Madam, - Your Business Opinion piece by Dominic Coyle (August 7th), which claimed that "passengers lose out in low-cost airline rivalry", couldn't be further from the truth.
Mr Coyle longs for the days when passengers "contacted a travel agent who sourced the best deal to the desired destination, etc" - omitting to mention, of course, that the average fare on and off the island of Ireland back in those idyllic pre-Ryanair days was over £200, or €270. Only the very rich two million or so passengers could afford to fly to and from Ireland in those "halcyon" days because the average air fare exceeded a week's wages. Most of the Irish population in those days were forced to travel on boats.
Today Ryanair's average fare is just over €40. This year more than 25 million passengers will fly to and from Ireland, thanks to the low fare access which Ryanair has pioneered. Irish tourism has exploded, with new hotels and tourism facilities dotted all over the countryside. Tourism has become one of the great engines of the Celtic Tiger.
Mr Coyle may object to Ryanair's baggage charges, yet what he ignores is that these are entirely discretionary. Last month more than 45 per cent of Ryanair's passengers travelled with hand luggage only, and thereby avoided paying any baggage charges, while availing of even lower fares.
His claim that the Irish airlines are the only ones in Europe to introduce bag charges is untrue. They were first introduced by FlyBe in the UK last January.
Finally, whilst Ryanair's average fares in the first quarter just reported did increase by 13 per cent from €40 to €45, most of this was because Easter was in the first quarter of this year and not in the comparative prior year quarter.
Ryanair expects our average fares this year to be flat, making us probably one of the very few companies in Ireland to be holding our pricing down when fuel prices have more than doubled over the past two years. - Yours, etc,
MICHAEL O'LEARY, Chief Executive, Ryanair, Dublin Airport.