Based in Ireland, Ryanair is certainly one of Europe’s favorite airlines. It carries 117 million passengers per year on over 1,800 daily flights from 84 airports, connecting over 200 destinations in 33 countries on a fleet of more than 350 Boeing 737 aircraft. With an additional 315 Boeing 737’s on order, Ryanair is looking to reduce fares and increase traffic to 180 million passengers per year by 2024. Ryanair has an industry leading 31 year safety record and has European aviation’s No.1 on-time performance.
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With regard to France, 2003 was pivotal through acquiring Buzz, a Stansted based airline from KLM. This acquisition gave Ryanair instant access to an additional 11 regional airports in France as well as propelling Ryanair to become the largest airline operating out of London Stansted Airport.
Fast forward to 2014 with 90.6 million passengers and particularly an average fare of only €47 and absolutely no fuel surcharges. The idea always being to reduce already low fares by having the lowest cost model as well as expanding into primary airports and creating schedules for business-people. As an example of expansion, it was the year of new destinations to Warsaw, Gdansk, Bratislava, Cologne and Glasgow.
The Ryanair recipe is quick turn-around times for aircraft at cheaper secondary airports, no frills, no business class and the operation of a single model of aircraft to standardize maintenance. Ryanair was the first airline to introduce low fares, it has transformed European air travel and plans to continue on this route with choice, competition and much lower fares on all routes where they are in competition with some of Europe’s major airlines.
