Ryanair

[TheLocalYokel]

I agree with regards to the Dublin overkill, however it would be good for the two airlines to coexist but I can't really see it happening. However with base fares both around the £20.00 mark, it could sway either way when people come to book.

Interestingly, the timings for the FR DUB route seem a bit more randomly timed for Summer 2011.

Hello coffeebeans,

Good to have another poster with an interest in BRS. I hope you will become involved regularly in this forum.

In summer 2011 more of the Dublin rotations are to be operated by BRS-based aircraft than in the past.

In summer 2010 only the late afternoon rotation was a BRS responsibility with the other two daily rotations worked by DUB-based aircraft.

In summer 2011 only the morning rotation will be a DUB responsibility together with the evening rotation on Saturdays.

The three daily rotations are timetabled for the same times each day except for the evening Saturday, when the inbound and outbound timings are reversed, and the morning Sunday which operates later than during the rest of the week.

I'm off to Dublin in the spring for a few days and my wife and I are using the Aer Lingus (Aer Arann) service from BRS.

The total return fare for us both comes to £139, which includes the booking fee and one checked-in bag in each direction. Ryanair's price for the same dates and roughly the same times (a bit later coming back in the evening) was about £20 cheaper overall, including booking fees and checked-in baggage. However, neither of us are keen on Ryanair and in fact my wife refuses to fly with them, having read some horror stories about their lack of customer care when things go wrong. I hope Aer Lingus don't let us down now.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

[textarea]Bumper Cheltenham Forecast as Ryanair Bookings Jump

Ryanair, the world’s favourite airline, today (7th Mar) forecast a bumper Cheltenham NH Festival with over 10,000 Irish punters descending on the UK’s premier jump racing festival after snapping up Ryanair’s lowest fares to East Midlands, Birmingham and Bristol Airports during the week of 14 – 19 March next. In response to record demand Ryanair has added 22 extra flights during the week long festival including four extra St Patrick’s Day flights for the Ryanair Chase, the feature event on Thursday 17th March.

The prize money for the Grade 1 Ryanair Chase has risen from £250,000 to £260,000, to make it one of the most valuable races at the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival in 2011. Ryanair is the official airline of the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival.

Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said:

“This year’s Cheltenham Festival looks set to be a bumper one with Ryanair bookings on routes to Birmingham, Bristol and East Midlands already ahead of the corresponding period last year. Most passengers snapped up early deals so to respond to this enormous demand Ryanair has added 22 extra flights to maximize the availability of low fares to the Cheltenham Festival.

“We hope that 2011 will see an Irish winner of the Ryanair Chase and Ryanair will be working closely with the Cheltenham Festival to ensure that the St Patrick’s Day Grade 1 Ryanair Chase is the highlight of another great Festival.”[/textarea]
http://www.ryanair.com/en/news/bumper-c ... kings-jump

 

[TheLocalYokel]

[textarea]Ryanair celebrates six million passengers at Bristol Airport

Ryanair reached a major landmark today (Monday 14 March 2011) when the airline carried its six millionth passenger from Bristol Airport.

Keely Jarvis from Aberdare, South Wales was the lucky six millionth passenger when she landed at Bristol Airport on the Ryanair flight from Dublin. To mark the occasion, Keely was presented with a bottle of champagne by Ryanair’s Sales and Marketing Executive, Maria Macken. She also received a pair of return tickets to Valencia with Ryanair from Bristol.

The landmark coincides with the start of a busy week for Ryanair, with thousands of passengers flying in during the four day Cheltenham Festival. This continues the influx of Irish passengers to Bristol Airport which began at the weekend with Irish rugby fans en route to the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff for Saturday’s Six Nations clash with Wales.

Starting with just one route in 1997, Ryanair now bases five aircraft at Bristol Airport, serving 29 destinations, including the addition of Ibiza from 28 March. Other popular routes include Venice, Beziers, Malta and Marrakesh.[/textarea]
http://www.bristolairport.co.uk/news-an ... n-pax.aspx

Ryanair actually opened a BRS base three and a half years ago with two based aircraft. Prior to that it operated routes to Dublin, Shannon and Girona using aircraft based elsewhere.

easyJet had reached a total of 21 million passengers through BRS a year ago this month so it must be around the 24 million mark by now. The Big Orange inherited the Go base set up in 2001 when it absorbed Go and I suspect the Go figures may be included in this total.

 

[Aviador]

Does the Ryanair summer pregramme kick in this week from Bristol airport?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Does the Ryanair summer pregramme kick in this week from Bristol airport?

Yes, from Sunday 27 March.

