If Aer Lingus does privatise, it can learn a few tricks from Ryanair aboutlow-cost flying, writes Gerry Byrne
Michael O'Leary threw a hissy fit when the EU said Ryanair's deal with Charlerois airport was anti-competitive. He claimed the decision dealt a death blow to low-cost travel. But don't be fooled by O'Leary's histrionics: low-cost air travel is not just about deals with remote airports, it's mostly about keeping airplanes in the air, not on the ground.
In 1996, the average Ryanair plane flew just four hours and 45 minutes per day. Last year, they each clocked eight hours and two minutes daily before being put to bed for the night, a 69 per cent improvement over the period. And he's not done with it either; by 2007 Ryanair forecasts each of its planes will fly an extra half hour again.
Each extra hour a plane spends in the air, the more money it earns; the longer it stays on the ground, the more its costs stack up. And by keeping his planes in the air, O'Leary has made money, lots of it. Ryanair is now one of the world's most profitable airlines. Increasing flying hours is not easy. O'Leary ruthlessly pruned the things which not only cost needless cash, but also slow down operations.
Among the first to go were airbridges, those covered walkways which get you on the plane dry and warm, whatever the weather. It costs just €30 an hour to rent them from Dublin Airport but that wasn't the only reason they had to go. There's only one airbridge per aircraft parking space, or stand, so that meant that Ryanair could only get passengers on and off the aircraft through one door. O'Leary had been out with his stopwatch and realised that precious minutes were being wasted with each flight while passengers shuffled back and forth through the airbridge.
He prefers a situation almost analogous to a bus station, where the bus can pull right up outside and passengers enter and leave by walking out from the building. He settled on Pier A, an almost disused, elderly boarding area at Dublin. It had no airbridges, so planes could taxi right up to the building and the passengers could walk in and out at ground floor level. While everyone else refers to "low-cost" terminals, the airline industry refers to Terminal A as a "fast-turnaround facility".
When Aer Lingus's new chief executive, Willie Walshe, took over he tried the Ryanair-style fast-turnaround concept on a variety of routes. The result was that Walsh was almost immediately able to launch nine new routes without buying or leasing a single new aircraft, so great was the extra capacity he was able to squeeze out of his existing fleet. Now he scrambles for space for Aer Lingus Commuter aircraft at Pier A alongside Ryanair's jets.
Fast turnaround is a large part of the reason why Ryanair favours out-of-the-way airfields like Charlerois, apart from ridiculously low charges. There is no congestion and aircraft land and take off as quickly as they can unload and re-board passengers.
By opting for fast turnarounds, a conventional airline can easily squeeze in an hour's extra flying time a day, two if its scheduling was really sloppy; that's a flight to London almost for no additional cost, except the fuel and it's almost all extra profit if you get a high enough fare for each seat.
Some years ago I once foolishly asked O'Leary if he would bid for some landing slots that were coming up at Heathrow. His reply was unprintable but, in the light of what I know now about fast-turnarounds, understandable. At Heathrow there are few stands alongside terminals and time spent in boarding and de-planing are longer. Aircraft are also likely to be delayed through stacking, where they fly an oval race-track shaped pattern, reducing altitude by 1,000 feet at a time, until it's their turn in a long procession of airborne misery to land. That would be fine for O'Leary if he could charge his passengers for the minutes spent aboard, not the distance travelled but, unlike taxis, airlines cannot charge waiting time.
Ryanair also stopped accepting commercial cargo for its passenger flights. Too often a Ryanair plane, fully loaded with passengers, was delayed because a cargo pallet had yet to make its way from the cargo terminal to be put on board.
In an industry littered with failure, O'Leary tries to keep his increasingly busy aircraft filled to capacity. But he can only do that by keeping fares - and costs - low. Travellers buy an airplane ticket to get from A to B, not to be entertained, he reasons. So farewell to hot towels, free meals, free newspapers, free drinks, free everything (including wheelchairs, until last week).
Staff are encouraged to supplement their wages by flogging stuff to bored passengers. Passengers pay the company's share of the credit card booking costs and don't expect frequent flier points. Plus, allocating seat numbers turned out to be a costly and unnecessary service.
All of the above may seem like a raw deal for the consumer but, if you want airline costs to be reduced dramatically, it's good news.
Similarly, point-to-point is another reason for Ryanair's success in reducing costs. Full-service airlines maintain an expensive small army of people at airports transferring passengers from one flight to another. Costly delays occur when a connecting flight is late and the airline has to wait for connecting passengers to arrive. Life is so much simpler (and cheaper) if you sell tickets for a trip from one airport to another and let the passengers look after their own connections.
Again, full service airlines like Aer Lingus are learning lessons from this. If you book somewhere Aer Lingus doesn't serve direct like, say Moscow, involving a flight from Dublin to Heathrow and then from Heathrow to Moscow, it might be cheaper booking two separate tickets and doing your own transfers at Heathrow. It means collecting your luggage off the Dublin flight and checking it in again for Moscow but, if you're on a budget, could prove very worthwhile.