Michael O'Leary Vs Panorama

Tabnabs

http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_8298000/8298750.stm

FAF

Steyr

Get Michael O'Leary a pint. Brilliant.:)

alpha2zulu

It is a great watch,fair play to Michael,certainly came across much more competent than that reporter. The phrase "flying a hard bargain" is certainly new to me too!

The record of the FR/Panorama emails on the ryanair site is also an interesting read.
http://www.ryanair.com/site/news/releases/2009/docs/Panorama%20Correspond.pdf

From page 15 of the document:

1. The on-line check-in charge: when was this initiated, please, and what was the
original charge?
2. The £40 fee for failing to print off and bring with one’s boarding pass: please could
you tell us how this figure is arrived at?
3. The £5 card handling charge. What was this at when it was originally introduced?
4. Why do you charge separate card handling fees for simultaneous purchases of tickets
by one person on behalf of a number, e.g. for their family, whereas Ryanair is only
charged itself (e.g. by the bank) once for processing all these payments?

The questions being asked by Panorama regarding when the card fee was introduced etc were very amateurish and could easily be researched by a quick google of pprune or even boards. Their line regarding hidden charges is a bit of a joke,its not as if you clicked purchase on a flight for 50euro and then 80 appears on your credit card bill:rolleyes:

OPENROAD

Great stuff although I will continue to fly with bmi

McGrath5

Brilliant when O' Leary asked him did he fly over with Ryanair.

Fratton Fred

Love him or hate him, you certainly have to admire him. I do wonder how long they can keep it up for, but they have certainly done wonders for passengers.

I too will stick with BMI though!

Foggy43

Be careful lads! BMI are not doing too well. Lufthansa are now in a position to sell BMI and an announcment is expected soon. BA are interested but maybe blocked as would Virgin should they bid.

scudzilla

That was sooo funny, O'Leary was spot on though, great when he caught them on flying BMI.

IMO O'Leary is a genius, only thing i question is that it's free to use a UK debit card (Visa Electron), as it's an Irish Airline couldn't they offer the same service to us with Laser cards instead of us getting hit with a Credit Card charge

pajoguy

I find it funny the stuff they were trying to pick on. Like you cant manage to select "No Travel Ins Req". They were clutching at straws. The charges are there in front of you. Hidden charges? If people these days cant remember to print their Boarding Cards they deserve to pay the charge at the airport.

None of us would have done half the travelling without MOL. Genius

samilou

He's a great business man, that's hy he's making money and they aren't...

You can go right through the booking process and then cancel, so there are no hidden charges...

Cant beat Ryanair on price, even if their fanfair and congratulating themselves being on time, is VERY annoying.

OPENROAD

Foggy43 wrote: »

Be careful lads! BMI are not doing too well. Lufthansa are now in a position to sell BMI and an announcment is expected soon. BA are interested but maybe blocked as would Virgin should they bid.

Still many options open to Luthansa, hopefully the end result will be that bmi will still be around as we know it in the long term.

duffman13

Thats brilliant that is, michael o leary just got a free ten minute ad out of the BBC!!!

Terrontress

On the show last night, they seemed to put forward the notion that there were negatives in Ryanair having secured less expensive aircraft and that poor Airbus were hard done by. They really were clutching at straws.

I don't think MOL's request that any interview be put out either live or unedited to be unreasonable.

The only thing that the show revealed that I'd think is negative is the constant stringing along of cabin crew on temporary contracts.

cyrusdvirus

Terrontress wrote: »

On the show last night, they seemed to put forward the notion that there were negatives in Ryanair having secured less expensive aircraft and that poor Airbus were hard done by. They really were clutching at straws.

I don't think MOL's request that any interview be put out either live or unedited to be unreasonable.

The only thing that the show revealed that I'd think is negative is the constant stringing along of cabin crew on temporary contracts.

same thing happens in a fair few major corporations, it's to protect the employer, rather than the employee. Intel, HP both do the same for a vast amount of their staff, but because they are not so high profile (by which they don't have an in yer face chariman like MOL, or a business where PR and CR are as big a part) it's not as noticable

toomevara

This just in;

Michael O'Leary 1 : Panorama 0

A one sided encounter with panorama clearly out of its depth, outplayed and outmanoeuvred by MOL's clearly superior strategy.

Owen

That was hilarious. MOL's clearly got no shortage of confidence, and cahoonas of solid brass.

flanzer

I can't believe BBC were so stupid enough to broadcast that! The really are an embarrasment to themselves.To me it looks as though they can't distinguish between a rouge trader, local Plumber, and Micheal O'Leary, king of the low fares and a legend in millions of peoples eyes!

You have to hand it to him. That guy was nearly a foot taller than MOL at the start of the interview and ended up being a foot tall by the end of it, clearly left scratching his head!

LindaR

MO'L made the reporter look like the Pilsbury dough boy.
As said before, the only addition I really object to is charging per person to use Irish debit/credit cards.Anything else can be accomodated.
Loved the young guy who had toured Europe for 10C.!

Snickers Man

The one thing they got right was the line when they said "People want it both ways; the fares of Ryanair with the service levels of traditional airlines."

That, in my experience, is where most people fall down with Ryanair. They think that Ryanair works to the mantra that "the customer is always right" and so their jaws drop when they see that they have to pay handsomely for such things as rescheduling flights, changing names on tickets or even replacing a boarding pass.

