Daft question
"why exactly are the airlines expected to be reimbursing people's hotels, meals and everything else when the governments are the ones who made a balls of this?"
Well, as member of the public with no special knowledge of the airline industry, let me answer your question Mr O'Leary.
Your company normally makes several hundred million euros a year from the travelling public. Some of that money comes from charging families hundreds of euros to carry their luggage. Or for needing a drink of water. Soon some of it will come from charging them to go to the toilet to get rid of your water.
In the business and legal environment in which you operate - i.e. a company based in Ireland subject to European regulation - all players have to abide by some minimum standards of behaviour. One of those standards is that if your company fails to provide a service, the costs incurred by individual customers for the delay or alternative transport should be borne by your company, not the customer.
The bottom line is Ryanair can afford to compensate the customer for costs incurred in service failure. Individual customers paying say 30 euros for a ticket are unlikely to be able to and in fact may suffer hardship.
Of course another business model would be for your fares to take account of the fact that occasionally you may need to compensate passengers. But that would be hard for you to figure out, wouldn't it?
BTW as to governments "making a balls of this" I suspect the UK government - and possibly others - do not yet have the power to start and stop volcanic eruptions. Perhaps you could argue they should have destructively tested airliners at 30,000ft by injecting various hypothetical volcanic ash mixtures into engines to see if they fell out of the sky in the case of a 1-in-200 year event. Or maybe you know the internal scientific and administrative procedures that lead to the flight ban and allowed it to be lifted? Given the naivety you demonstrate on the other question, I guess that is more than unlikely.
Well, as member of the public with no special knowledge of the airline industry, let me answer your question Mr O'Leary.
Your company normally makes several hundred million euros a year from the travelling public. Some of that money comes from charging families hundreds of euros to carry their luggage. Or for needing a drink of water. Soon some of it will come from charging them to go to the toilet to get rid of your water.
In the business and legal environment in which you operate - i.e. a company based in Ireland subject to European regulation - all players have to abide by some minimum standards of behaviour. One of those standards is that if your company fails to provide a service, the costs incurred by individual customers for the delay or alternative transport should be borne by your company, not the customer.
The bottom line is Ryanair can afford to compensate the customer for costs incurred in service failure. Individual customers paying say 30 euros for a ticket are unlikely to be able to and in fact may suffer hardship.
Of course another business model would be for your fares to take account of the fact that occasionally you may need to compensate passengers. But that would be hard for you to figure out, wouldn't it?
BTW as to governments "making a balls of this" I suspect the UK government - and possibly others - do not yet have the power to start and stop volcanic eruptions. Perhaps you could argue they should have destructively tested airliners at 30,000ft by injecting various hypothetical volcanic ash mixtures into engines to see if they fell out of the sky in the case of a 1-in-200 year event. Or maybe you know the internal scientific and administrative procedures that lead to the flight ban and allowed it to be lifted? Given the naivety you demonstrate on the other question, I guess that is more than unlikely.
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