 

[Aviador]

I thought so. I think Ryanair tend to go straight to their full summer programme unlike some other airlines such as Jet2 who tend to introduce flights gradually usually peaking at the end of May until the the end of September.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

easyJet also introduce flights gradually as the summer unfolds, with one or two routes only operating from mid July until early September - certainly from Bristol anyway.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Ryanair has now slipped in an extra BRS-Alicante each week on Sundays, making it double daily on Sat and Sun and single daily for the rest of the week. There doesn't seem to have been a reduction anywhere else.

This means that for most of the summer there will be 23 weekly scheduled rotations on BRS-ALC with easyJet going double-daily every day of the week.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

[textarea]The voice of authority

Picture, if you will, the scene at Bristol Airport. The Ryanair staff policing the queue for the Malaga flight are measuring the bags. A Spanish gentleman further up the queue tries in vain to get his hand luggage into the Ryanair measuring basket. It won’t fit. As luck would have it, the attention of the checking lady is attracted momentarily elsewhere. The Spanish guy shrugs, removes his slightly oversize baggage and joins the queue — thinking he’d got away with it.

Well he thought he had. What he forgot was: this is England. Another passenger in the queue, a man with a local sounding Bristol accent — and a real jobsworth if ever there was one — hailed a passing Ryanair employee and pointed the cheating little foreigner out to her.

She immediately recalled him — but he was wily, as foreigners often are. Possibly he had jettisoned some of his luggage onto a friend. Or perhaps he was just lucky — he put his case into a different measuring basket, and, I’m delighted to tell you, it miraculously fitted.

There was obvious disappointment from a slightly chagrined Local Man, although I think I could detect some satisfied cheers from what were obviously other cheating foreigners.

But it made me wonder — is England the only country in the world where the default position is to help the authorities?

It certainly isn’t in Ireland. I remember when I first returned home some dozen years ago I got the Official Reminder about getting a television licence. This was on foot of a series of public service adverts advising you to get a licence. Basically the message was, you’ll be disgraced, you’ll have to go to court, your neighbours will despise you, you will be branded unclean if you’re caught.

So I popped into the local post office cum corner shop to buy one. The woman, whom by this time I knew quite well through buying my messages there every day, looked askance. The people in the queue looked askance. “Look Mal,” she said quietly, “I don’t think, well, nobody around here ever bothers. Nobody gets one. The television people never bother coming to these parts, and if they did we’d soon let you know.”

Well, what was I to do? Yes, that’s right. I subsequently drove several miles to a post office where nobody knew me and bought one.

For some reason I thought of the incident when I saw jobsworth at Bristol Airport.[/textarea]
http://www.irishpost.co.uk/tabId/69/ite ... ority.aspx

Not sure if anyone can claim the moral high ground from this little tale.

Furthermore, I note the attempted cheat is a 'gentleman' whilst the affronted fellow passenger is a 'man with a local accent'.

 

[big g]

It happens at all UK airport's Ryanair fly from, but most of the time it's the passengers child that will spill the beans! can be most amusing.

 

[Aviador]

It happens at all UK airport's Ryanair fly from, but most of the time it's the passengers child that will spill the beans! can be most amusing.

I agree, Ryanair definitely have the same policy at other UK airports. After all how else are they expected to make money from people who don't visit the bag drop desks.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

It wasn't Ryanair's policy I was highlighting. As you both point out this has been the case for a long time across the board with suggestions that check-in agents have a target for each flight. Ryanair deny this.

I was pointing out the moral conundrum of whether someone trying to avoid the airline's policy (whether it is fair is another argument) or someone pointing this out to the airline can claim the moral high ground.

The article was a bit like suggesting a poacher is a romantic figure whereas someone who 'dobs' him in is a bit of a cad.

 

[big g]

I do find it funny when a passenger will argue that their bag is fine to go on and will try to avoid using the gauge, but it's in black and white (well yellow and blue!) if your case is to big you have to pay, I have also seen many a passenger go on the aircraft wearing 3 pairs of trousers and 5 T Shirts as they didn't have any money to pay!

In a nut shell if you read their policy and understand how FR works it's a great and cheep airline to fly on, you won't find many airlines with a fleet as young (approx 3.5 years) new and reliable.

 

[Aviador]

I once remember witnessing a passenger jump up and down on his bag to make it smaller so it would fit into the baggage gauge. He then remembered that the contents of the bag contained a Christmas cake. Silly man, but it just goes to show the extremes some passenger's will go to to get the cheapest deal.

