[Article] Ryanair expand in Cork and Nottingham

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/unison/national/6297102?view=Eircomnet

Price war promise as Ryanair takes on CIE
From:The Irish Independent
Wednesday, 14th September, 2005

Michael O'Leary in Cork yesterday where he announced a new challenge to Iarnrod Eireann. Picture: Daragh Mac Sweeney/Provision

RYANAIR and its brash chief Michael O'Leary last night set their sights on changing domestic travel with a promise of rock bottom fares on a new Dublin to Cork air route and the prospect of cheap flights to other centres.

The move will pose serious competition for bus operators, Iarnrod Eireann and rival airline, Aer Arann.

The budget airline launched the new route with an average fare of €40 return (including taxes). It says it will consider services to other regional airports if the new operation takes off.

And Mr O'Leary sounded a warning to Iarnrod Eireann, in particular: "If I were them I'd be quaking in my boots right now," he said. "Whatever they decide to charge for their Dublin-Cork service we will undercut it."

In an effort to promote the Dublin-Cork route which starts next month, Ryanair is offerring an Internet fare of one cent each way (excluding taxes and charges).

The €40 ticket for the 30-minute flight is €16.50 cheaper than the daily return rail fare, but €28 more expensive than that charged by the coach operator, Aircoach.

Last night Iarnrod Eireann said it did not fear the new competition. It has plans to modernise the Dublin-Cork service, which it hopes will attract new business.

Next year the rail company will operate an hourly service between the two cities offering 16,000 seats in a new fleet of trains. It is also expected that the city centre to city centre travel time will be reduced from the current 2hrs 30mins.

One estimate last night was that the Ryanair flight, travel to and from the airports, check-in and baggage reclaim could result in a total journey time of over four hours.

By road, travel between the cities can take the same amount of time.

Currently Aer Arann is the only airline operating the route, which was abandoned by Aer Lingus in 2002 after 40 years.

Said Michael O'Callaghan of Aer Arann yesterday: "It's not surprising an airline like Ryanair would decide to target some of our routes."

But he added: "Offering one cent fares on an extended basis is unrealistic. Below cost selling is basically aimed at getting a competitor off a specific route."

Announcing the new three times daily service in Cork yesterday, Mr O'Leary said it was taking on Iarnrod Eireann for the business rather than Aer Arann.

He declared: "Whatever they decide to charge for their Dublin-Cork service, we will undercut it."

He added: "There is no doubt there are huge changes coming given the new rolling stock on the railroad and the improvements to the Dublin-Cork road. I think trains certainly pose the greatest challenge to Cork Airport."

But he admitted Ryanair was departing from its policy of focussing the airline's growth on international routes by its Dublin-Cork initiative. "You go where the potential is and we believe there is enormous potential on the Dublin-Cork route."

Ryanair also revealed a number of new routes from Cork to Britain. From the end of November, it will fly to Liverpool, London Gatwick and Stansted.

Mr O'Leary promised that about 1,0000 low fare seats would be available everyday.

"Ryanair's new Cork base will deliver 1m passengers per annum, sustain 1,000 jobs in the region and allow the people of Cork and Munster to travel internationally and domestically for a fraction of existing prices," he said.

Joe Gantley, Cork Airport Authority chairman, said: "The Board of CAA welcome Ryanair's commitment to establishing a base in Cork and look forward to the contribution this will make to the continued growth of Cork Airport."

The low-cost carrier also revealed it will run a new daily service from Knock airport to London and flights from Shannon to the Spanish resort of Malaga.

Ralph Riegel and Frank Khan

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/topstories/6296933?view=Eircomnet

Ryanair enters domestic arena from Cork hub
From:ireland.com
Wednesday, 14th September, 2005

Ryanair yesterday announced plans to enter the domestic market with the launch of a route from its latest European hub, Cork, to Dublin three times a day.

Chief executive Michael O'Leary said the service, which will start on November 24th, is targeted at people currently using train and other modes of transport to get between the two cities.

