Being motivated

It’s been a while since I updated my blog for the last time. This is mainly due to my busy summer schedule which in large measure involved travelling and religiously watching NFL. But that doesn’t mean that my constantly thinking brain hasn’t created any interesting opinion to post it here. Oh well, nothing like that – I even dare to say, I have more to put here than ever before. Although, at this time, I would like to concentrate only on one particular subject or actually, my recent turning point in the way of how I’ve started perceiving my lovely airline, Ryanair.

Those who know me, or are familiar with my complaints and strong opinion about the aforementioned airline’s business model, had a chance to learn how much I hate this LCC. But perhaps, I should slightly change my perception of it especially if I forget about my personal experience on board flight FR666 or FR2157 or..... well, the number of disappointments served by Ryanair is simply too long.

 But in all fairness, there is something that has undoubtedly grabbed my attention.  After listening to the airline’s CEO Micheal O’Leary’s speech at CANSO Global ATM Summit in August where he brought up an interesting point of how quickly the aviation sector will walk away from a typical hub-based model to point-to-point flying. So that will have an irreversible impact on many airlines specifically on national flag carriers which still base their operation on large hubs.

Point-to-point, hmm; I think this is how I like to fly – avoid long queues, irritating security questions (if you fly across the USA) lost baggage and of course “ I missed my connection plane, only because the first one didn’t arrive on time”  . Indeed, that makes a lot of sense.

It costs passengers less to fly non-stop. The argument for hub-and-spoke is that low fares are more important to passengers than scheduled or nonstop routes. However the total cost of carrying passengers from their point of origin to their point of destination is lower when passengers fly nonstop than when they have to change planes at a hub.

Industry research shows that a hub-and-spoke structure requiring two flights for every destination incurs 2% higher aircraft handling and landing fees than nonstop service to the same destinations. Likewise passenger connection costs for a two-flight routing are around 8% higher than direct routing.

But, I’m sure the growth of point-to-point service does not mean that hubs will disappear. It simply means that passengers will have more convenient schedule choices and more opportunities to fly nonstop.

Bottom line;  Well done Mr O’Leary