You love to deny it, but Ryanair is your favorite airline: an accountant turned CEO who has become PR agencies’ nightmare, its ridiculously cheap flights, and its hilarious touchdown fanfare are all part of the Ryanair experience. They have become one of the largest if not the biggest airline in Europe in about a decade. Whilst most companies will at least try to pretend they aim to please their customers, Ryanair does the opposite. It’s not about comfort, smiles, or class.
So you’re booking your £1.99 return ticket, you’ve dodged the travel insurance offer/scam, you’re not travelling with golf clubs, nor a snowboard. You’re bracing yourself for the credit card fees, trying to figure which one of your plastic cards will be best to pay for your fee until you realise it’s going to cost you a fiver extra in any case.
But wait, you’re going for more than 3 days and you need to check-in some luggage. Bummer, that’s another £7 per piece, each way. Well no, there’s a solution (if fashion is less important than a few pounds): a 22 pocket jacket, with space for a laptop, other electrical equipment, toiletries, a few changes of clothes and all other travel indispensable. Hit the link for an example: Scottevest. So is that to become the new standard clothing for [Ryanair] travelling? I have a feeling a lot of their flights will soon feel like flights from Seattle to Anchorage packed with fishermen and hunters. What does Hilary think? Is that being entrepreneurial?
StartupCafe 
Ha ha! I remember that once I checked in wearing 3 coats. Funnily enough I wasn’t the only one in the queue doing this
How about a third party website that will allow trading your 10kg hand luggage allowance? You could easily offset the price of your ticket if you travel light.
Hey Thomas! Just wanted make an observation about PR and Ryanair. The CEO would be a PR agent’s nightmare typically, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. He’s like the Simon Cowell of the airline industry. I’m intrigued by the fact that he pretty much says ‘you pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys – or treated like animals, whatever…next question!’ As you’ve pointed out, the Ryanair experience is not about comfort, smiles or class.
Despite this, they still get custom. People are willing to take the risk of being exposed to all sorts of situations, and know that they will not be treated with tender loving care. He’s flipped the idea of customer service on its head. It really is quite peculiar.
Ryanair is in a position to tell us its giving serious thought to making passengers pay a pound to take a p*ss, or call bloggers idiots and lunatics. I wonder what kind of similar PR approach would work as well for new startups?
You think that’s funny, but flights to Anchorage really do look like that. And they smell like fish. 🙂
I do miss it.
Can’t wait to get my vest and offset my £10 ticket price with luggage weight trading!
Funny enough the topic of RyanAir’s PR came up in the office recently as we were sorting out our own PR approach… I was amused to hear that the announcements of possible standing flights or paying to use the toilet are things they have no intention of actually doing – but they just say it in order to build/re-inforce the *dirt cheap* image.
Think one lesson could be announce outrageous plans that reinforce the image you want to have, regardless of whether or not it’s going to happen…? 🙂
They just kicked off a competition to fly with zero baggage, with major news coverage in the US!
I’m highly amused… 🙂 http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/video/rolf-potts-travels-with-no-bags-11436893