Ryanair charges?

luckat

Now, I'm not complaining. I got a flight to London, where I have to go, for 44 euros, which is good value. But I'm a bit baffled by the charges - can anyone explain them? (By the way, the breakdown on the website was slightly different from the one on the email - one of the things it listed, for instance, was a 5 euro charge for using a credit card. ???)

PAYMENT DETAILS
*********1.98 EUR Adults
*********5.00 EUR Fees
********22.81 EUR Service Charges
*********6.56 EUR Ins/whcr Levy
*********7.58 EUR UK Air Duty
*********0.00 EUR Government Tax
*********0.00 EUR Airport Taxes
*********0.00 EUR Car rental
*********0.00 EUR Insurance
********43.93 EUR Total Paid

BuffyBot

€5.00 is a payment fee for using credit cards - common amongst most airlines now when booking online

Ins/whcr Levy - many airlines absorb the cost of this for passengers who want to use a airline/airport wheelchair for getting from check in to the the gate. Ryanair stopped absorbing this cost last year so now you are paying towards people who need assistance.

Airports charge variable amounts to the airlines, which are then passed on to the passengers.

UK Air Duty is a tax imposed on passengers exiting the UK by the UK government.

dmeehan

does the UK air duty also apply for internal UK flights?

sliabh

dmeehan wrote:

does the UK air duty also apply for internal UK flights?

I hope you are not suggesting that Dublin to London is an internal UK flight :-P

That said two years ago I was going from Dublin to Paris and Ryanair were quoting all onboard prices in Sterling! They are a funny sort of "Irish" airline

BuffyBot

dmeehan, I'm not sure to be honest!

eth0_

sliabh wrote:

I hope you are not suggesting that Dublin to London is an internal UK flight :-P

That said two years ago I was going from Dublin to Paris and Ryanair were quoting all onboard prices in Sterling! They are a funny sort of "Irish" airline

Well their major base outside Dublin is in Stansted isn't it, they fly to an awful more places from there than from Dublin, more of their customers are probably British so I can see why they'd have quoted sterling prices.

vinnyfitz

Well let's take it item by item and see how much hidden profit there is for ryanair in this list of charge? Luckat - I'm assuming this is a one way ticket right?

PAYMENT DETAILS
*********1.98 EUR Adults
Fair enough 1.98 is a cheap enough fare to be sure

*********5.00 EUR Fees
This is the credit card fee I presume - the funny thing is that as a large customer of the credit card companies Ryanair only pay 1% or 1.3% of the transaction value as the fee. So between 43 and 53 cent is the true cost €4.50 is additional profit for Ryanair.

********22.81 EUR Service Charges
Now this the bit that mystifies me - what are these service charges? Can anyone clarify what they are supposed to represent? What does Ryanair have to hand over to a third party and what can it keep?

*********6.56 EUR Ins/whcr Levy
This is a great new price confusion scam from Ryanair.
The theory is that we all share the costs of wheelchair service for those passengers who need them. But let's just think about this. The cost of providing wheelchair service might be 1 hour of staff time at max €20 per hour at each end (2 hours) and a capital contribution to the cost of each wheelchair - say 20 cent per trip. So everytime a wheechair is deployed that might cost say a total of €40.20. Now how many wheelchair users do you see on average on a ryanair flight? Maybe 0? 1?, 2? I rarely see even one but let's say 3 for the sake of argument. So total cost is 120.60 spread between 180 passengers. Oh look! That works out at less than one Euro per passenger - not €6.56!
Conclusion: Ryanair take an extra minimum of €5 in profit from each wheelchair levy - surprise surprise.

*********7.58 EUR UK Air Duty
This sounds like a not unreasonable exchange rate calculation for a £5.00 UK Government landing fee - would that be right?
Of course Ryanair don't pay this over to the UK exchequer if you do can't actually fly for some reason - they just pocket it.

*********0.00 EUR Government Tax
*********0.00 EUR Airport Taxes
*********0.00 EUR Car rental
*********0.00 EUR Insurance
********43.93 EUR Total Paid[/QUOTE]

So I've found at least €10 more net revenue for Ryanair hidden in your ticket price. Maybe others can find more?

NB Like Luckat I'm a happy Ryanair customer - I just think we should see what we are really paying for.

sliabh

eth0_ wrote:

Well their major base outside Dublin is in Stansted isn't it, they fly to an awful more places from there than from Dublin, more of their customers are probably British so I can see why they'd have quoted sterling prices.

