I don’t think you can call Ryanair / O’Leary a one trick pony with a declining business model. Last quarter for them showed increased passenger traffic, higher load factors, and less profit alright, but still heaps of profit. In the same period, Aer Lingus contracted, and lost money. As did Aer Arann – who are now entering the world of chartering to stay afloat. O’Learly is now looking at transatlantic flights and will surely look at Asia and other, similar territories. Why? Because he’s nailed the low cost aviation thing better than anybody else has. If he can do it in Europe, why not have a stab at every other territory in the world.

As agressive as Ryanair looks, it has actually grown organically and steadily. Yes, they’ve bought a few small airlines along the way, but most of their growth has been slow, carefully planned, and each route or hub has been profitable pretty much from day one. It’s a tightly run ship.

You’re right, Ryanair have dropped heaps of routes in the last few months because they couldn’t afford to keep them up and running. So they’ve replaced them with profitable routes. Would you not do the same if you were running Ryanair?

I’ve no idea why you think Ryanair needs Aer Lingus to survive. Just look at the balance sheets for both. I’m not talking about cumulative cash in bank either, i’m talking about quarterly net profits. Ryanair has had over a decade of stunning results – Aer Lingus had a couple of years, then Willy Walsh fecked off. That’s another thing about Aer Lingus – they’ve had huge levels of CEO turnover of late, whereas Ryanair has the stability of a solid and loyal management team, headed by O’Leary, who have not just crafted an action plan, but are implementing it. Aer Lingus are just set to repeatedly change management, as they’ve always done, and for that reason as an airline they’ll never have stability.

Personally, I think Ryanair is fine. Flying to London for work i’d usually fly CItyjet because they fly to London City, but if I was flying to some random destination for a weekend (I flew to Eindhoven earlier this year on a weekend piss up with some mates and all went perfectly with Ryanair), Ryanair are more than adequate. How would your prefer to get to all the destinations Ryanir fly to? By bus? Do you get a sammich on the bus with your seat? Course you don’t.

The sooner we get over our antiquated, romantic view of Aer Lingus and realise that having a national airline isn’t a pride-inducing thing anymore, the better.

@Paddy. Good for you. Finland is one of the most literate places in the world and according to the OECD Ireland has a high level of functional illiteracy in the world. We need to copy their system in a lot of ways.

Unfortunately we are a Catholic country and couldn’t organise two paper bags. Austria being an exception. The fundamental difference between Finland and Ireland is that in Finland you are responsible for yourself and here we are taught to look to authority for all the answers. Also in Finland people resign. Nobody resigns here.

My point is that in six months there might not be an Aer Lingus left to sell. The financial crisis has not hit us yet. We are in the eye of the storm and roofs and businesses are going to be utterly destroyed in 2009. That is why I am saying to take O’Learys money and run. If only for the reason that he will be the one flying us out of here to make new lives in new places.

We need to dump the Keynesian economics and follow the Austrian school. What is happening now is putting out fires with kerosene in the US and UK and in Ireland hiding until it all goes away.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

That link I mentioned is here: http://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/a-note-on-comments

It is not about right or wrong, but minding your manners.
I’m sure nobody wants to have this detract from the main topic at hand, if anyone has any issues, feel free to email me: webmaster@davidmcwilliams.ie.

Thanks

Ronan

I said banks were making a fortune, but it was “only on paper,” which is a major difference from saying they are making a fortune.
I made it clear: I have no problem with (market capitalism) profit. I don’t know how that makes me a communist, unless you are viewing me in the light of the new approach to capitalism: nationalizing risk, and loss while privatizing profit.
I do have a TV. I live in Finland -for 12 years now – where investment was made in the peoples education/welfare and (not a knee jerk move to make a profit at any cost) as you see it paid off.
David mentioned Finland in a previous regarding a good example/model for Ireland. I would imagine so too.

Paddy;-)

Ryanair themselves have been sorely tested over the past few months and haven’t always come up with the right answers. I’m thinking specificailly about their expensive hedge on oil. If you bought their shares around 12 months ago you’ll probably not think that Ryanair was your best investment or that O’Leary is the business god of legend. Still, at least you wouldn’t have invested in a bank.

So rather than touting the already self-touted talents of MOL perhaps we should be asking ourselves why AL, with such apparently large unused cash reserves, hasn’t considered mounting a serious bid for any other airline, including Ryanair now that there’s such “value” in the market. Are AL management simply much more conservative/boring than MOL & chums? Do they lack ambition? It often strikes me that AL doesn’t want to be a public company at all and the only reason they were privatised is that we can’t seem to figure out how to run any semi-state body efficiently. In an ideal world they’d be a safe, semi-state yet somehow efficiently run organisation. The desire for safety, implicit in the government’s substantial shareholding, will often conflict with the investors desire for greater ROI. If we decide we want a more ambitious AL then we should look to modify the management and mission. The government can do this given their stake. This doesn’t automatically imply a quick sale to Ryanair.

Either way I can’t see how it’s a good idea to cheaply sell off the airline over to someone who, however smart he is, misleads the public when advertising the most basic aspect of his company’s service. Dublin-to-Paris indeed!