Love, hate, and the flying choices we make.
It’s amazing to see that Ryanair is the 5th largest carrier worldwide by the number of passengers carried last year.
As much as people like bashing Ryanair and complaining about pretty much everything, the reality is simple: people flew, fly, and will fly Ryanair as long as it delivers on its promise. And that promise is nothing sophisticated, low-fare air travel. And they deliver.
Ryanair has twice the passenger count of easyJet, nearly the combined total of British Airways and Air France-KLM.
For me, this boils down to a simple idea:
No matter how we decide to classify an airline, be it full-service carrier (does that still exist?), hybrid, low-cost, or ultra-low-cost, the model itself won’t solve everything for airlines. We see this assumption a lot, especially when “traditional full-service” carriers try to transform into hybrid or low-cost players on certain routes or fares.
The business model is just the direction.
How you execute it is what makes the difference.
And Ryanair seems to execute it pretty well.