What I object to is when flying between two Euro countries they expected us to use the currency of a another (hey why not charge us Polish Zlotys)

That may be a violation of legal tender laws, but I am sure there is some sort of get out clause for airlines.

Paulw

sliabh wrote:

That said two years ago I was going from Dublin to Paris and Ryanair were quoting all onboard prices in Sterling! They are a funny sort of "Irish" airline

The reason why prices were quoted in Sterling (they are still in Sterling, but converted to Euro) is that they're a British registered company (even though an Irish airline). This is due to the way the Irish govt dealt with them initially. The company is registered in the UK and all their accounts are based in sterling.

No other reason.

silverside

last time i flew with ryanair UK-dublin a few weeks ago, onboard prices were in euro.

I still prefer to fly with other airlines where I can, I appreciate the other airlines basic level of customer service and flying to main airports. At the times I fly (mostly around the weekend) ryanair aren't much cheaper, and you still have to get out to stansted/luton to stansted.

Handy tip for anyone wanting to get to London : From September, trains from birmingham airport to London Euston will take around an hour. They cost about £20 return if you have a young person's Railcard. So this may be a good alternative to flying to Luton/Stansted/Gatwick.

Paulw

vinnyfitz wrote:

********22.81 EUR Service Charges
Now this the bit that mystifies me - what are these service charges? Can anyone clarify what they are supposed to represent? What does Ryanair have to hand over to a third party and what can it keep?

These are the charges for baggage handling and ground crews, landing fees and such. This goes to companies like ServiceAir and such who deal with these issues. AFAIK Ryanair make about €1 profit out of this.

Paulw

silverside wrote:

last time i flew with ryanair UK-dublin a few weeks ago, onboard prices were in euro.

Yes, the prices are shown in Euro now, but they are a converted Sterling price.

vinnyfitz

Paulw wrote:

These are the charges for baggage handling and ground crews, landing fees and such. This goes to companies like ServiceAir and such who deal with these issues. AFAIK Ryanair make about €1 profit out of this.

Do you know if you can get a break down of this total charge somewhere?

BTW - what is the advertising standards ruling about this? Surely if this is a charge the airline simply can not avoid in order to deliver their service (the flight) then it should be part of the quoted price - otherwise the thing is farcical?
I mean why not separate out cabin crew and pilots salaries as a charge also? If I am looking at the advertised price of a Fiat I don't expect to find out eventually that there is an additional fee for the metal or the assembly or the safety testing...

silverside

Paulw, it's a trivial point, but as far as I remember, the prices are all in euro round numbers, and are not quoted in sterling. Either way they are very expensive for what you get, as you would expect. I rarely see anyone buying anything.

do you work for Ryanair? you seem to know a lot about how they operate.

therecklessone

vinnyfitz wrote:

*********6.56 EUR Ins/whcr Levy
This is a great new price confusion scam from Ryanair.
The theory is that we all share the costs of wheelchair service for those passengers who need them. But let's just think about this. The cost of providing wheelchair service might be 1 hour of staff time at max €20 per hour at each end (2 hours) and a capital contribution to the cost of each wheelchair - say 20 cent per trip. So everytime a wheechair is deployed that might cost say a total of €40.20. Now how many wheelchair users do you see on average on a ryanair flight? Maybe 0? 1?, 2? I rarely see even one but let's say 3 for the sake of argument. So total cost is 120.60 spread between 180 passengers. Oh look! That works out at less than one Euro per passenger - not €6.56!
Conclusion: Ryanair take an extra minimum of €5 in profit from each wheelchair levy - surprise surprise.

Interesting theory, but its wrong.

Ryanair charge a flat rate of 50c (or 35p) per passeneger to cover the cost of providing free wheelchairs.

http://www.ryanair.com/press/2004/feb/gen-en-060204-3.html

The rest of that charge covers security and insurance levys (the security levy has always existed as far as I know, but the insurance levy was *I think* a post 9/11 charge to cover increased insurance premiums)

therecklessone

vinnyfitz wrote:

Do you know if you can get a break down of this total charge somewhere?

A large part (at least 50%) of that charge is made up of landing fees at both airports.

If you can make sense of any of this:

http://www.aer-rianta.ie/AR_Corporate/pdf/TACO11.pdf

Capt'n Midnight

Paulw wrote:

These are the charges for baggage handling and ground crews, landing fees and such. This goes to companies like ServiceAir and such who deal with these issues. AFAIK Ryanair make about €1 profit out of this.

