[Anonymous]

[kavaqc1]

I recently travelled to Birmingham – Dublin, flying out Ryanair and flying back Aer Lingus and the winner by far was Ryanair. The Ryanair revolution continues.

One question to Ryanair, where have all the flights from Luton to Dublin gone? only 1 a day most days and that’s at 06:25!!!

[Potakas]

A previous article here at BT said that ryanair will cut capacity at Stansted by 17 per cent this winter, with overall UK capacity falling by 16 per cent.

Ryanair is blaming the UK government’s “tourist tax” for the move, which it says “continues to damage British traffic, tourism and jobs”. The carrier says that it will switch some of its London based aircraft to “to other European bases where governments have scrapped tourist taxes and reduced passenger charges, in some case to zero, in order to grow tourism and traffic”.

Capacity will reduced at most of Ryanair’s other UK bases, although Edinburgh and Leeds will be spared the cuts. Maybe the Luton-Dublin route was one of its cuts.

About the time it’s simply Ryanair..

[VintageKrug]

Quite right.

Actually, I think that the reduction in flights is only partly tax/fee related.

In reality, Ryanair (and other LCCs) fly from many smaller regional airport nowadays, so there is less need (and therefore demand) for flights from the “traditional” mainstay secondary airports such as STN and LTN.

[TominScotland]

kavaqc1, you make an interesting point. I use both airlines frequently from either GLA or PIK to Dublin. Ryanair wins hands down every time on reliability/ punctuality – Aer Lingus appear to be congenitally late, especially towards the back end of the day. However, this problem has improved somewhat since the introduction of their Aer Arran franchise arrangement, using smaller turboprops (not much fun in bumpy weather).

However, Aer Lingus is the clear winner for me on service – I know you don’t expect much on a 40 minute hop but Michael O’Leary appears to have banned smiles and basic courtesies from cabin crew in case this impacts on cost/ timing. Sad, really and not helped by the austere attitudes of some of the low cost labour imported from elsewhere in Europe.

My choice, in the end, is dictated by timings of the flights and the cost – both of which can vary considerably on a day to day basis, especially with FR.

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