About Ryanair

About Ryanair 

Ryanair is Europe’s largest airline, the largest low-cost carrier, and one of the world’s largest airlines as measured by international passengers carried. The founders of Ryanair are Tony Ryan, Liam Lonergan, and Christopher Ryan, it was founded on 28 November 1984, Ireland. Currently, the CEO of the company is Michael O’Leary.

The headquarters of Ryanair is in Swords, Ireland. The parent organization is Ryanair Holdings plc. Subsidiaries of Ryanair are Malta Air, Ryanair UK, Buzz, RyanAtlantic, Ryanair DAC, Lauda Europe, Malta Air Limited, Buzz Limited, Coinside, Lauda, Ryanair Sun S.A and Buzz Stansted Limited.

According to some reports, it has been reported that Ryanair managed to increase the number of passengers until 2021 growing from 75.8 million passengers in 2012 to 148.6 million passengers in 2020. Summer tends to be the busiest month, with 14.9 million passengers uplifted in August 2019.

About Ryanair’s History 

Let’s learn about Ryanair’s incredible history in brief –

In the 1980s

Ryanair was set up by the Ryan family with a share capital of just £1, and a staff of 25. The first flights operate in May from Dublin to London Luton. The launch fare of £99 return is less than half the price of the BA/Aer Lingus lowest return fare of £209. Ryanair acquires its first jet aircraft by leasing three BAC 1-11 aircraft from the Romanian state airline, Tarom. Due to continuing losses the business class product was abandoned and the Frequent Flyer Club closed.

In the 1990s

After three years of rapid growth in aircraft routes and intense price competition with Aer Lingus and British Airways, Ryanair accumulated £20m in losses and went through a substantial restructuring. 

Ryanair now offers the lowest fares in every market, high freight-frequency, moving to a single aircraft fleet type, scrapping free drinks and expensive meals on board but reducing the lowest fares from £99 to just £59 return.

Ryanair switches its main London base from London Luton Airport to the new London Stansted Airport in Essex. Ryanair overtakes Aer Lingus and British Airways to become the largest passenger airline on the Dublin-London route (the biggest international scheduled route in Europe). 

In the 2000s

Ryanair launched Europe’s largest booking website – www.ryanair.com. Within three months the site is taking over 50,000 bookings a week and becomes the only source of the lowest airfares in Europe.

Ryanair becomes No.1 in Europe for customer service, beating all other European airlines for punctuality, fewer cancellations, and least lost bags. Ryanair is named the most popular airline on the web for 2003 by Google, as www.ryanair.com continues to be the most searched travel website in Europe.

In the 2010s

They opened 7 new bases at Chania, Eindhoven, Fez, Krakow, Maastricht, Marrakech, and Zadar, as they grew to 57 bases and over 1,600 routes. Ryanair became the first European airline to have carried over 1 billion customers.

MyRyanair has over 30m members and Ryanair.com became the world’s most visited airline website.  The group grew to 87 bases, as they opened Memmingen, Poznan, and Burgas (from March 18), and also added Munich, Rimini, Varna & Aalborg to their ever-expanding list of airports.

In the 2020s

This year has been the most challenging in Ryanair’s 35-year history. Covid-19 saw traffic collapse from 149m to just 27.5m.

Nevertheless, Ryanair minimized job losses by engaging with its people & unions on temporary cost saw cost-savings and worked with airports all across Europe to secure traffic recovery schemes that allowed Ryanair to continue opening new routes and a total of 8 new bases in Billund, Riga, Stockholm, Corfu, Rhodes, Chania, Zadar & Zagreb.

About Ryanair Services

Ryanair is Europe’s largest airline, the largest low-cost carrier, and one of the world’s largest airlines as measured by international passengers carried. Ryanair’s largest hub is at London Stansted Airport, with its second second-largest Dublin Airport. The carrier operates a comprehensive network of services across Europe, the Mediterranean, and North Africa.

Ryanair carries 149m guests p.a. (pre-Covid 19) with 2,500 daily flights from over 80 bases, the Group connects over 225 destinations in 37 countries on a fleet of 450 aircraft, with a further 210 Boeing 737s on order, which will enable the Ryanair Group to lower fares and grow traffic to 200m p.a. over the next 5 years. 

Ryanair has a team of over 16,000 highly skilled aviation professionals delivering Europe’s No.1 on-time performance, and an industry-leading safety record. Ryanair is Europe’s greenest cleanest airline group and customers switching to fly Ryanair can reduce their CO₂ emissions by up to 50% compared to the other Big 4 European major airlines.

Benefits of Using Ryanair 

Let’s take a look at some of the benefits about Ryanair –

1. Ryanair sells 70% of seats at the lowest two fares while the remaining 30% of seats are charged at higher fares.
2. Ryanair does not use travel agents. You book online over the Internet. This saves them 15% on agency fees.
3. It uses direct marketing techniques to recruit and retain customers, and to extend products and services to them.
4. They are based in Stansted in Essex, a secondary airport. It is cheaper to fly from Stansted than either Heathrow or Gatwick and since it is less busy Ryanair can turn aircraft around more quickly.
5. Many of Ryanair’s destination airports are secondary. For example, if you fly to Copenhagen (Denmark) you arrive in Malmo (Sweden), although it is only a short coach trip over the border.
6. Low cost, no-frill to European destinations. There is no free food or drink onboard. Other revenue fronts — the company has dealt with Hertz car rental, hotels, phone cards, and bus tickets. About 16% of profit is made this way.

This was all about Ryanair; about Ryanair’s history, services, and benefits that have made it one of the largest airline groups in Europe.

References 

*[ICANN Lookup]

**[SimilarWeb ryanair.com] Retrieved 27th February, 2022

***[Siteprice ryanair.com] Retrieved 27th February, 2022

Disclaimer: Data given in the table at the beginning are subject to change, please check the reference websites for latest  value.