Monday, August 6, 2007

Ryanair's A Hungry Beast

Ryanair today announced a seat sale of 2.7 million seats during September, October and November this year at just £10 per seat (inclusive of all taxes). As you would expect from the master tactician, Michael O'Leary, he's wrapped it all up in an attack on BA and Virgin for price fixing - but rather surprisingly no attack on the BAA.

It's not difficult to see why they've done it. Their load factors are generally running two points below last years levels, which in itself s hardly surprising given the fact that in May Ryanair's capacity was up by 19% - a trend that reflects the whole year to date. Even if capacity had stayed the same this year there would still have been around 2.1 million empty seats over the three months of the offer. As it is their capacity is likely to rise by at least 15% giving them another 1.9 million seats to sell.

It's interesting to see the curve unwinding in Ryanair's chase to fill the hungry beast that is their expanding capacity

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