The research for this report, which is focused on a S.W.A.T. analysis on Ryanair, was fully based on internet web sites. For full information, refer to the bibliography at the end of he report.
3. Findings
3.1 Strengths
a. Leadership in the low-cost sector
• “Ryanair was Europe’s original low fares airline and is still Europe’s largest low fares carrier. Currently the company carries over 35m. passengers on 325 low fare routes across 21 European countries”( Ryanair).
As a matter of fact Ryanair is currently the largest low-cost company on the market with 12 European bases, a fleet of over 250 aircrafts and more than 2700 employees.
Moreover the company provides frequent point-to-point services which allows them to avoid costs of services for connecting passengers, costs of baggage transfer and costs of transit passenger assistance.
In addition their cost-leadership strategy is based on the intention to overtake competitors by minimizing any cost in order to provide a same service but at a lower price. b. Low costs
• “Ryanair’s operating costs are among the lowest of any European scheduled passenger airline”(Ryanair). In fact the company focuses and try to control and reduce the four considered major costs for a passenger airline, which include aircraft equipment, personnel productivity, customer service and airport access and handling. b.1. Aircraft equipment costs
• The initial company’s strategy to contain the aircraft equipment costs was to purchase a single model( Boeing 737-200A) of used aircrafts between 11 and 17 years of life . However in the late 1990’s there was a significant drop down of the availability of such aircrafts on the market. As a consequence the company decided to start purchasing brand new aircrafts( Boeing 737-800) increasing in this way not only their fleet but also their costs. As a solution to this problem, Ryanair decided to purchased everything from a “single manufacturer which enabled it to limit the costs