Ryanair - routes, schedules, incidents and issues (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Ryanair profits drop as Iran war puts off passengers and lifts fuel costs

Ryanair's profits have fallen sharply as war in the Middle East sent jet fuel prices soaring and customers reluctant to book flights.

The Irish airline's pre-tax profits dropped 34% to €593m (£503m) between April and June while sales were flat as the company was forced to cut fares to stimulate demand.

Ryanair also said it expects summer fares to be slightly lower than last year due to "consumer hesitancy" around air travel.

The price of fuelling a plane has jumped since the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran in February and while Ryanair said it had "hedged" or struck deals for the most future fuel costs, those not included in these arrangements had more than doubled.

Crude oil prices hit $90 (£67) a barrel for the first time in a month on Monday, before falling back slightly, after a weekend of intense exchanges of fire between the US and Iran.

Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — an essential route for global oil and gas supplies — has ground to a halt.

An interim peace deal last month brought some respite to oil and energy prices, but they spiked again as negotiations broke down and fighting resumed.

The airline warned that its results for the year will be "highly sensitive" to external factors such as conflict escalation in the Middle East and Ukraine as well as the price of unhedged jet fuel.

Fares for for the key summer period between July and September are on track to be "modestly" lower than last year, with many passengers booking closer to departure than normal.

The firm's finance chief, Neil Sorahan, said flights on its popular Mediterranean routes were still full. "People [are] as keen to get away as ever, albeit booking just a little bit later," he said.

Between April and June, Ryanair's revenue ticked up 1% to €4.4bn.

While passenger numbers rose 6% to 6.1 million- helped by the Easter holiday in April - fares fell by 6% as the airline reduced fares to entice flyers concerned about the Iran war.

Ryanair's share price fell 5% on Monday.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said Ryanair was in a better position than many of its rivals, but nonetheless "visibility is worse than San Francisco airport when the fog sets in".

"The renewed escalation in hostilities in the Middle East is unhelpful and without a lasting resolution, challenging times for the airline and travel space look set to continue."

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Ryanair broken window may have been caused by 'foreign object'

An incident on a Ryanair flight which saw a passenger partially sucked out of a plane window may have been caused by "foreign object damage" to an engine, said the airline's boss.

Michael O'Leary said an initial investigation into the incident on 10 July between Greece and Germany suggests "it looks like a foreign object damage to the engine on takeoff at Thessaloniki but ... we can't say that definitively".

He insisted that the engine on the 18-year-old Boeing 737 plane had been fully serviced and overhauled in the past two years.

Serbian national Ljubisa Karović's head and right shoulder were sucked out of the plane's window, leaving him "seriously injured and in shock".

His wife Svetlana Grković Maksimović told BBC Serbia that she and two other passengers held on to his legs for several minutes.  She said: "We pulled him back together. His entire face was deformed and blood was pouring from his nose and mouth."

He was taken to hospital after the plane made an emergency landing.

Passengers told local media they heard "some kind of explosion" on board.

The aircraft was operated by Ryanair's subsidiary Malta Air.

Confirmation that the damage was caused by an external object could affect Ryanair or Boeing's liabilities over the incident.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating. O'Leary said that a draft report would be issued in about 28 days.

[JayMac]

I don't think it's very wise for an airline boss to pre-empt the NTSB* investigation.



* The US's National Transportation Safety Board are leading the investigation, having been invited to do so by Greece's Hellenic Air and Rail Safety Investigation Authority.

[Chris from Nailsea]

I don't think it's very wise for an airline boss ...

Just to say, we are referring to Michael O'Leary here ...

That's my personal opinion, not the official view of the Coffee Shop forum.

CfN^▸ (Chris from Nailsea, an administrator on this forum). 

[Chris from Nailsea]

An update, from the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Engine parts smashed Ryanair window that man's head was sucked out of, report says

Broken engine fragments smashed a cabin window of a Ryanair plane causing a man's head and right shoulder to be sucked into the hole last month, US investigators have said.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) wrote in a preliminary report that this happened after an engine fan blade broke shortly after takeoff on the 10 July flight from Greece to Germany.

