Ryanair drops routes out of Manchester

Smiley82

Article in this morning's paper - efffective October 1 Ryanair will be dropping 9 of it's 10 Manchester routes.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/08/18/ryanair-bust-up-with-airport-costs-600-jobs-115875-21604847/

'Ryanair's Manchester routes to Barcelona (Girona), Bremen in Germany, Brussels (Charleroi), Cagliari in Sardinia, Dusseldorf (Weeze), Frankfurt (Hahn), Marseille, Milan (Bergamo) and Shannon will cease.

Most of the flights will be switched to East Midlands, Leeds Bradford and Liverpool airports.

Passengers affected will be emailed directly by Ryanair and given a full refund or the option of flying from an alternative airport. The cuts come despite an 11% rise in Ryanair's passenger numbers in the three months to June.'

Hope no-one has any of these flights booked!!

ashulton

unfortunately i do! has anyone heard from ryanair yet because i haven't heard anything. i've only read it in the news.

i've already booked my accommodation so i could really do with knowing what they planning on doing.

cannyscot_2

Oh no we have too! and accomodation booked -we will have to just compromise

c45arlo

I have not heard anything official yet but have already rebooked my flights with a traditional carrier at little extra expense.
This is the third time this has happened to me using this airline so it's unlikely I will risk booking them again.

cannyscot_2

c45arlo wrote: »

I have not heard anything official yet but have already rebooked my flights with a traditional carrier at little extra expense.
This is the third time this has happened to me using this airline so it's unlikely I will risk booking them again.

c45arlo what happens in these instances? It says flights moved to leeds liv etc. Do you get a choice of booking on any other out of uk flight to girona ( in my case) or how does it work?


I might copy you and book an alternative as I presume worst case you get your money back?


If possible let me know how it works for a cancelled flight with Ryanair it has never happened to me before so I guess I have been lucky .

Smiley82

As per the article linked above:

Most of the flights will be switched to East Midlands, Leeds Bradford and Liverpool airports. Passengers affected will be emailed directly by Ryanair and given a full refund or the option of flying from an alternative airport.

So I would say they would contact you with an alternative flight, but if you aren't happy with the alternative, you are able to take the refund option.

cannyscot_2

Thanks Smiley 82-my thanks button is not working.

The bit I am unsure of in light of c45arlo booking alternative flights is

Do Ryanair then just tell you well your option is to East Midlands ie you might miss a days hols or come in with the kids really late or a refund?

I'm just trying to work out whether I should go ahead and make alternative s which cost more but then the holiday is saved.

I'm thinking they might say Liv but it comes in really lae and the kids have school the next day?

Just thought someone might have experience of how it works in practice?

Smiley82

Happy to help. Given they have already published that refunds will be available, if you can find similar/reasonable priced flights, you are probably better off just booking them.

The only experience that I have with flight changes is with Thomsonfly, and I was sent the following email:

Dear XXXX

Please be advised that there has been a schedule change to your Thomsonfly flight(s) as detailed below. Please follow the instructions in this email to re-confirm your flight.

Please advise any other passengers who may be travelling in your party of the changes. Your payment details have not changed, and your booking reference remains: XXXXXXX

Your new flight details are below:

In order to confirm that you have received this notification, please click here to accept the change and reconfirm your booking online.

Please note that all flight times are local and schedule details for any other flights you may have booked with us remain the same as per your original itinerary.

We apologise for any inconvenience that this change may cause.

It was then mentioned when I logged in that if the change was not suitable, then I was welcome to contact them to arrange a refund. In my circumstances, I was lucky, my change was only 10 minutes....no big deal, I accepted the new flights.

If I were you, i'd look into new flights and see how much they are likely to be.....just in case!

markelock

isn't this because MAN is so expensive? this could just be my anecdotal experience, but the taxes/fees are always more from there than Luton, Liverpool or East Midlands.

Pssst

I think this is all one big bluff.

I think that Ryanair had to do some cost cutting becuase the current climate and the state of their finances dictated it.

Now then,they wouldnt want to fess up publicly to that as it could damage their reputation.

So what did they do? Invent some harem scarem tale of hard negotiations with Manchester airport.

Man airport says that they afforded Ryanair one of the lowest ladning fees possible and could go no lower. Why should they? anyway other airlines such as Jet2 will fill the slots.

Ryanair are being disingenuous with this made up story. Truth is they HAD to cut costs. They just didnt want to fess up.

wdyw

markelock wrote: »

isn't this because MAN is so expensive? this could just be my anecdotal experience, but the taxes/fees are always more from there than Luton, Liverpool or East Midlands.

6 months to go before the latest edition of the definitve text book on airline costs comes out and things may well have changed but certainly back in the 90's it was more expensive to land a plane off-peak at Manchester airport than it was to land the same plane (with same load factor) at peak times at Heathrow ...in fact Manchester was the most expensive airport in the world listed!!!

Now landing costs are only part of the costs associated with flying to/from Manchester but it surprised me more that they used Manchester in the first place than it does to see them move elsewhere.