Tuesday 29 June 2010

OMG is it that time of the year already?

29 June 2010:

Ryanair cuts flights in row over tourist tax. Budget airline Ryanair is to slash its flights by almost a fifth. It will carry two million fewer passengers this winter. The cutbacks include a 17 per cent reduction in services at Stansted airport, where the Irish no-frills carrier will be handling 1.5 million fewer passengers than last winter.

Ryanair will also cut winter flights at most of its other UK bases, except Edinburgh and Leeds Bradford. Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary cited the “damaging” Air Passenger Duty airport departure tax as a reason for the reduction...


21 July 2009:

Budget airline Ryanair has announced a reduction in its services at Stansted Airport, blaming higher charges. Ryanair will reduce the number of aircraft it runs at the airport by 40% in its winter schedule, and will cut the number of flights by 30%, it said...

The company said that Stansted was one of its most expensive bases, and added that an increase in air passenger duty tax was also a factor in its decision. The airline operated 40 aircraft from Stansted in the summer, but said this would fall to 24 this winter.


July 17 2008:

Ryanair, the cut-price Irish airline, today announced it will withdraw nearly a third of its aircraft from London's Stansted airport and suspend operations at seven other European airports because of higher fuel costs and airport fees. Michael O'Leary, chief executive at Ryanair, said his airline would operate 28 aircraft out of Stansted, down from 40.

It is the second straight year that Ryanair has reduced its activities at Stansted for its October to March winter period...

4 comments:

Steven_L said...

Well spotted. Everyone will have you down as one of these anoraks that write down the serial numbers of Airbus's now.

Mark Wadsworth said...

S_L, Ryanair does this every year; I do this every year. It's just that time of year.

Woman on a Raft said...

What we really need now is a strange animal, preferably a snake, being found in the Ryanair toilets and the staff trying to charge it a pound.

Anonymous said...

Look, now is "that time of year" when the Ryanair "Counting how many planes we have" man comes out of hibernation, goes and counts all the planes and then tells Michael O'Leary the "bad news" that Ryanair has fewer planes than the "advance departure schedules" would suggest, and that "quite a lot of people who have booked flights are going to be sitting around in airports waiting for planes that are never going to arrive". Michael has a quick word with the PR department and they dust off that handy "for reasons beyond our control Ryanair reluctantly announce that the costs charged by Stansted Airport are such that we cannot afford to have the planes we don't actually have landing there, so we are cutting back on our Stansted operations and focusing the planes we do have on other airports" press release and release it again. The release also explains that "The inconvenience to people expecting us to have as many planes as the flights we advertise and sell seats on "well in advance" so customers "maximise their savings by booking ahead" whilst we "maximise the period their money is on deposit in our bank account" is of course, deeply deeply regretted" and adds that "customers not now going to be flying anywhere with us from Stansted might eventually get their money back, we are waiting on legal advice".