Ryanair will base a new Boeing 737-800 to service the new route, offering over 1,000 low-fare seats between Cork and Dublin daily as well as a twice-daily new service between Cork and Gatwick.

Mr O'Leary said the placing of a Ryanair Boeing 737-800 plane at Cork and the establishment of a base there would result in an extra one million passengers coming through the airport in the next year.

The airline will also launch a Cork-Gatwick route.

By 2010, Mr O'Leary said he expected Ryanair's throughput at Cork to grow to over four million.

Mr O'Leary stressed that Ryanair wasn't targeting the existing Cork-Dublin business of Aer Arann, which currently provides eight flights between the two cities, but re-iterated that it expected to grow the business by attracting new customers.

"It's the first time we are going to have a low-fares airline on a domestic route. Prices will start on Cork-Dublin at €1 and, with taxes and charges, it'll be €14 one way, €28 return - that's about half the price being charged by Aer Arann.

"But Aer Arann still have eight flights a day, they have a better frequency than we have, they have later evening time departure, they offer a businessy type of service which we don't do. We will not be coming down here looking for Aer Arann's passengers.

"Frankly, at our prices we're going to get a whole new group of passengers who presently can't afford to fly Aer Arann. The one who really need be quaking in their boots today are the train services because they're really going to be screwed."

Mr O'Leary said the average price including taxes and charges on the new Cork-Dublin route would be €20 and he said that, if the company needed to lower it further to compete with Iarnród Éireann, it would do so.

While news of the new Ryanair services out of Cork was welcomed by Cork Airport Authority chairman, Joe Gantly, there was disappointing news when Slattery Travel confirmed the collapse of its planned Cork-New York service due to start next month.

Slattery Travel chief executive David Slattery said the decision not to go ahead with the service was due to an increase in aviation fuel prices, which would have forced the company to add €95 to the cost of each seat.

Ryanair also announced new routes yesterday out of both Shannon and Knock airports. The airline will fly twice weekly out of Shannon to Malaga year round from November 2nd, its 17th route out of that airport.

Mr O'Leary also announced a new daily route from Knock to Luton airport - its third service from Knock to airports around the UK capital.

Ryanair has postponed plans to make Lübeck airport, near Hamburg, a European hub. The airline put its plans to extend operations at the airport on hold after planning for a runway and taxiway extension and an instrument landing system upgrade was turned down. The airline said it would announce a replacement hub later in the week.

http://www.rte.ie/business/2005/0914/ryanair.html

Nottingham is latest Ryanair base
September 14, 2005 17:55

Ryanair is to set up a new European base at Nottingham East Midlands Airport in England, adding ten new routes to its existing five.

The airline will base two new Boeing 737s at the airport from March 7, introducing routes to Berlin, Derry, Nimes, Carcassonne, Nantes, Dinard, Limoges, Lodz, Wroclaw and Bergerac.

Ryanair already flies from Nottingham to Dublin, Shannon, Murcia, Barcelona and Rome.
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Chief executive Michael O'Leary said the airline would deliver 1.2 million passengers a year to the airport.

The airline also today announced a new route to Derry from its Liverpool base. It says the new route, which will commence next February, will operate daily and deliver an additional 100,000 passengers into the North West region.

Shares in the company closed two cent lower at €6.73 in Dublin this evening.

Our man in Havana

The cork run will be his undoing. He cannot beat the train and never will. I give him 6 months and he will quietly kill off the route due to poor patrontage and high losses.

Metrobest

Don't be so sure! I think a lot of passenger traffic will come from passengers making onward connections to Ryanair's European network. To stimulate demand Ryanair can sell a huge percentage of these seats for next to nothing, as it makes most of its money from ancillary revenues such as on-board snacks, scratchcards and whatnot.

A cheap Ryanair flight is quicker and cheaper than a train for people living in Northside suburbs proximate to the airport - the time wasted in connnecting to Heuston would negate any advantage of taking the train.

FinoBlad

Unison.ie wrote:

Ryanair is off the rails on this, planes can't beat trains

IT'S great to see Michael O'Leary challenging CIE on the Cork-Dublin route. Competition is the lifeblood of a healthy economy, and nothing but good can come from offering an alternative to the rail connection for those who don't want to (or can't) drive.

