Ryanair flights... Gone DOWN?!

prezzacc

:mad:
Was looking to book ryanair flights a while ago....priced £150ish for two over holidays so thought ahh not too bad,, anyway price went up .. £180 for two! Dam i thought, i better book they go up nearer the time of flight so i heard.... went to book, flights gone down to £110 Bargain i thought.... Booked!

Just checked same flight.... now only 90 grrr! I though they went up nearer time of flights ?! Am i gonna be gutted if i keeo checking the site lol

jamesbrownontheroad

Yep. It's called Yield Management. It's what makes Ryanair so profitable.

It sounds like you may have been seduced by the old adage that the cheapest fares are those bought earliest. They're not.

Ryanair generally open up seats for sale 9-12 months in advance. These are not sale fares; they're just mid-priced fares that accrue unavoidable check-in fees etc.

Four-two months before departure, Ryanair gets a good feel for which flights are selling well and which are not. This is when the bargains emerge. If you look on ryanair.com you'll see there is ALWAYS some kind of sale or promotion going on (flashing gif image at the top of the left hand column).

These are the only fares Ryanair advertise and therefore they do not accrue unavoidable extra fees. These are also the best deals. Ryanair wants to fill unsold seats. So they use this 2-4 month window to deep discount emptier flights to balance out the initial demand. Note that flights to sunshine and holiday destinations rarely get big discounts here because they don't need to be filled up as much as more marginal routes.

Every airport has a dedicated page listing all available destinations and cheapest available sale fares, plus booking and availability windows. For instance, here's the page for flights from Glasgow Prestwick.

Edit: apologies, forgot to paste in. Here it is:

http://www.ryanair.com/en/cheap-glasgow-prestwick-uk-paris-beauvais-france-flights

You can see that only Derry, Stansted and Beavais are included in the current offer. Anywhere warm (!) and the cheapest available flights are still quite high (and not the advertised promo fares, so they accrue online checkin fees etc).

After that window has passed, i.e. for anything leaving in the next month or so, you can expect the fares to jump right back up, because that's when it's expected that if you have to travel, you're prepared to pay top dollar.

Hope that explains it a bit. Fares go up and go down. You should buy every flight knowing this. The price you pay is the price you're happy to pay to secure the flight at the time you book it.

The_Groat_Counter

Can't dispute anything you say jamesbrownontheroad, but just want to add that when booking flights from some other airlines it is possible to know what the lowest (public) fare is, because they publicise it - e.g. one-way flights with BA to (and back from) European destinations (the cheapest £49 fare is available to 13 destinations) where the lowest prices are both publicised and are also made available for flights in the distant future - so if you secure say a £49 fare to Rome for some distant date you can I think be fairly sure that it's not going to get any cheaper. (BA could have a sale or something I suppose, but for these cheaper fares I'd suggest it's unlikely, and if there is a reduction I don't reckon it'd be much - unlike Ryanair, BA are not operating on the imperative of filling up the aeroplane come what may.)

prezzacc

Dam! Thanks for all that info, very interesting..however!!!

I may be trying to talk myself out of this... lol .. but reus where i booked says only in the sale for 3 days 1st feb to 3rd feb booking, and i only paid a little more ! lol. Interesting to know that tho thanks very much....

Like you say im still reasonably happy as i have a VERY short time and strict dates from certain airports and this was the only route in the country that i could get with the days i wanted! So i expected to pay a lil over the odds.

Thanks again for all that info tho

homeopathy

The same thing happened to me.
As I was buying flights to Carcassonne over Easter and May Bank Holiday, I found flights seemed to be going up in January so I purchased them. Since then they have gone down to a much lower price - I think they went down at the 3 month window.
I assume I cannot rectify this unless someone has found a loop hole!!