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Ryanair

UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
THE BUSINESS SCHOOL

BUSINESS STRATEGY
3BUS0014

LESLIE FITZHUGH

COURSEWORK:
RYANAIR CASE STUDY


BY:
SARAH ANTONY
LIDYAH GUNARATNAM
VIGITHA KIRITHARAN
SAADIA PERVEZ
JOSEPHINE

HAND IN DATE:
04/12/2003
12:30

Brief Introduction
About Ryanair  
(See appendix A for a complete breakdown of Ryanair’s history and future plans)

Ryanair was launched in 1985 with a daily flight between Waterford and London Gatwick. A year later, Ryanair broke the cartel of Aer Lingus and BA on the Dublin to London route. Over the next 3 years, Ryanair expanded rapidly. Under a new management team, a major overhaul of the airline was undertaken in 1990/91 and was relaunched as the first of the new breed of ‘low fares/no frills’ airline. Ryanair is Europe’s largest low fare airline with 76 low fare routes to 13 countries in Europe carrying over 12 million passengers. It is the second largest scheduled airline in the UK in terms of passenger carryings. (Key Note Ltd 2002)

• In January of this year, 2003, Ryanair announced that they had ordered another 100 new Boeing 737-800 series aircraft.
• Also announce their takeover of the low-fares airline, Buzz from KLM and they plan to turn around the loss of £0m euros that Buzz is facing.
• In February, they opened a new base in Italy.
• In April, another base was opened in Sweden with six new routes.
• Financial results that were released in June showed:
“passenger traffic for the year grew by 42% to 15.7m as average load factors increased from 81% to 84%, primarily due to a 6% reduction in average fares. Total revenue in the year rose by 35%, however operating costs rose at a slower rate by 26%. Net Profit increased by 59% to 239.4m euros.”
• 3 new routes were announced in August and now, “Ryanair has 127 routes that cover 84 destinations across 16 countries.”
(www.ryanair.com )

The nature and extent of competition in the market and how
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