£8 Ryanair Flights to the United States?

Ryanair has proven to be a fascinating business to watch over the last few years. It’s such a great case study for many issues in business. Even if you occasionally weary of oil price and credit crunch news stories (unlikely, I know) the dislikeable but strangely compelling boss of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, will come up with something else to make you sit up and take notice.

O’Leary rubbishes environmentalists and pollsters who single out Ryanair as ‘the world’s least liked airline’. “Ryanair carries more UK passengers than any other airline because it has both lowest fares and the best punctuality and its passengers ignore irrelevant and baseless surveys,” the company famously once said. “The public votes with its feet.”

That is a good cue into a discussion of the concept of ‘quality’, broadly described in Business Studies as being about meeting the needs and expectations of customers effectively. In practical terms, this might mean the cheap flight you picked up got you to your destination – delayed and hassled perhaps (and smarting at being charged a fortune for a sandwich) – but was OK really. What were you expecting?

If the cheap Ryanair £8 flights to the US come true, it’ll be hard to be a dissatisfied customer. How does O’Leary plan to do it? “Economy class will be very cheap, around 10 euros, but our business class will be very expensive,” he said in a newspaper interview. He is also expected to announce plans to buy more than 50 extra aircraft from struggling competitors, as part of plans to beat the recession by undercutting more expensive rivals. His reaction to the Credit Crunch has been “We’ll just have to keep flying more aircraft, opening up more routes and offering people more cheap flights,”

Ryanair profits have dipped recently, but the airline is not dying on its feet like many others. It’s been hurt by high oil prices, but in an interesting way. It took out expensive insurance against high oil prices that turned out to be unnecessary as the oil price has taken a dive.

Oh, and no, you won’t be able to fly to the US for £8. That will only be available on a handful of seats and does not include baggage fees, airport tax, flight taxes, surcharges etc etc. The sort of thing that drives passengers nuts. I dare say that a few of us will ‘vote with their feet’, however.