Low-cost airline «Ryanair»

Ryanair is an Irish low cost airline based in Dublin. Member of the European Association of Cheap Airlines.Founded in 1984 by Irish millionaire Tony Ryan (1936-2007), the company is a purely regional company that operates daily flights between Waterford and Gatwick.

In the following years, the company tried unsuccessfully to intervene on the London-Dublin route, which was already occupied by another Irish company Aer Lingus and the European giant British Airways. Ryanair — remained unprofitable.

The company began operations in 1985, a year after its founding, when it began flying a 15-seater Embraer EMB 110 Bandeirante turboprop aircraft on the Waterford-London / Luton route.

The situation changed significantly when Michael O’Leary, who had experience as an advisor since 1988, joined the company in 1995. He rejected the old strategy of the Ryan family and focused entirely on the concept of the ancestor of low-cost airlines Southwest Airlines: «Lowest prices / None applications «. He also closed unprofitable routes and limited the fleet to only one type, completely rearming it from BAC 1-11 to Boeing 737.

After growing rapidly in the United Kingdom around 1997, the airline used the money to expand its operations across Europe. Since then, it has undergone significant expansion; In 2008, Ryanair was the largest airline in Europe in terms of passenger traffic, ranking sixth in the world.

Since 1997, Ryanair has expanded its expansion to continental Europe. The company operates small provincial airports — as satellites of large ones. These are usually former unprofitable airfields or former NATO military air bases.

On August 27, 2009, Ryanair’s management decided to invest half a million euros in a campaign to approve the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland.

In 2016, Ryanair was the largest airline in Europe, carrying 117 million passengers. It has 13,000 employees by 2019. Ryanair is mainly located in Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The company’s CEO is Michael O’Leary. The company is named after Irish businessman Tony Ryan.

Since March 2017, Ryanair has started offering connecting flights. Since May 2017, he has been cooperating (codeshare) with the Spanish company Air Europa, selling its long-distance lines on its website.

As of May 16, 2017, Ryanair began selling connecting flights for the first time at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport. This was followed by flights with a transfer at Milan-Bergamo airport from 3 July 2017 onwards.

In September 2017, the biggest crisis in the company’s entire existence began, as Ryanair began cutting up to 50 flights a day (less than 2% of all flights). The reason was the employees who started taking holidays, so the airline did not have the capacity to replace them so that the flights were on time at the same time. The situation affected approximately 700,000 passengers who traveled in September or October 2017. One of the reasons for the lack of staff was the transition to the rival Norwegian airline «Norwegian Air Shuttle». Depending on the situation, the company’s shares fell by approximately 1.3%. On October 7, 2017, Michael Hickey, the company’s Chief Operating Officer, announced his resignation due to the situation and the deterioration of the company’s name.

Ryanair operates more than 400 Boeing 737-800 aircraft, with one 737-700 used primarily for non-scheduled flights. The company’s strategy is based on the lowest possible ticket prices. The company tries to save as much as possible, asks the airports for the lowest possible fees, uses one type of aircraft, if possible, uses airports on the outskirts or outside the destination cities.

The airline’s biggest competitor is the English easyJet.