American Airlines Files for Chapter 11

[markw]

TBH, for a long time, that was the perception of Southwest although it was odd because in many cases their destinations were actually closer to the destination city than the "Major" airlines using airports like Love Field, Hobby, Midway, and Newark. I didn't realize until recently that for a lot of New York City, Newark is actually a better airport to go into because you're along side the island instead of on one end of it.

Ryanair were/are infamous for playing fast and loose with European geography - "Frankfurt" Hahn is something like 75 miles from Frankfurt, and is about the same distance from Luxembourg, "Brussels" in Ryanair speak is actually the city of Charleroi 25 miles away, and "Dusseldorf" Ryanair flights land in the small town of Weeze, over 40 miles away. "Hamburg" with Ryanair drops you into Lubeck, 34 miles away, but "Munich" with Ryanair is somewhere up a mountain 68 miles from the city it claims to serve. They also suggest Sandjeford Torp airport is one of two airports they serve for Oslo, despite being over 70 miles from the Norwegian capital.

Whilst Southwest have a reputation for serving more convenient smaller airports with good service and motivated crews, Ryanair, who claim to have been influenced by Southwest, drop you into the cheapest ex military airfield they can find roughly in the same country you want to travel to and reputedly treat their crews like chattels. Despite that they do seem to be doing well, and seemingly have sparked a whole new tourism concept, the weekend away in places only the locals, spies, aircraft enthusiasts and ex military personnel have ever heard of.

[FlyTexas]

Despite that they do seem to be doing well, and seemingly have sparked a whole new tourism concept, the weekend away in places only the locals, spies, aircraft enthusiasts and ex military personnel have ever heard of.

That actually sounds like fun.

Brian

[Garry Russell]

Ryanair doesn't 'claim; to have been influenced by Southwest, O Leary, charged with the re launch many years ago spent time with Southwest so that he could learn their business model. Southwest assisted Ryanairs change of direction

He than applied an extreme version of that as the basis of what became the Ryanair we know, an extreme version low cost operations with all the humanity removed.

[markw]

Ryanair doesn't 'claim; to have been influenced by Southwest, O Leary, charged with the re launch many years ago spent time with Southwest so that he could learn their business model. Southwest assisted Ryanairs change of direction

He than applied an extreme version of that as the basis of what became the Ryanair we know, an extreme version low cost operations with all the humanity removed.

Well, I've heard O'Leary say on a business programme he was influenced by Southwest, which in my view is much the same thing, the man is effectively Ryanair in all but name (in fact do the original Ryan family retain any investment in the airline?), but I do agree the man has done the polar opposite and developed his own model which owes as much to the Southwest model of business as Concorde did to the original Wright Flyer. The two airlines appear to have very different public images, and whilst I've never had a bad experience with Ryanair, and they do seem to be successful, they do seem to be completely indifferent to the image they have as an airline with no scruples, and only about trying to fleece you with hidden charge scams and add-ons.

There again, I've had some truly woeful lack of service from BA in the past for no real apparent reason, and Air France as well. It will be interesting to see if American's Ch11 period leads to any problems with their customer service, I suppose it's only human for staff who are uncertain about their future to be a bit preoccupied.

[ianhind]

I think the BBC News were suggesting that all the other "big" (as in known this side of the Atlantic) had used their time in Chapter 11 to renegotiate staff conditions and salaries and hence they were now surviving. Almost as if this was going to be inevitable for American since they still had the pre 9/11 status for conditions of employment

Your average American probably has no idea that you can fly Ryanair from London to Madrid.

And probably few in the UK know that Ryanair has a large number of routes within Europe. Coming back from holiday via Alicante, a lot of the Ryanair flights out of there were to non-UK destinations.

Ian

[Garry Russell]

Indeed...they have bases all over Europe