When Ryanair was a smaller airline I think you could forgive some passengers for not knowing about the airlines extra charges. These days most people should be aware of the extra charges when they book even if they haven't read them on the airlines website. They will almost certainly have heard of cases where passengers have been ripped off and so should know that they need to book with caution and study the airlines baggage restrictions carefully.

I haven't ever flown with the airline because I wouldn't trust myself to check every fine detail, but the airline works well for many people who are willing to 'take a chance' when booking.

 

[pilot_737]

Aviador, there really aren't many fine details!

Once you have paid for the flight (including the additional booking fees etc) and got your email receipt, just show up to the airport with your boarding card (that was printed a few hours in advance), don't go over the baggage allowance and follow the size guide!
Its that simple, there are no other fine details!

Jet2, I'm sure, have the same strict policy on bag size, allowance etc and they have as many hidden charges as Ryanair on the booking page!

 

[TheLocalYokel]

It seems the 3 x weekly Bristol-Knock route has been axed for the coming winter.

The only surprise is that it's lasted so long (four winters- this one would have been the fifth). Winter passenger loads have often been dreadful, sometimes fewer than 50 passengers.

Summer is better but even here 75% load factors in a month are comparatively rare.

It will be interesting to see if the route is reinstated in summer 2012.

The LBA-NOC route also seems to have been chopped this coming winter.

 

[alphagolf]

Ryanair welcomed its 260th Million passenger at Bristol Airport who were booked on this mornings Bergerac flight.

The airline has also launched its Winter 2011/2012 flying programme from Bristol which will include 17 Destinations, with Katowice in Poland as a new destination. Twice weekly on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

I don't what the programme was like for Winter 2010/2011, so I don't know whether Bristol has had any further reductions in capacity over the coming winter!

Saying that, any new route is always welcome, I look forward to hearing about more new routes in the coming months as the airport has suggested.

alphagolf

 

[TheLocalYokel]

Winter 10/11 saw 18 Ryanair routes from Bristol, which represented an approximate 35% reduction in rotations over the previous winter though not such a big percentage drop in the number of routes - for example the 2 x daily Belfast City was a loss of 14 weekly rotations at a stroke, though of course it was replaced by Flybe on this route.

Ryanair says the detinations this winter will be Alicante, Barcelona (presumably Girona), Dublin, Faro, Gdansk, Gran Canaria, Katowice, Kaunus, Lanzarote, Malaga, Malta, Milan (presumably Bergamo), Poznan, Riga, Rzeszow, Tenerife and Wroclaw.

Compared with 10/11 Beziers, Bratislava, Knock, Marrakesh and Venice Treviso are missing, with Rzeszow, Riga, Katowice and Bergamo replacing them.

Of the missing routes this coming winter........................................

Beziers Has operated summer and winter since summer 2008. I presume it will be back next summer. If it doesn't return the Wrington Parish Council will have problems. Despite objecting to the airport's expansion the parish council went ahead last year to set up a twinning with a town near Beziers on the basis of the Ryanair route. Civic dignitaries have visited each other's patch and the whole thing is in full swing with events planned on both sides of the Channel.

Bratislava was axed for this summer so no surprise it's not coming back this winter. In terms of loads this was a great surprise because summer monthly load factors were consistently in the high 80s/low 90s%.

Knock has operated summer and winter since Ryanair set up its BRS base in November 2007 but loads have never been good (except for high summer when they've been reasonable) so perhaps the only surprise is that it lasted so long.

Marrakesh is a disappointment as its been a regular winter route and also operated last summer and is operating this summer and has always had very decent loads.

Treviso started in summer 10 to replace the easyJet to Marco Polo. As an aside the Marco Polo route had operated for many years summer and winter with phenomenal load factors and attracted a great deal of attention in the local press when it was axed. easyJet admitted it carried high loads but still could not make money out of it or at least the sort of money they wanted.

Of the 'new routes' this coming winter, all have been flown at some point in the past in winter by Ryanair from BRS.

Rzeszow, Riga and Katowice operated year round for the first two years of the Ryanair base (2007-2009). Rzeszow and Riga then became summer-only routes and Katowice was axed altogether.

Bergamo operated year round from 2007, for two years against easyJet to Malpensa with both airlines going daily. easyJet then pulled out altogether and Ryanair reduced to 3 x weekly until last winter when it axed the route. It returned this summer and is retained for the winter.

On the face of things it looks as though BRS will be broadly as last year in terms of flights though I haven't checked them all, and Ryanair is notorious for going through several sets of published timetables before settling on one. In view of the airline's recent announcement that it will park twice as many aircraft this winter as last BRS might have come out of it pretty well.

