A couple of years ago I paid 2 pounds from London to Dublin return. Did Ryanair have to pay fees for this? e.g airport fees/immigration fees etc. Or is there some other way this gets recouped? I checked no bags and they made no ancillary income off me. I see these cheap deals quite often. Does Ryanair make a loss on these or are they getting reimbursed some other way?

bevan7 wrote:

A couple of years ago I paid 2 pounds from London to Dublin return. Did Ryanair have to pay fees for this? e.g airport fees/immigration fees etc. Or is there some other way this gets recouped? I checked no bags and they made no ancillary income off me. I see these cheap deals quite often. Does Ryanair make a loss on these or are they getting reimbursed some other way?

Yes, they have to pay all the fees as any other airline. You pay 2 pounds but believe me..in the same plane some people had paid 40+ pounds for a single way ticket. So...the company do all the "math" before launch this kind of promotion...some pay less others pay more and in the final has a balance between this.

In 2009 I flew from STN to KRK for £00.00 believe me the flight didn't cost me a penny, although upto that flight I had taken advantage of the £2 flights previously operated on many occasions but I was shocked that I was charged nothing when booking online.

I only went to Krakow for the night and the train from the airport to Krakow Central Station was packed with the guard hurriedly trying to get payment from the passengers on the short 10 minute trip but never got anywhere near me by the time we had arrived in Krakow, the same thing happened the next day on my return back to the airport, I hadn't paid for either journey, a result for me.

I booked the two star Comapinele Hotel room only for £27, the next morning I decided that I would take breakfast, no staff said anything as I sat down eating my breakfast from the buffet and I wasn't charged, another result for me.

On my return to STN my parking charge was £25 but when I went to the payment machine I found a screwed up £20 note on the floor and I had £5 in my back pocket which I had intended to use for a coffee in flight which I hadn't done, another result for me.

So my two day one night short break to Krakow cost me just the £27 hotel costs plus the fiver I had in my pocket, and the Euros I had for personal expenditure were left overs from my previous travels a few weeks earlier.

That was the cheapest trip I have ever taken and it was my first visit to Poland I remember it well

bevan7 wrote:

A couple of years ago I paid 2 pounds from London to Dublin return. Did Ryanair have to pay fees for this? e.g airport fees/immigration fees etc. Or is there some other way this gets recouped? I checked no bags and they made no ancillary income off me. I see these cheap deals quite often. Does Ryanair make a loss on these or are they getting reimbursed some other way?

Those fares are Ryanairs advertising.
A lucky few will get away with paying a fare like that.
The vast majority end up paying a lot more for the ticket and also end up paying a significant amount of ancillary fees.

Dahlgardo wrote:

bevan7 wrote:

A couple of years ago I paid 2 pounds from London to Dublin return. Did Ryanair have to pay fees for this? e.g airport fees/immigration fees etc. Or is there some other way this gets recouped? I checked no bags and they made no ancillary income off me. I see these cheap deals quite often. Does Ryanair make a loss on these or are they getting reimbursed some other way?

Those fares are Ryanairs advertising.
A lucky few will get away with paying a fare like that.
The vast majority end up paying a lot more for the ticket and also end up paying a significant amount of ancillary fees.

That's what I always thought. During my time living in Europe I flew Ryan Air a number of times and I saw these "fly to so and so for 1 cent" or some other ridiculously low fare. Upon clicking on them I was always met with "the fare may be 1 cent but the ancillary fees cost 20 or 30 Euro" notice. Still cheap for a flight but far from 1 Euro Cent cheap.

fraspotter wrote:

Upon clicking on them I was always met with "the fare may be 1 cent but the ancillary fees cost 20 or 30 Euro" notice. Still cheap for a flight but far from 1 Euro Cent cheap.

Optional. I never paid them.

Pe@rson wrote:

fraspotter wrote:

Upon clicking on them I was always met with "the fare may be 1 cent but the ancillary fees cost 20 or 30 Euro" notice. Still cheap for a flight but far from 1 Euro Cent cheap.

Optional. I never paid them.

Agreed. My mum, brother and I flew STN-BRE return for the grand total of £0.03. Didn't need luggage so that was all we paid.

Even if you personally dont pay anything for the flight or extremely little, you are part of bargaining chip Ryanair can use to drive down their cost to fly in to the airport.

Pe@rson wrote:

fraspotter wrote:

Upon clicking on them I was always met with "the fare may be 1 cent but the ancillary fees cost 20 or 30 Euro" notice. Still cheap for a flight but far from 1 Euro Cent cheap.