Serbian national Ljubisa Karović's head and right shoulder were sucked out of the plane's window, leaving him "seriously injured and in shock".  His wife Svetlana Grković Maksimović later told BBC Serbia that she and two other passengers held onto his legs for several minutes.

The NTSB said the flight from Thessaloniki to Memmingen "experienced a No. 2 (right) engine fan-blade-out (FBO) failure during climb out.  The crew elected to return to SKG [Thessaloniki International Airport] where they made an uneventful landing."

The NTSB was "delegated the investigation in full" by the Greek authorities in the days following the incident.  It also detailed a timeline of events given by the flight crew, who said they received a "high vibration" engine alert during the climb.

In response, they reduced the engine power and carried out a series of checks. When the vibrations stopped, the crew continued to climb on autopilot, the report said.  But the engine vibrations then increased and the crew heard a loud bang, prompting them to declare an emergency and begin their descent.

Flight attendants reported hearing and feeling the vibrations, and seeing a small amount of smoke before the oxygen masks were deployed.

One flight attendant said they then noticed passengers calling for help after a passenger became "partially lodged in a damaged cabin window", with the entire window missing.

The engine had undergone ultrasonic inspections in May this year with no findings of fault, the report stated.

Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary earlier suggested that the incident may have been caused by "foreign object damage" to an engine.

The aircraft was operated by Ryanair's subsidiary Malta Air.

[Mark A]

Armchair pilot here. So the engine sent the flight deck crew a memo saying "I'm sick, I need to go to engine hospital right now please." but after giving it a bit of a rest they put the autopilot back at the controls to continue the flight? Hmm.

Mark

[Chris from Nailsea]

Ryanair.

Enough said. 

[Bob_Blakey]

Ryanair.

Enough said. 

Possibly somewhat unfair in view of this:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/travel/13209387/pilot-sucked-ba-cockpit-window/ 

[Chris from Nailsea]

From the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Ryanair boss O'Leary defends 'high-fare rapists' airlines remarks

Ryanair chief executive Michael O'Leary has refused to apologise to a rape crisis centre which criticised him for describing rival airlines as "high-fare rapists".

Speaking to journalists, O'Leary said some people were "desperate to get to Ryanair's low fares because they can't afford to fly with the high-fare rapists around Europe".

O'Leary doubled-down on his choice of words when asked about them at the time, and later refused to apologise when the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre (DRCC) wrote to him asking for apology, in a letter seen by the BBC.

Ireland's deputy premier Simon Harris said it was "clearly an inappropriate use of language" and that O'Leary "should have moved to rectify it".

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told UK^▸ (United Kingdom) radio outlet LBC that victims of rape are "not going to be rushing to book tickets with him, let's be honest".

O'Leary made the comments on Thursday while talking to journalists ahead of Ryanair's yearly meeting with shareholders.

Asked by a reporter from the Press Association whether the language was appropriate, he said: "Absolutely."

"British Airways, Lufthansa, and everybody else's high fares, I'll happily offend them on a regular basis," he added.

Asked whether it would offend sexual assault victims, he said rape was "a terrible crime".

Following O'Leary's comments, the DRCC's chief executive Rachel Morrogh wrote to O'Leary accusing him of trying to get a headline with his comments.  She said the DRCC had received calls from rape victims who were "upset and distressed because of what you said".

She offered O'Leary training on the impact of sexual violence and urged him to apologise.  "I can't imagine you would ever use the term so flippantly again if you truly understood [what] it was like to survive rape," she wrote.

In response, O'Leary said: "I am quite clear that no remarks of mine could possibly trivialise the heinous crime of rape."  He added that as he had not "trivialised the heinous crime of rape" he would "not be issuing any apology or accepting your offer of training".

It is not the first time O'Leary has offended people while talking about his business.  In 2004, he reportedly called the owners of Stansted Airport "a bunch of overcharging rapists" in a row over airport charges.

He has also previously called some of his own staff "lazy bastards" and once said to passengers looking for a refund "we don't want to hear your sob stories".

In June, he said the airline would "reluctantly" stop charging parents to sit next to children after a watchdog investigation was opened, but insisted its previous policy complied with laws.