There I was the other night poking around Tesco when a
Polish neighbour approached me. She is looking forward to going home to Poland
in November and asked me if she should be worried. She usually travels Ryanair and wonders will
the flight be cancelled. Aer Lingus is significantly dearer and she couldn’t
afford to fly home as often. This is the
conundrum facing many, mostly low paid workers, who rely on another group of
low paid workers in Ryanair to get home.
She pointed out that it’d be too dear to fly in December
even with Ryanair so November has become the new Christmas for herself and her
daughter as they catch up with family and friends. I suggested she check Easyjet’s website as
they fly from Belfast.
Yesterday I saw a facebook post from a former pupil who
works as cabin crew with Ryanair. He was waiting at a bus stop outside a
airport terminal when a man approached him and verbally abused him because his
wife’s dream holiday had been cancelled once Michael O’Leary pulled flights. It
reminded of how counter staff at Anglo Irish Bank were abused by their
customers as they closed accounts when the bank collapsed 9 years ago. People often vent their anger at the wrong
person. It is wrong and sad. The workers
in Ryanair are no more responsible for the mess than those who worked the
counter at Anglo.
There is a flaw in the Ryanair model. It is predicated on
reducing all costs in all circumstances. It maxes the return
from the customer base and keeps cost below those of their competitors.. Aircraft, wages,
landing fees, fuel, handling charges, agents all reduced to as low as possible. Eventually something has to give.
Michael O’Leary used to thank God for
Irish funerals as mourners from Britain flying home had to pay top dollar.
I presume O’Leary is on his knees once more. His pilots are
leaving, his aircraft are on the ground. Ryanair jets are flown twice as much
as most other competitors. Unless they fly they lose money. The cancelling of the flights and uncertainty
of the customer base mean that the number of passengers will drop. It is not
economic to run a plane that costs €98M and fill it with passengers paying just
€9.99. I’m not saying there is a bubble
in the budget airline business but if the company needs to keep its pilots it
can’t sustain these prices. Pilots can get better pay in Asia or the Middle East
and they’re voting with their feet. There’s little that Michael O’Leary and his
management team can do about that except pay their staff more. We all know what that will mean for the price of a ticket.
At the back of it O'Leary reckons that if they increase pay for
pilots cabin crew will be next in line. You know those videos you see sometimes
of yobs giving stick to cabin crew before they take off? Well it seems the
cabin crew are not actually paid to deal with the matter and that they don’t
get paid until the plane takes off. Can you imagine a fire fighter at the
airport being told, that you don’t get paid unless they’ve to deal with an
incident? No. Me neither. Would I work under the conditions that Ryanair staff are expected to work for their pay? Absolutely not.
So what has all this to do with Wexford? Well quite a lot
actually. If Ryanair increase their costs then they must increase their average
fare. If they do that they will make cheap travel less affordable. They will
also be less competitive and they will become like one of those expensive
airlines that Michael O’Leary got so much publicity by criticising. That will
mean less flights although it will not necessarily mean that people will not
want to travel. People will find other ways to get around, the market will move
on.
Unlike Ryanair who sell planes when they get to 10 years
old, Irish Rail’s rolling stock last longer, cost less to run and while it won’t
generate as much revenue on an average
train journey as a Boeing 737-800 from Dublin to Stansted it is economically
more sustainable. Some of the passengers
will revert to boat and train or bus, especially when it comes to travel from
Ireland to Britain. Dublin London is the
second busiest air corridor in the world.
If even half a million passengers per year shifted to boat and train or
bus from air lines, that’d fill an 8 coach train out of Holyhead or Fishguard
every day. Dublin Airport by the way expects over 24 Million passengers in
2017, so these figures are not fanciful. It will also generate substantial increases of
foot passengers into Rosslare. Already 25,000 foot passengers use Fishguard. The turbulence at Ryanair can have an upside
for the shipping companies that operate into Rosslare.
As I’ve said before on this blog, Michael O’Leary must be
down on his knees thanking God for Irish Rail management. If it was raining soup, these guys would be
out with a fork! They are pushing ahead
with their plans to terminate train services to Rosslare hoping that by
amending the plan to terminate at Wexford rather than Gorey. The €4.4M question
as to how much they can save on that proposal will be figured out by the NTA.
In the meantime, is my Polish neighbour going to get home
before the end of the year? I wish I knew.
