RYANAIR STRENGTHS

Strengths

Strengths in the SWOT analysis are an asset that companies have and they are used as a way to
distinguish yourself from competitors. Strengths are internal to the organization and they are under
its control (Scholley Bubenik, 2019).

1. Low costs

Ryanair is well recognized all over the world because of its lower costs. The company has taken this
as its biggest strength. Ryanair is the most outspoken price-oriented carrier between its competitors.
Ryanair operates at length to lower its costs and prices and the company is pride in being the lowest
fare and lowest cost carrier in Europe. It is just necessary to have to look at its fiscal year 2019 half-
year results to see that Ryanair breathes "lowest costs" on every page and slide (Jeroen
Kraaijenbrink, 2019).

Ryanair continues to deliver the cheapest unit cost of any EU airline and the cost gap between
Ryanair and its competitors has extended over the last year. Ryanair continues significantly lowering
the cost on a per passenger basis than any of its competitors, and this enables the company to offer
lower fares. Ryanair anticipates delivering low or slightly cheaper flight tickets over the coming
years, especially after the acquisition of Boeing MAX that deliveries ramp up, these aircraft give 4%
more seats but 16% lower fuel expenditure. The introduction of this aircraft constitutes a critical part
of Ryanair's cost efficiency for the following next 5 years (Ryanair Corporate, 2020).

The Chief Executive Officer of Ryanair, O’Leary performed several difficult decisions to transform
Ryanair into one of Europe’s leading low-cost airlines. The CEO replaced the whole fleet, which
included 14 types of planes, with a fleet of Boeing 737s. Ryanair made possible to lower prices
operating from secondary cities, rather than operating out of secondary airports. Also, some airports
paid Ryanair to fly into them. Another strategy was to stop accepting bookings through travel
agents, Ryanair moved to direct bookings, at the beginning through call centers and later over the
online services. (Harvard Business Review, 2014).

The airline took several other actions to remake itself. Ryanair eliminated business class to
concentrate its effort on economy class and leisure clients. The company lowered costs by stopping
serving free meals and beverages on flights, instead, the airline made them available to purchase.
This change allowed the company to reduce the number of attendants per flight from five to two.
Ryanair eliminated seat assignments to hurry up boarding and stopped carrying baggage, which
decreased aircraft turnaround times from 45 minutes to 25 minutes (Harvard Business Review,
2014).

2. Low fares
Ryanair introduced low fares in its industry and into Europe around 30 years ago. The company is
well known in the industry because of its low fares. Ryanair has always been highly capable of
providing to customers what they truly want; the lowest fares in the market and the widest selection
of destinations. Ryanair has converted its fares in one of its biggest strengths taking the company to
another level as "The biggest airline in Europe" carrying more than 100 million customers since 2015
(Jacobs, 2015).

Ryanair chief Michael O'Leary understands that low fares attract more customers every year. He
expects the company to benefit from any price war in the airline industry. On the other hand, The
Chief Executive Officer of Ryanair knows that an "artificially low prices" could depress profits in the
following years. As an example, in 2018 Ryanair's average one-way fare was 37 euro and it went
down 6% in 2019, although this was compensated by customers spending on different services such
as car hire and hotels. This strategy is making Ryanair wining in fares against its competitors (BBC
News, 2019).

3. Size and Fleet

Ryanair is the largest airline group in Europe. The company carries 151m customers on more than
2,400 flights daily from 82 bases, the organization connects across 200 destinations in 40 different
nations on a fleet of over 470 aircraft, with an additional 210 Boeing 737s on order, which will allow
Ryanair to lower fares and grow its traffic to 200m customers by 2025. Ryanair has a crew of over
19,000 highly experienced and skilled aviation professionals delivering the No.1 on-time
performance in Europe. Ryanair did a difference between competitors when they became Europe’s
greenest cleanest airline group and clients swapping to fly Ryanair can decrease their CO₂ emissions
by up to 50% contrasted to the other Big 4 European Union major airlines (Ryanair Corporate, 2020).

