Ryanair... again!

Sorry to keep posting on this subject, but I am spending too much time "waiting" to travel as opposed to actually travelling...

In my last post, I told the story of the outbound journey to my current work place... Today's post is about the inbound journey.

I am lucky enough to be able to come back home every week end and see my family. I use the airline mentioned in the title, as they are cheap and they have planes...!

Anyway, at about the same time they changed the time for the outcbound flights, they also changed the time for the inbound flights: this is now scheduled 2 hours before the previous time (i.e. it was flying at 14:30 and is now at 12:30).

With the old schedule, I could leave work at 12:30 and be there on time to catch my plane. That left me with plenty of time on the Friday to do what I have to do.

But now, I have to leave work at 10:30 on the Friday in order to go back home! There is no other flight until the next day if I miss this one!

Needless to say, this new schedule does not work really well with my co-workers and client(!), and I can feel that people are looking at me in a strange way when I tell them that my day finishes so early.

My problem however does not reside in how to deal with this. My problem lies in the fact that since Ryanair have changed the schedule for this flight, they have not ONCE been on time when I used the service. The best they did was last week where it was only 30 mns late. But on average it has been 60 to 75 minutes delayed....

You know what it feels like? It feels like the time Ryanair give to their passengers for departure are systematically false. Is this another way to ensure that people booked on the plane will be there and ready for when the plane really lands so that your plane can be even more in the air than they are today?

If this is the case, good thinking Batman, 'cause I do my best to be there at the time that is communicated to me when I book, so it works.

However, here is another bit of thinking Mr O'Leary: I travel every week, back and forth. Thats 2 flights a week, so I pay for 2 seats per week on one of your planes. I will project my usage for the last 4 months and say that I will be doing this for 1 year. That's 52 weeks, to which I will substract 8 weeks for holiday. You can therefore assume that I will be commuting 44 weeks per year. At 2 seats per week, that's 88 seats per year that I use and pay on your planes...

I fly on Boeing 737-800, capacity 189 people. The number of sits I will use and pay for per year is about 46% of a full plane.

My point is that I am not satisfied with the service I am getting. I f I could, I would actually use another airline. And it is not just the price: my customer actually pays for these, so I don't really care how much the flights cost to be honest (although I hate to waste, and I don't see why a free drink oin board should cost £200 on the ticket.).

Anyway, when I stop using Ryanair, you will loose nearly 1/2 a plane for 1 of its rotation. Not much I hear you say.

Let's just imagine that 1 more person has the same usage patern than me and decides to ditch it at the same time. That would be 1 of your planes grounded due to no passengers for 1 of its rotation.

Still not too impressive I hear you say, because you have 90 of these planes, and because each of your planes can do up to, say, 5 rotations. per day.

Some more opinions on Ryanair can be found here. I have not counted exactly how many dissatisfied people expressed themselves there, but there areroughly 100 of them. And that's only 1 site...

So now, lets imagine that all these 100 people have the same usage pattern than me and also decide to not use your company. That would be a loss equivalent of more than HALF OF ALL your planes not to take off for one of their rotations.

For an equivalent of ALL your planes not to take off for one rotation, we need 200 people being really unhappy with the service they receive. And, still in equivalence, for all your planes to be grounded for a full day, we only need 5 times this number.

To conclude, it does not look like a complete impossibility that this happends one day. How much would this hurt your company?

Looking at this from an opportunity angle, how could listening to your customers contribute to your growth strategy? Probably more than you can imagine right now.