But I have to say that if I were Irish Rail, I would not be quaking in my boots, as Michael says they should.

I have no doubt that if Ryanair decide to operate the route they will do so at a profit.

They are not in the social service business. It does not follow that, delays in introducing new carriages notwithstanding, the service poses a serious threat to the Dublin-Cork rail service.

Consider the following. If the air service was a superior option for most travellers, why would you set the return airfare at a level substantially below the standard return rail fare?

After all, if you charged the same as Irish Rail and offered a better service people should be knocking the door down to get on the plane.

Setting the fare at a substantial discount indicates clearly that it is necessary to do so to attract traffic from Irish Rail.

Putting it another way, it indicates that at €60 a return rail ticket offers at least as good value for money to a significant number of people as a return airfare at €40.

Indeed, on reflection, this is obviously the case. Take the time element. If you want to travel by air you have to get to the airport (time cost from the centre of Dublin about 40 minutes), and be there at least an hour before take off (time cost one hour or more: the security checks will ask you to unbelt and unshoe as at present). Then after ten minutes taxiing you take off for a 30 minute flight. (time cost: 40 minutes.) Assuming no delays, you land in Cork airport, taxi to the terminal, get off and go through the terminal and hail a cab for a 15 minute ride into the centre of Cork (time cost 30 minutes, at least). Total time elapsed: at least 2 hours and fifty minutes, possibly three hours and a half.

But if you took the train (of which there are more than twice as many a day in each direction than flights) the time elapsed would be 20 minutes to Heuston, 150 minutes on the train when the new service is up and running, and 10 minutes from Glanmire Road to the centre of Cork. Total time: three hours.

The time saving is minimal, and may not exist at all, even before we consider weather and other factors that upset airline schedules to a much greater degree than rail schedules.

You don't face the shambles of arrivals and departures at Europe's premier third world air terminal. And you can get two hours or more work done in comfort during the trip, and can use your mobile phone to keep in contact and so on and so forth.

The fact is that at distances of 200 miles or less, rail makes much more sense at any given price to the consumer than air travel.

No one in his right mind would fly from Brussels to Amsterdam or Paris. No one would travel even to London City Airport, let alone Heathrow, to fly to Birmingham even with the chaotic state of Britain's rail system. The Eurostar (at a higher fare, note) is increasing its share of the London to Paris traffic. Under these circumstances I suspect that in the elegant offices up at Kingsbridge the Irish Rail bosses will be far from worried, and may even welcome, the arrival of Michael into the market.

It provides them with further ammunition in their constant efforts to gouge more money out of the taxpayer to buy more trains.

The open-toed sandals of the Greens may be confidently expected to march for up-grading of rail services to counter the threat to the environment and climate change from increased use of kerosene guzzling B737s.

Irish Rail's management can now point out to the union militants that competition for passengers has moved up a notch. Whatever Irish Rail feel about all this, the real losers are the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA). The Ryanair decision to introduce additional services out of Cork bears out the wisdom of those who said that breaking up Aer Rianta was a good thing. It adds to the case for ensuring that the DAA is not allowed near a second terminal at Dublin.

Because one thing seems sure to me: if Michael O'Leary is to make money on the Cork route in the long term it will depend on reducing substantially the time required for the city centre to city centre journey, and that can only be done by a drastic reduction in the time wasted (and the associated appalling conditions visited on us by DAA) at Dublin Airport.

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independent/stories.php3?ca=44&si=1467246&issue_id=12992

lostinsuperfunk

From today's Irish Times:

Aer Arann is to reduce the number of flights on its Dublin to Cork route from nine to three a day from November, when Ryanair begins a new service.

So there will soon be only 6 Cork-Dublin services a day (3 AA + 3 Ryanair) instead of 9. Perhaps this was inevitable anyway, with the new hourly train service starting soon.

Maskhadov

Will the train be able to compete with RyainAir. I hope it starts to bring the price down for trains and improve the terrible service