Ryanair believes that the customer is always right "as long as he or she does exactly what we tell them to do".

It does NO HARM to the travelling public at large, therefore, to remind them continually of this basic fact just to reinforce the message that a Ryanair ticket (or boarding card) is not a guarantee of anything, rather it is an OPPORTUNITY to fly for a price lower than one would traditionally have expected to pay.

This is not Ryanair bashing. I don't believe in Ryanair bashing for the sake of it. I fly Ryanair, when it suits me, although I prefer to fly others. It's a simple statement of fact meant to inform those that may be ignorant. Information is the lilfeblood of a free market.

We'd miss Ryanair if it wasn't there. But then, we'd miss the others if they weren't there too.

Terrontress

When you say you prefer to fly with others Paint Doctor, is there a monetary value that you'd put that at on a route which Both FR and EI operate or FR and any other airline for that matter.

DUB - LGW for example. €20 return to not fly on FR? €30, €50?

I find that where a flight is less than two hours long, I am happier to take the cheapest option, regardless of the airline or service levels.

I have found that when flying to London, LCY is worth spending extra money to fly to such a convenient airport but between two identical airports I'll always go with what's least expensive.

Owen

Terrontress wrote: »

When you say you prefer to fly with others Paint Doctor

I didn't say anything like that. It was Snickers Man.

Terrontress

Apologies, apologies. Tough to see the whole screen on my phone browser.

Mad_Max

I was left with one question after I read the emails between Ryanair and Panorama.

How did that wolly get a job researching and presenting a show for a major tv station??!

BrianD

The programme set itself up as a grand expose of safety standards etc. When the bit about piloting came up the only gripes were 45 min to prepare flight plans and that drinking water was no longer supplied.

I speculate that flight plans on scheduled flights are probably generated out of a template. Lack of water is stingy - I would have thought you have to supply it as work basic - but I'm sure that water is available if needed.

In the past, nobody knew how airlines calculated fares and nobody really asked. Now you can see how Ryanair calculate theirs!

I don't think the point about the online check-in charges were well made. Yes, one would think that if you do it yourself it should be cheaper than the cost of providing check-in desks at an airport. However, there is still a cost to provide the online service and this €5 is probably cheaper than the old system. The point about using your own PC, paper and ink was a little childish.

Snickers Man

Terrontress wrote: »

When you say you prefer to fly with others Paint Doctor, is there a monetary value that you'd put that at on a route which Both FR and EI operate or FR and any other airline for that matter.

DUB - LGW for example. €20 return to not fly on FR? €30, €50?

I find that where a flight is less than two hours long, I am happier to take the cheapest option, regardless of the airline or service levels.

Who wouldn't? But you have to factor in the overall cost.

Terrontress wrote: »

I have found that when flying to London, LCY is worth spending extra money to fly to such a convenient airport but between two identical airports I'll always go with what's least expensive.

Nail on the head!

If you want to fly from Dublin to Bishop's Stortford, you fly Ryanair to Stansted. No brainer.

If you want to fly somewhere in South London/Surrey, you fly Ryanair to Gatwick. No brainer.

If you want to fly to South East London (as I have had to do occasionally) for a weekend away, you certainly examine flights to London City and try to get somebody to book you a flat-rate mini cab to your ultimate destination. It will rarely be cheaper than flying Ryanair to wherever and hiking your way across on public transport, but it can be a whole lot more cost effective.

But then again, it's not that much cheaper to fly Ryanair at weekends.

London's a big place. Choose the right airline for your circumstances. I can't remember the last time I paid to fly to London with Ryanair. They don't suit me. The alternatives are better. By which I mean, cost effective.

So O'Leary was way out of order slagging off the guys for taking British Midland to Dublin. He didn't know where they were starting from. If you live west of BBC headquarters at Shepherd's Bush, as the reporter may well have done, it would have been madness to fly from anywhere other than Heathrow.

Incidentally, a gang of us are going for a weekend away on the piss to Luxembourg in a few months. How are we getting there?

Well, you can only fly directly to Luxembourg from Dublin by Lux Air but that is only for Eurocrats and Eurobankers for whom somebody else pays the tab. (ie us taxpayers). So the ordinary punter has to fly to a nearby destination and make his way from there. The choices are Ryanair to Hahn, Ryanair to Charleroi or Aer lingus to Brussels.

The way we are going? Aer Lingus to Brussels. Cheapest flights and best rail connections. Who'd have believed it?

Happy landings!

Tropheus

At least Panorama posted it for public view. They could have as easily stuck it in a bottom drawer never to be seen again.

No doubt, he is a wierd genius.

pclancy

You get what you pay for. Simple as!

Foggy43

The programme was not MOL v Panorama. It was Ryanair: Love them or hate them.
It put forward both sides of the argument in a light hearted way. This was more than lightly done because the next Panorama is on a completly different subject but with content some people may find very disturbing

Tabnabs

Foggy43 wrote: »

The programme was not MOL v Panorama. It was Ryanair: Love them or hate them.
It put forward both sides of the argument in a light hearted way. This was more than lightly done because the next Panorama is on a completly different subject but with content some people may find very disturbing

As the OP, I put up the thread to show the BBC Panorama interviewer doorstepping Michael O'Leary and the outcome of that tactic. So the title refers to this specific interview and not the programme :P/:rolleyes:

jesus_thats_gre

The man is a genius!