Optional. I never paid them.

In Europe are there not any taxes or fees charged by the airport or government that are paid by the traveler? I would have expected that purchasing a 1 cent fare on Ryanair would be similar to redeeming frequent flier miles for an award flight, in that although the airfare is free there are still taxes and fees that have to be paid. For example, when I redeemed miles on United recently, the airfare was $0 + 45000 miles, but I still had to pay a $11.20 "September 11 security fee", which is charged by the TSA, not United. For an international flight a few years ago it was more, as there were taxes/fees collected by both governments, like "US immigration user fee" and "Costa Rica tourism tax", which all together added up to around $50. So I would have thought that a 1 cent fare on Ryanair would actually be "1 cent plus wherever taxes and fees the government charges." But I guess transportation taxes work differently in Europe.

Ryanair are masters in negotiating deals with governments and airports. Some local, regional or even national governments give tax discounts to Ryanair in order to bring tourists to their cities/regions/countries. Also some airports, mostly smaller secondary airports, give discounts on the landing and handling fees just to attract passengers to their airports. For those airports it makes a difference between a little bit of income or no income at all since they got no alternative. It's either Ryanair or nothing.

This works because a few times I actually ended up taking a Ryanair flight to a certain destination just because I could get a cheap flight. I wouldn't have gone there if the flight was more expensive, but the fact that the flight was cheap was reason for me to go there.

Also, as others have pointed out, not all seats on Ryanair are dirt cheap. Only a few of them are, but on average they still make a profit on each flight. This is also because they keep their costs down as much as possible in every possible way. At certain airports they're using remote stands because those are the cheapest. You'll almost never see them use an airbridge for boarding because airstairs are cheaper than airbridges.

Yflyer wrote:

In Europe are there not any taxes or fees charged by the airport or government that are paid by the traveler? I would have expected that purchasing a 1 cent fare on Ryanair would be similar to redeeming frequent flier miles for an award flight, in that although the airfare is free there are still taxes and fees that have to be paid. For example, when I redeemed miles on United recently, the airfare was $0 + 45000 miles, but I still had to pay a $11.20 "September 11 security fee", which is charged by the TSA, not United. For an international flight a few years ago it was more, as there were taxes/fees collected by both governments, like "US immigration user fee" and "Costa Rica tourism tax", which all together added up to around $50. So I would have thought that a 1 cent fare on Ryanair would actually be "1 cent plus wherever taxes and fees the government charges." But I guess transportation taxes work differently in Europe.

There are, but European laws require them to be part of the ticket price. They're not mentioned seperately, this allows Ryanair to spread them non-equally over their passengers. In fact, the passengers who book late and pay a high fare pay the taxes for the passengers who book early and pay a low fare.

Ryanair doesn't have a frequent flyer program, they don't make any difference between a one-time traveler and a frequent flyer. As long as the seat is occupied, they don't care who sits in it.

Flew Dublin to Cork in 2010 for €0.02 return

I miss those deals... Ryanair haven’t done them for quite a while now...

I remember DUB, NRN etc. for £0.02 return. I prided myself with “never paying more than a tenner for a city break”!

I mean, they are paid for by people going onto internet forums and talking about how cheap they were able to get FR fares. It's a marketing cost.

So there you go!

I flew to Germany for free with Ryanair, it was return flights, and I also flew to Italy twice for about 10 pounds return. I didn't check a bag and didn't buy anything onboard... so they didn't make any additional from me, they get bad press, but at the end of the day for a 1 maybe 2 hour flight return to go from A to B it was sufficient. They are low cost and I knew what I was in for, poor service, crew that struggled with English, every man for himself to get the seat they want on the plane, I mean honestly a total s**t show but, at the end of the day it was no different than to getting on the train in rush hour, it got me to my destination on time, it was a short flight, had no issues, so honestly cant really complain.

I mean to be honest, I fly first as much as I can, but lets face it, those same people paying hundreds to fly club with BA to the same destination, and refuse to set foot on Ryanair because its beneath them.... those are the same people that get on the train in London in rush hour and get crammed in like a sardine so... whos the fool? I had great trips, I knew what to expect from Ryanair and it was as expected but I didn't have any problems. As long as you read the small print.... and know the potential additional fees if you don't follow Ryanair policy, which at the time was paying for your boarding pass if you didn't print it yourself, idk if they still do that I haven't flown them in a very long time.

But I have to say thanks to Ryanair for my uber cheap and free flights, I had a great weekend away, a nice hotel, and enjoyed my trip so....