It’s like parking on a meter five minutes over and getting a ticket. You know the rules. They may be petty, but you have to play the game to get the best deal otherwise you make a larger contribution to company profits. Sorry.

It’s clear from Ryanair’s incredible profits that they play by different commercial rules from other brands and it’s instructive to think about why that is.

The bottom line is that they do not operate within a normal, functioning market.

Of course, they did a huge amount to bring competition to the aviation sector when they first launched, but they are now using market dominance to erode the customer experience.

Put simply, they don’t care about 500K people hating them because, they don’t have to.

Something needs to change and I think Easyjet may have begun to recognise this and are changing their strategy. I wrote a bit more on this here if you’re interested:

http://thirdcity.co.uk/blog/budget-wars-could-easyjet-outmanoeuvre-ryanair/

The risk Ryanair faces is that may be seen to make their money from “gotcha” catches. In fact, they may actually make their money from gotchas.

As the internet helps educate people to print their passes out in advance then Ryanair will make less money from less gotchas.

The education process, that in some cases the difference in price isn’t there (before or after the gotcha charges), is the longer term risk.

Ryanair may have seen a recent dip in profits but they are also now the second biggest airline in Europe – a simply meteoric rise over the past few years. And all this despite a long-standing indifferent attitude towards customer care and an abject refusal to ‘engage’. How can this be?

Ryanair’s USP is it’s honesty of intention – people know that all airlines are ultimately out to scam them (BA, Virgin and others have all been involved in price fixing and similar dubious practices). Ryanair is refreshing because essentially it admits it. Ryanair’s customers know that they will get a cheap flight if they play the game. If they don’t , they will get shafted. It’s not about the airline being their best mate, or ‘joining the conversation’.

In essence what Ryanair have done is to turn air travel into a commodity. People don’t love commodity suppliers; they just look for the cheapest price.

As long as that remains the case then social media is indeed irrelevant to the brand. It is, they themselves put it: ‘a waste of time and money’.

Also worth noting, that Ryanair’s drop in profits was as a result of an increase fuel prices – an issue which sometimes only affects one airline and not them all depending on how they buy their fuel.