4. Safety record

In terms of safety using transportation systems, customers are always looking for the safest airlines
to fly to their destinations and Ryanair has maintained a notable record of taking passengers to their
destinations safe and sound. Reports generated by the Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Centre
have placed Ryanair in the top 40 airlines for safety in the world (Corrigan, 2010). 

Ryanair has the title of the safest airline due to the company has never suffered a fatal accident in 35
years. Ryanair started in 1985, and it has carried more than 1.1 billion travellers and since then no
passenger has died while taking a fly with the Irish airline (Craven-Todd, 2018).

5. Airport choices

Ryanair's important strategy to attract more customers while keeping the fares and cost low is its
choice of airports. Ryanair is focused on low cost and uncongested airports that allow it to deliver a
25-minute turnaround helping to create Ryanair’s competitive advantage. In many cases, Ryanair has
started operations in regions of Europe where previously there was limited interest for air travel and
inciting traffic due to its very low fares since other airlines would not be able to equal its fares. By
flying to such airports, Ryanair has opened a whole new market in countries that previously had no
convenient connection to Europe (Ryanair Corporate, 2020).

6. Innovation

Ryanair Tech Laboratories is one of the promising strategies of Ryanair. Ryanair's ultimate ambition
is to become a tech company with an airline associated. There is a huge, aggressive program of work
that Ryanair labs are undertaking, sustaining all innovation functions. Seemingly the most attractive
and visible would be the website and the mobile app. But the company innovates in some of the
other functions as well, from the commercial side to the organizational one that includes Finance,
Human Resources, Operations, etc (Kennedy, 2017) .

BBC News (2019). Ryanair expects to win in airline “fare wars”. Available at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48332849 (Accessed: 10 March 2020).

Craven-Todd, E. (2018). Ryanair news: Airline named the world’s safest airline following
Southwest passenger death. Express.co.uk. Available at:
https://www.express.co.uk/travel/articles/947965/ryanair-worlds-safest-airline-southwest-
flight-1380 (Accessed: 10 March 2020).

‌ orrigan, D. (2010). Safety Record of Ryanair. TripSavvy. Available at:

C
https://www.tripsavvy.com/ryanair-safety-record-1644049 (Accessed: 10 March 2020).

‌ arvard Business Review (2014). Strategies to Fight Low-Cost Rivals. Available at:

H
https://hbr.org/2006/12/strategies-to-fight-low-cost-rivals (Accessed: 10 March 2020).

J‌ acobs, K. (2015). How Ryanair was transformed into a €1bn profit machine. Available at:
https://www.independent.ie/business/irish/how-ryanair-was-transformed-into-a-1bn-profit-
machine-31522352.html (Accessed: 10 March 2020).

‌Jeroen Kraaijenbrink (2019). EasyJet Vs. Ryanair: How Low Can Low Cost Go? Forbes.
Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeroenkraaijenbrink/2019/02/01/easyjet-vs-ryanair-
how-low-can-low-cost-go/#6ced39cb696a (Accessed: 10 March 2020).

‌Kennedy, J. (2017). Ryanair’s Colin O’Brien: ‘We will be a tech company with an airline
attached.’ Silicon Republic. Available at:
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/ryanair-colin-obrien-digital-ecommerce-apis
(Accessed: 10 March 2020).

Scholley Bubenik (2019). Gaining a Competitive Edge By Conducting A SWOT Analysis On

Your Workforce. Forbes. Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/scholleybubenik/2019/03/13/gaining-a-competitive-edge-by-
conducting-a-swot-analysis-on-your-workforce/#686c25bd380d (Accessed: 10 March 2020).

Ryanair Corporate (2020). Annual Report 2019. Available at: https://investor.ryanair.com/wp-

content/uploads/2019/07/Ryanair-2019-Annual-Report.pdf (Accessed: 10 March 2020).