They are getting stricter on baggage - now 15Kg per person and €7/Kg if you go over this. they are also encouraging people to carry more hand luggage instead of putting it in the hold - up to 7Kg per person - it would be nice to see them pass on the savings they make by not paying baggage handlers - but it's pure profit

Also like the way you can recalim your gov't tax if you miss your flight - the "nominal" processing charge is the same as the tax - you get nothing - again pure profit.

dmeehan

sliabh wrote:

I hope you are not suggesting that Dublin to London is an internal UK flight :-P

Of course not!!

luckat

Vinnie, this was a return flight, so the actual "fare" part was even cheaper.

Thanks for the attempts to interpret, everyone. Yes, I too will use any other airline than Ryanair if it's the same price or within a few euro, but I couldn't find a cheap flight for this particular trip that wasn't Ryanair.

By the way, apparently there's a piece in the Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter about Ryanair charging qualified pilots hundreds of euro for taking a "test" before employing them. Haven't seen it myself; it's probably one of these

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=722&a=4314&previousRenderType=5&queryArt4314=ryanair

but I didn't have time to search through them. Maybe someone with decent Swedish can find which one and translate it.

luckat

....though the worst thing about travelling with Ryanair is the ungrammatical mangling of the English language that is the safety announcements: "The use of laptops are not to be used", I think, is one of them. Ack! Ewww!

And the nasty thing, in common with other airlines, that the stewardesses and stewards only have first names, but the pilots have surnames: "Hello, this is Captain Declan O'Brien; our cabin staff today are Marcie and Bert".

sliabh

luckat wrote:

By the way, apparently there's a piece in the Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter about Ryanair charging qualified pilots hundreds of euro for taking a "test" before employing them.

Ryanair charge their pilots for the cost of their medicals, and their uniforms I believe. This is something other airlines pick up for their people

dmeehan

sliabh wrote:

Ryanair charge their pilots for the cost of their medicals, and their uniforms I believe. This is something other airlines pick up for their people

it also appears to be a cost other airlines pass on to their passengers in the form of higher fares..

(sheez, i'm begining to sound like O'Leary)

sliabh

Not that much higher though. It's a while since I had a dirt cheap (i.e. less than EUR100) fare with them. Most of their standard fares are about the same as Aer Lingus when you add in the cost of travelling to your real destination from their airport.

But for me the real killer that is going to stop me using Ryanair is the hold luggage restrictions. Mountaineering is my thing and its pretty hard getting my bags full of gear (ropes, boots, climbing rack, ice tools) in under 20kg let alone 15kg, or whatever new limit they are planning.

therecklessone

luckat wrote:

By the way, apparently there's a piece in the Swedish paper Dagens Nyheter about Ryanair charging qualified pilots hundreds of euro for taking a "test" before employing them.

Visit http://www.pprune.org/forums/ and search for Ryanair.

Then sit back and enjoy the ride.

John R

There are dozens of costs inherent in just about every product or service available but why is it only ryanair that insist on offering the "bare" cost upfront and adding on the "extras" at the end?
Imagine the nightmare if everyone started doing this, you go into a newsagent and the sticker price on a bar of chocolate is €0.11. You go up to the counter to pay and you are presented with a list of tax levy 5c, delivery charge 7c, service charge 6c, building maintenance and utilities 7c, security 3c, change service 2c, etc. It is ridiculous.

The whole ethos of Ryanair is slight of hand, everything is designed to prominently display the positives and hide the negatives until the very last minute where people end up being stuck with extra charges and great inconvenience. At the forefront of it all is sleazy O'Leary who takes every opportunity to pretend his only interest is the consumer where in fact a significant profit is gained by Ryanair from trapping the unwary with their overly restrictive terms and conditions. They seemingly get away with it all because there are a mountain of lemmings who buy into their marketing bunk.

jlang

The fact that they break out 'their take' of the ticket and then profit on most of the other categories in the list just doesn't sit right with me.

luckat

http://www.svd.se/dynamiskt/naringsliv/did_7982980.asp

If anyone has any Swedish, this is one of a couple of articles in Svenska Dagenbladet about Ryanair. Google for the paper and Ryanair and you'll find other/s.

drane2

I recently booked a flight with Aer Lingus from DUB to LHR. The breakdown of charges was as follows:

Category Fare Taxes,Fees,Charges SubTotal TOTAL
1 Adult(s) EUR 51.00 EUR 44.27 EUR 95.27 EUR 99.27

Handling Fee: EUR4.00

So here, where Ryanair charge 41.95 in taxes and charges, Aer Lingus charge 49.27. This can probably be explained by higher landing charges at LHR. In-built into taxes and charges with Aer Lingus are : service charges, insurance levy and air duty. I like the way Ryanair break it down.