paying for parking and their time to travel back and forth. > The point is that Hamburg -> Munich should be cheaper than London -> Hamburg The issue is that your plane ticket does not include all the externalities that it should. You are being subsidized by other passengers and you are not paying for environmental damage caused by the plane, the cost of the infrastructure to support the airport, etc, etc.
zihotki 4y ago
People should be comparing the final price from door to door instead of just a ticket price. Transfer isn't free.
- bowsamic 4y ago
  I use my 9 euro ticket to get the S bahn directly to Hamburg airport, then my dad picks me up from Stansted

bowsamic 4y ago

> You're looking at the cheapest possible fare - a loss leader - that few people actually pay. And those that do pay it end up paying significantly more in ancillary fees. Not at all. My parents visited and they didn't bring a bag. Just because Ryanair pressure you into paying more, doesn't mean that you have to. When I went home I took one carry on bag between my wife and I, so I payed the extra £20, still WAY cheaper. It's a fair comparison EDIT: I can't reply because rate limited (as always). Fuck HN. You can't seriously compare flying on Ryanair with just a carry-on rucksack to swimming the English channel. That's absurd. And even with the added baggage it is still way cheaper. You can still bring a carry-on rucksack on your Ryanair flight for that base price, and many people do. You get one carry-on for free, and have to pay for the additional carry-on and/or a checked bag. A carry-on rucksack is easily enough for a weekend visit, or even a week if you stretch it. Why are you treating it like some kind of insane thing to do? > How much time and money did you pay to get to and from the airport? How early do you need to be at the airport for check-in/boarding? How long does it take to get out of the plane and out on the street? 2 hours for check-in, and maybe an hour to get out. It doesn't cost anything to get to and from the airport for me. So sure that's a reasonable amount of time, but in the end it's still way cheaper, and I'd arrive at the HBF in advance anyway. The point is that Hamburg -> Munich should be cheaper than London -> Hamburg

arcticbull 4y ago
It doesn't matter what you or your family did, it matters what folks do on average. It's possible to swim the english channel free of charge, but that doesn't make $0 a fair comparison against the train. You don't benchmark Costco by the price of its rotisserie chicken. Ryanair isn't flying planes just for you, they're flying them for average customers, so it makes sense to compare average fares. What if there's only two $15 tickets made available per flight? The problem is you don't know how many they're making available at a given price point or how they're distributed - it's a trade secret. That doesn't make cherry-picking the lowest possible value a fair comparison point.
- InCityDreams 4y ago
  What would you consider a fair comparison? Oh, i and all my friends often go no-bag. I have clothing in four different countries. My mother has a wardrobe of things at my place and my sisters. She flies with nothing, too.
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    Again these are anecdotes. I've certainly done that too but I've also paid $200+ for a short hop on Ryainair when it was the cheapest option, picked an extra legroom seat and checked a bag too. The point is that expensive fares and ancillary fees subsidize cheap loss-leader fares. It's a complex system and you have to consider it as a whole instead of looking just at the subsidized loss-leaders when making a cross-mode comparison. I would consider a fair comparison point to be for a given flight: 1. Sum total spent on airfare by all passengers on a flight - PLUS. 2. Sum total spent on ancillary services by all passengers on a flight. 3. Divided by the number of passengers on a flight. And average it out across all flights between the city pair over a year to eliminate the effects of seasonality and timing. Without having access to Ryanair's revenue management data this is the best we can do.
rglullis 4y ago
How much time and money did you pay to get to and from the airport? How early do you need to be at the airport for check-in/boarding? How long does it take to get out of the plane and out on the street? There is no such thing as "one-hour flights".
rglullis 4y ago
If you don't see the reply button, please just wait a bit instead of editing your own answer. It helps to give you (and your interlocutor) a chance to have a more thoughtful discussion. But if you really can't wait to write down your witty comeback, here is a trick: the reply button is only hidden when it's a thread, if click on the link to the comment that you want to reply to, you will see the text area for replying. Anyway, back to the regular schedule... > It doesn't cost anything to get to and from the airport for me. Of course it does. At the minimum, it is the price of the train ticket to get you back to the city. If someone is picking you up at the airport, they are paying for parking and their time to travel back and forth. > The point is that Hamburg -> Munich should be cheaper than London -> Hamburg The issue is that your plane ticket does not include all the externalities that it should. You are being subsidized by other passengers and you are not paying for environmental damage caused by the plane, the cost of the infrastructure to support the airport, etc, etc.

zihotki 4y ago

People should be comparing the final price from door to door instead of just a ticket price. Transfer isn't free.

bowsamic 4y ago
I use my 9 euro ticket to get the S bahn directly to Hamburg airport, then my dad picks me up from Stansted