Come fly with us for nothing, says ‘no fares’ airline Ryanair

LOW-FARES airline Ryanair launched a one-million free seat sale yesterday and said the promotion would not hurt its profits.

The seat sale is part of a public campaign to quell suggestions that the company’s customer service might be anything less than exemplary.

From yesterday until midnight on Monday, there are one-million free flights available, where the passenger will only have to pay the airport tax, and a quarter of these flights will depart from Dublin.

The deals are available for flying from October 1 to December 17, including the October bank holiday weekend and the mid-term school break.

Overall, the one-million seats’ offer represents approximately one-third of the airline’s capacity.

The catch is that although there are free seats on all routes except new destination Strasbourg, there aren’t necessarily free seats on every single flight, so grabbing a great deal on a peak-time route could be difficult.

At the launch of the bonanza yesterday, commercial director Michael Cawley said there had been a lot of ignorant and superficial comment about the customer service of the airline.

“The bad publicity is way out of context with its size.”

He said that although other airlines’ publication of a customer charter was just “smoke and mirrors,” their efforts were “long on style” as opposed to Ryanair’s, which was “long on substance.” Advertisements for the promotion say “All customers have to pay is Zero, Nada, F**k All,” and there is a question as to whether such an ad might run foul of the Advertising Standards Authority.

Mr Cawley said the Advertising Standards Authority was much more vigilant in its scrutiny of low fare carriers than high fare.

Mr Cawley said Ryanair strongly supported the recent government decision to build a second terminal at Dublin airport.

He added the company had been in talks with several international airport operators, including TBI which owns Luton, Stockholm and Belfast, and the operators of Glasgow Prestwick and Frankfurt airports as well as some private groups.

He said all of these operators were going to make expressions of interest, and while Ryanair was interested in giving financial assistance to any other operator, it was important to understand that running the terminal itself would not be its first choice.

Ryanair’s passenger service and low fares charter gives pledges on safety, low prices, punctuality, modern aircraft and friendly, hospitable on-board service.

Mr Cawley said by 2006, none of the airline’s planes would be more than six years old.