Ryanair (I): Weg mit den Kaugummis!

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Still stuck on you

(Travel view - Joanne O’Connor)

There’s nothing like getting off a flight with a piece of chewing gum stuck to your freshly laundered holiday trousers to get your weekend away off to a bad start. So Ryanair customers will be delighted to learn that the airline has instigated a Chewing Gum Removal Program to help its passengers avoid sticky situations. At the heart of the programme is a new ultra-powerful gum-busting product which will be used daily on the aircraft to ensure passengers enjoy a Wrigleys-free zone.

It’s a small step maybe, but an important one for an airline which has been widely critisised for having a customer services department of two people. (An ‘urban myth’, Ryanairs head of communications Paul Fitzsimmons assured me over a cup of tea and a sandwich on a visit to London last week. Apparently it’s more like 20 people and no, I didn’t have to pay for the sandwich.)

It seems that the least frilly of no-frills-carriers has had enough of it’s reputation for heartlessness and wants to prove that cheap doesn’t have to mean nasty.

‘We’re not as bad as people think,’ says Fitzsimmons. This may be not the stuff that great marketing slogans are made of, but he does have a point. Take, for example, Ryanair’s track record on punctuality and lost luggage. Based on statistics published by the Association of European Airlines for the month of February, the Irish carrier tops the league table with 88 per cent of flights arriving on time (compared to 77,2 per cent for BA) and 0,65 bags lost per 1.000 passengers (compared to 15,8 for BA).

Of course, if those statistics had been published last summer when hundrets of passengers were separated from their luggage as Ryanair’s new baggages handlers at Stansted airport struggle to cope with the volume of flights, it would have been a different story. Fitzsimmons admits it was ‘a bit of a nightmare’ but says it also acted as an wake-up call. ‘We realised we had to get our act togeather.’

The first step was to appoint customer services director Caroline Green, who will report directly to Michael O’Leary. Her remit covers everything from improved training for the cabin crew to the appointment of an ‘aircraft appearance manager’, whose job is to oversee the cleaning of aircraft (and presumably the Chewing Gum Removal Programme).

But will you be given assistance with accomodation if you are stranded at an airport overnight? Will you be able to speak to somebody in customer services on the phone if you have a complaint? Will you be offered refreshments if your flight is delayed? Let’s not get carried away, folks.

Ryanair is one of the few airlines in the world today that is not haemorrhaging money. Love him or leave him, Michael O’Leary is on to a winning formula. And rather than Ryanair moving to emulate the full-service carriers as it envolves, we are far more likely to see traditional airlines turning to Ryanair’s pared-down business model as they struggle to survive.

As Caroline Green puts it: ‘Are you going to offer passengers a plastic sandwich when their flight is delayed or are you going to be an airline that will still be operating in five years?’

It might not be what its dectractors want to hear but the Ryanair bubble is not to burst.

 

(The Observer, Dublin, 20.04.2003)

 

 

Habe die Ehre,

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