Unfortunately, all the changes over last winter are typical of this airline at BRS. They chop and change as if there was no tomorrow and then, often unexpectedly, bring discarded routes back after a year or two.

The following have been flown at some point since 2007 (in the case of Shannon since 2005 predating the base) then axed and not brought back - yet!

Derry, Dinard, Grenoble, Salzburg, Scezecin, Shannon, Cagliari, Eindhoven, Pau, Perpignan, Montpellier, Toulon, Trieste, Bydgoszcz, Budapest, Bratislava, Rimini, Porto and Belfast City.

Most, though not all, were either summer or winter routes and some such as Budapest and Bratislava enjoyed very high load factors and others were given very little time to bed down with the extreme example in Bydgoszcz that was axed last summer after just two months with load factors that weren't at all bad for a brand new route (71% in the second and final month - June).

Some of the routes are now operated by other carriers but this does show the scattergun tactics of the airline in its BRS route planning.

 

[TheLocalYokel]

by jacinta » Wed Jun 08, 2011 11:29 am
Last year we flew from bristol to marrakesh at xmas time. We are trying to book it again this year but there are no flights shown all that week. I noticed they have published their winter 2011/2012 schedule. I dont see it listed. Is it gone?

 

[TheLocalYokel]

by TheLocalYokel » Wed Jun 08, 2011 12:02 pm
Bristol-Marrakesh is not operating this winter according to the latest information from Ryanair. I don't believe it's the only Ryanair route to Marrakesh axed for the winter - probably to do with the civil unrest in North Africa over the past few months.

I posted the following a few days ago in the Bristol Airport Ryanair section which sets out the airline's plans for the coming winter though, knowing Ryanair, this may not be the final schedule.

Winter 10/11 saw 18 Ryanair routes from Bristol, which represented an approximate 35% reduction in rotations over the previous winter though not such a big percentage drop in the number of routes - for example the 2 x daily Belfast City was a loss of 14 weekly rotations at a stroke, though of course it was replaced by Flybe on this route.

Ryanair says the detinations this winter will be Alicante, Barcelona (presumably Girona), Dublin, Faro, Gdansk, Gran Canaria, Katowice, Kaunus, Lanzarote, Malaga, Malta, Milan (presumably Bergamo), Poznan, Riga, Rzeszow, Tenerife and Wroclaw.

Compared with 10/11 Beziers, Bratislava, Knock, Marrakesh and Venice Treviso are missing, with Rzeszow, Riga, Katowice and Bergamo replacing them.

Of the missing routes this coming winter........................................

Beziers Has operated summer and winter since summer 2008. I presume it will be back next summer. If it doesn't return the Wrington Parish Council will have problems. Despite objecting to the airport's expansion the parish council went ahead last year to set up a twinning with a town near Beziers on the basis of the Ryanair route. Civic dignitaries have visited each other's patch and the whole thing is in full swing with events planned on both sides of the Channel.

Bratislava was axed for this summer so no surprise it's not coming back this winter. In terms of loads this was a great surprise because summer monthly load factors were consistently in the high 80s/low 90s%.

Knock has operated summer and winter since Ryanair set up its BRS base in November 2007 but loads have never been good (except for high summer when they've been reasonable) so perhaps the only surprise is that it lasted so long.

Marrakesh is a disappointment as its been a regular winter route and also operated last summer and is operating this summer and has always had very decent loads.

Treviso started in summer 10 to replace the easyJet to Marco Polo. As an aside the Marco Polo route had operated for many years summer and winter with phenomenal load factors and attracted a great deal of attention in the local press when it was axed. easyJet admitted it carried high loads but still could not make money out of it or at least the sort of money they wanted.

Of the 'new routes' this coming winter, all have been flown at some point in the past in winter by Ryanair from BRS.

Rzeszow, Riga and Katowice operated year round for the first two years of the Ryanair base (2007-2009). Rzeszow and Riga then became summer-only routes and Katowice was axed altogether.

Bergamo operated year round from 2007, for two years against easyJet to Malpensa with both airlines going daily. easyJet then pulled out altogether and Ryanair reduced to 3 x weekly until last winter when it axed the route. It returned this summer and is retained for the winter.

On the face of things it looks as though BRS will be broadly as last year in terms of flights though I haven't checked them all, and Ryanair is notorious for going through several sets of published timetables before settling on one. In view of the airline's recent announcement that it will park twice as many aircraft this winter as last BRS might have come out of it pretty well.

Unfortunately, all the changes over last winter are typical of this airline at BRS. They chop and change as if there was no tomorrow and then, often unexpectedly, bring discarded routes back after a year or two.