Three-day site closure ‘won’t cost Ryanair a penny’
The airline’s popular website, responsible for the vast majority of its bookings, will go offline for 73 hours from 10pm on February 22 until 11pm on February 25 for what the company calls an “essential system upgrade” as it moves to a new reservations system.
Ryanair stressed all passenger travel will be unaffected during the period when the website is offline — and claimed its profits would follow suit.
A report in yesterday’s London Times newspaper claimed that on the basis of losing 500,000 bookings over the three days the site is offline, at an average of €63 per flight, Ryanair stood to lose €31.5m.
The low-fares airline responded in customary fashion, declaring it would not lose any money at all, and because of advance notice of the suspension of the website, people would simply ensure that bookings were made in advance.
There were also strong words for the journalist who wrote the story on the Times Online website, Ginny McGrath.
“The figures claimed by Ginny McGrath on the Times Online website are rubbish,” Ryanair stated bluntly.
“They are totally fabricated. We have already taken significant additional advance bookings (and will take more after the shutdown) which will ensure that bookings, loads and financial results will be unaffected.”
The article had reported that, according to internet monitoring agency Hitwise, Ryanair could lose up to half its average weekly bookings during the three-day shutdown. Not so, according to the airline.
“All passengers will be notified that they can make changes to their bookings either before [or] after this shutdown. Contrary to Ginny McGrath’s claims, the shutdown comes at a great time for Ryanair as we are predicting lower fares, fewer competitors and traffic growth to 60 million passengers this year.
“The Times Online article is, as stated above, rubbish.”
