Ryan Air

Cathal Ryan and Declan Ryan have started Ryanair since 1985. For nearly a year, Ryanair had operated a 14-seat turboprop between Waterford and Gatwick Airport on the outskirts of London. The airline targeted low-fare segment market. It initiated service from London’s secondary airports. In terms of competition, Waterford and Gatwick didn’t pose any challenges.

Ryanair done very well by manged to cope quickly to technological change. The increase power of internet in the last two decades, company developed a strong electronic market through internet and they are the Europe’s leading airline company to date (Ryanair, 2000).

Michael O Leary uses a centralized management style in the company which is also used a functional structure. The organisation structure of Ryanair is tall. As illustrated in my diagram Michael O Leary is the CEO of Ryanair and he deals directly with the chief financial officer, head of marketing, head of customer service, head of pilots union and all the other departments displayed in the structure. A functional structure is a structure that groups people in different departments or functions because they all share common skills or they can make use of the same resources. The members of these teams working in these different departments become very skilled and become more specialized within each function. My reason for choosing functional structure for Ryanair is that there no real hierarchy in the organisation, this improves the channels of communication and ensure there is no confusion. Michael O Leary makes the decisions in the firm and uses a very hands on approach in the business by dealing with other managers in the business on a day to day basis. If any problems are ever encountered Michael O Leary would deal with the problems internally. Staff within the company are also matched with their expertise and assigned to a certain group such as marketing, finance etc. A functional structure helps organisations to group tasks into functions to increase their effectiveness in which the company will be allowed to reach their company goals such as providing customers with cheap flights with excellent customer service. As Ryanair grows in size there may well be more departments added to the structure as there will be more employees and more roles and responsibilities to be

The strategic plan of Ryanair has been to establish itself as Europe’s leading low-fares airline.” Ryanair aims to offer low fares that generate increased passenger traffic while maintaining a continuous focus on cost-containment and operating efficiencies.” (www.ryanair.com)

Generally speaking, the launch strategy of Ryanair was not the best one for that moment in time. They began operations between Dublin and London, in a very saturated market, which was already served by two competing and very experienced companies owned by the governments:

Douglas' experience and leadership skills have continued to be a major asset for our team. He comes up with most of the ideas for our projects and did a good job of speaking during our presentation. He can occasionally be slightly stubborn about things, like what research we should've included for our innovation project. Overall, he is an effective

Prior to 1991, Ryanair had suffered from continuous losses from 1985 to 1989. The first reason that put it into this situation was that it tried to position itself as a low fare airline with the first rate services. It tried to keep low and unrestricted fare, while keep focusing on the best customer service and relationship. This mixed model was proven inefficiency. The low price could lure number of

Porter’s main argument was that a company's strength is usually divided into one of two factors: Differentiation and cost advantage. In recent years Ryanair have made the strengthening of their

case can be broken down by addressing the following list of questions which follow a

1. In-depth environmental analysis of the European Airline industry and discuss the implications for the budget sector and especially for Ryanair. 2. An integrated understanding of the functioning of a company – its human and technical operations, leadership, customer relationships and financial structure. 3. Implications of the internal functioning to create viable strategic positioning and discuss any changes to Ryanair’s approach to ensure an improved sustainability 4. Evaluate the strategic leadership style of Michael O’Leary

The purpose of this report is to comment at the first part how Ryanair achieve its competitive advantage through the RBV analysis (Barney,1991), the second part will assess its approach to the diversification through the Ansoff matrix , the third part will discuss the company’s organisational culture using the cultural web modeland last part its internationalization strategy.

Almost three decades ago, in July 1985, three brothers, Catlan, Declan, and Shane Ryan founded Ryanair airlines in the southeast of Ireland. Little did they know, it would become one of the most successful low- cost airlines in the whole industry. It started with just one leased fifteen seater plane that flew from Ireland to London’s Gatwick airport of which their father, Tony Ryan was the chairman. After the government deregulated air traffic to England, Ryanair got the license to operate from Dublin to London. At the end of that year, the airline had flown 5,000 passengers already. By the following year, it quickly started expanding with the purchase of two bigger but older planes. Since the very beginning the company maintained a low-cost strategy. They managed to provide fares that were 20% lower than what its main competitors were offering.

From 1987 to 1990 Ryanair opened an additional 17 Routes and begins to emulate jet travel into the route structure. However, during this period Ryan air continued to emulate the standard business model due to continued fare regulation as well as a lack of innovation. Deregulation of air travel with European Union members had not yet taken full effect, and thus led to continued high operating costs and losses for Ryanair. Ryanair eliminated the frequent flyers program as well as no longer offering business class which caused a continued increase in passenger traffic but still had the airline operating at a loss. In 1987, Michael O’Leary was hired by Tony Ryan as a tax and personal finance director. O’Leary was soon tasked with aiding in the restructuring of Ryanair in an effort to return the airline’s profitability. O’Leary is a believer of a low fare

Now I am going to discuss Ryan air’s (RA) current strategic position by analysing its macro (external)and micro (internal) environment.

We will see how Ryanair was successful as world’s one of the most favoured low-fare airline and how did it apply each of this mix by putting in the