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Comment by jdietrich | Hacker News Reader

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...

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More 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..."

I 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.

They already know the deal when they buy.

When people die from the way they let people wait, you tend to have a different vision of the whole thing than “you get what you pay for”.

When you entrust care of people you love to a company, you tend to expect more than capitalism tuned to the extreme.

And before you ask, yes, that’s exactly what happened to a family member of mine. “Wheelchair assistance” never showed up.

What are wheelchair users vulnerable to besides physical assault? They can still travel just as readily as able-bodied people in planes, cars, trains, boats, etc. Neither can simply walk across the sea to another country.

(ii) and (iii) evokes parallels to amazon.

I agree it’s all marketing for people who feel they can barely afford to fly (but need to fly anyway), and who don’t use/trust comparison sites (middlemen).

I wonder if the aggressive upselling during the booking flow is part of this marketing too. If you really want the cheapest possible flight you will carefully decline all upsells and double-check the final bill for surcharges. This makes you feel you’ve shrewdly whittled the price down as far as possible.

Another way of looking at it is it just wears the customer down. If the booking flow were too smooth and didn’t include many points where the customer is forced to decline added luxuries, then you might be more likely to pause before confirming the transaction, and maybe open EasyJet’s site for a quick price comparison.

As 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.

Pretty much. They don’t even disguise it - their whole marketing is “if you want to fly cheap fly Ryanair” that’s it.

I'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.

Come to the US and ride a Greyhound then.

That'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.

Sorry 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.

I took a greyhound back from prison. We broke down in Cumberland, MD and I spent 8 hours on the side of the interstate. The guy I was with said he takes the route 3x a week and it has happened to him 6 times in the last year. No WiFi but we did have plugs.

I rode the Pittsburgh to Washington D.C./Baltimore route on May 20th 2019.

So are you expecting WiFi in every single airline that you fly?

I flew only once with Ryan air, my experience was that I was forced to pay 80 gbp because I hadn't checked in online (when no other airlines force you to do that) and they had us all wait on the tarmac under the rain for 45 minutes before boarding. Plus seats were really cramped.

So, no not worth it for the slight difference of price they offer.

You wanted to play the game, but didn't care to lookup the rules.

Well, I didn't have a choice back then to fly ryanair, they were the only flight that flew from where I was to my destination. I just assumed that they followed the same rules as every single other airlines I had ever flown.

Ryanair make their own rules, other budget airlines have started to follow them now too. As a precaution I never fly without checking in online before reaching the airport.

They can be a bit crap like that but I think I've been stung by a similar fee (luggage small print) about once in 50 flights so it still works out cheaper than most rivals. Choosing to delay your return by a day is also often expensive.

There'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...

I agree. Fellow "cheapskates" who just want to get from Dublin to Edinburgh on a cheap flight probably admire his thrift.

Such cheap flights are possible because the airlines aren’t paying the externalities they cause.

Ryanair don’t fly to London btw. Or Brussels.

They do, to Stanstead and Luton.

Stanstead and Luton are 30-40 miles from London

They're 45m-1h by train from Central London.

Birmingham airport is 1h06 from Central London

Brussels itself is only 1h54 from central London!

Okay, 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.

They 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.

You 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.

What externalities are they not paying for that other airlines are? Or is this a complain against all airlines?

He’s provably referring to ghg emissions, and sure no one pays that (it’s also not something we can conceivably pay for)

Quite possible for Europe to charge landing fees based on ghg emissions for all planes arriving/departing.

I’m all for charging fees (especially when the chargee is not me), but fees don’t put CO2 back in the ground.

The point is they act as a deterrent. The money raised can be used to mitigate the effects of the emissions.

That 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.

Cap 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"?

Well, the issues I'm aware of: Ryanair pay their staff poorly. And that is not cheap enough, so they also employ them under employment law from "cheap countries", to try and circumvent income taxes and other charges of the local countries they service.

Ryanair demand subsidies from local governments to fly to far-flung airports. They can hold these governments hostage, as often the airports fail if they stop their service. Of course, this could be seen as simply "bad management" by our local governments.

And to finish, though this is something that applies to all airlines : no VAT or "eco" tax, that the rest of us have to pay.

People seem to be using the economic word “externalities” as “things I don’t like”.

That is what externality means -- "a side effect or consequence of an industrial or commercial activity that affects other parties without this being reflected in the cost of the goods or services involved." (unless this person is affecting the cost somehow as a result of this dislike)

In a sense, economics is entirely about what people like and dislike.

No, an externality is an impact you create that isn't a part of your business model. It can be positive or negative. Most of the time people talk about negative externalities these days, especially with airlines, they're talking about profiting from climate change. (Although I don't know that Ryanair is worse than anyone else.)

