It's a brave man who suggests Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary might be reading the market wrong - but as I'm just blogging and not telling him to his face, I'll take a chance.
The airline's recent experiment with in-flight entertainment showed just how hard it is to get people to pay to watch a screen on a short-haul flight. I know people like JetBlue have made it work, but US flights are longer than in Europe and JetBlue's customers are not quite as brutally cost-conscious as Ryanair's. Plus, JetBlue is showing live TV, which may have attractions for business travellers on a budget, whereas pure entertainment is hard to justify if the only reason you chose your airline was to save serious money.
Now O'Leary's talking about on-board gambling. The history of this concept in air travel is not encouraging however. I wrote about all this stuff for a living back in the mid-90s and at that time there were umpteen companies who thought gambling was how they were going to make a living. I don't think any of them actually did - even on long-haul flights. And I know that one of the biggest didn't come even remotely close to breakeven.
Ryanair are going to experiment by offering gaming on their website first. Well, that's all very well - and Ryanair has about the 1,600th most popular website in the world (not as good as EasyJet, but better than JetBlue for comparison) - but that's just not the same as gambling in an aircraft.
Same problem with another Ryanair idea - mobile phone use on-board. Hardly anyone's going to pay a premium to make calls from an aircraft, and if there's no premium then the margins will be razor thin - just ask the phone companies.
Ryanair's business model depends increasingly on getting travellers to pay for anything other than their ticket, so the ticket can be cheap or free. But stuck in a long metal tube with a little screen in front of you and not even necessarily during a mealtime it could just be that all you want is the ticket.
on November 4, 2005 11:28 AM | Reply
All good points. However, I think O'Leary has missed a trick. In-flight dating! Imagine the scene... Handsome stag party member flying to Prague, meets - via the in-flight screens - the Hen party bridesmaid going in the same direction. This isn't just in-flight entertainment - it's a movie! Sign those Hollywood rights today Michael...
Mike Butcher
on November 8, 2005 4:07 AM | Reply
Ryanair should spend the money theyare using for "Stupid short haul plans" to decrease ticket prices.
Focus on selling sleeping pi;;s and "eye shadows" and forget about entertainment on 1-2 hour flights.
Increase carry on luggage allowance so people can carry all their rading material and stop being
"upright stupid"
Kai Hansen
on November 8, 2005 9:47 AM | Reply
Just to point out that at the dawn of the interactive IFE craze in the 90s, I was at Swissair, which had just equipped its first aircraft with gambling. Given that gambling is strictly limited in Switzerland, they were expected a major coup. The technology worked like a dream, but when pressed, the head of the project had to admit that they'd lost around SFr70 on the flight as the canny Swiss quit while they were ahead. Could be a different story in Ireland but a cautionary tale nevertheless.
Kevin O'Toole Flight Group
Kevin OToole