So if we priced airlines in regards to all of their externalities, they would have to pay for climate change but would get a portion of the all revenue derived by business trips (ie. the time saved traveling by air compared to other modes of transport and what the employees traveling would have been able to produce during that time). I wonder if they would end up better off under that system.

They’re already capturing those benefits - they are among the reasons customers buy tickets and thus contribute to the price.

I’m sure positive externalities are a thing, but direct benefits to one party in a transaction aren’t externalities.

In the same sense the climate change effects are also priced in as most people in the west use air travel or add enough carbon via other means to have to be personally responsible for any ill effects.

In the OPs example, hiring low wage labor, is in fact reflected in the price.

Can you explain more about how Ryanair refusing to fly to far-flung airports without a subsidy is an externality?

Someone else is paying for something they are using. Better still:they're getting paid to use it.

Of course, nobody is twisting the arm of these politicians. But the fact remains that Ryanair is exploiting this weakness to avoid paying themselves.

Type "Ryanair airport subsidies" in google and have a look at the first couple of titles. It's a mess that has been going on for 10 years now and is only now slowly being called a halt to.

https://www.transportenvironment.org/press/24-ryanair-airpor...

They 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

None of those airports are actually in London.

Lol 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

Yeah, 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.

London Ashford is closer to France. I wonder if the airport would close if the CEO admitted that...

I had no idea there was such a thing!

I’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.

if 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

Heathrow is in the London borough of Hillingdon, in TFL zone 6 on the underground, and served by London buses 24/7

You’re having a laugh. Living in east london I can get to Stansted far faster than Heathrow or Gatwick.

They don’t fly to london? I live in London and I fly Ryanair from london Stansted all the time

> Ryanair don’t fly to London btw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airports_of_London

And they probably swear more than he does.

No, 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.

Didn't think they were allowed to charge extra to pay by card in the EU anymore?

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.

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.

They'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.

Other 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.

You’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

I didn’t say they have an impeccable safety record. I said that even if they did have one at the time of whatever fatal incident they have in the future, they are engaged in a business where they are statistically likely to eventually have a crash.

My argument is that it is idiotic for a CEO in such an industry to make comments about being cheap. It leaves the door open for people to place blame when an accident occurs. It’s like talking to the police if they want to interrogate you. It can’t help, but it can hurt. Why would you risk it?

Which Southwest crashes are you thinking about? They have never lost a passenger in a crash, though one person on the ground was killed in Chicago. There have been two accidental passenger deaths. One was due to engine failure, not a crash, and the other was a passenger who tried to get into the cockpit and died after being restrained.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines#Accidents_a...

^^ this.

Southwest has one of the best, if not the best, safety records of all major air carriers.

The point is that Ryanair is the best.

They are smaller than Southwest on most (not all) metrics, but in the same ballpark.

Their only accident is a bird strike causing 8 minor injuries.

How can you say an airline that is 35 years old is clearly better than one that is 52 years old based on total anything?

Admittedly I thought they had more than they do because of all the hoopla about 737s. I guess the one recent incident that comes to mind is the broken fan blade incident that killed a passenger. That could easily be attributed to lack of maintenance but it blew over relatively fast. However, the heroics of the captain created a different story.

I would never dream of thinking Ryanair skimps one aircraft maintenance. I’d be concerned by their cabin crew performance given the conditions they work in though.

I think their fleet is quite new as well, and they keep it that way, for fuel efficiency.

The guy is doing a cheap airline, not an unsafe one. He’s not a madman. He’s a ruthless business guy, and he knows a crash due to poor maintenance would end his business.

He's never said his planes are unsafe.

Why would Ryanair ever have a crash? Their airplanes are usually quite new. The EU hasn’t had an accidental plane crash in ages. Have you ever flown Ryanair?

Hang on, the EU has had heaps from small (the Piper that went down over the Alps yesterday and the plane carrying Emiliano Sala come to mind) to large (Air France 447).

I meant large passenger planes. And I meant accidental crashes within the EU territory not extraterritorial. I believe the safety record is pretty good, but can’t tell you it’s perfect

Both Boeing 737 Max planes which recently crashed were also almost brand new.

I have flown Ryanair a few times, I’d rather not go than take them today though.

Why would Ryanair ever have a crash?

Because they hurl large, heavy, metal objects with people on them into the sky at hundreds of miles per hour, thousands of times per day. Historically, that activity has resulted in some small percentage of those flights not coming down safely. The math says that it is quite likely to happen over the course of enough flights.

> Given their volume of flights, a fatal crash is statistically likely to happen at some point.

Has Ryanair flown more flights than all the domestic and international commercial jet flights in Australian history? Because there has never been a crash of a commercial jet here despite several near misses.

Safety culture and training has more of a bearing than statistics.

TIL. 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.

This 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.

Ryanair 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.

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