Ryanair Case

gate and landing charges charged by the major airports. Italso avoids the congestion at the major airports helping it improve the turn-around time for the planes as well as setting the benchmark in on-time arrivals and take-off’s-Point-to-Point flightsFlying point-to-point helps Ryanair eliminate a lot of additional operations like baggagetransfers etc. helping it to turn-around the planes quite quickly-Single type aircraftRyanair’s decision to fly only a single type of aircraft has helped it lower it’s maintenancecost. This has also contributed to Ryanair improving it’s organizational memory of it’smaintenance engineers, contributing to innovations by the engineers to improve theefficiency of the planes.-Cost cultureRyanair’s low cost culture has permeated to all of it’s employees and is spread throughoutthe organization, making this an integral part of the cultural web.

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First mover advantageRyanair was the first airline in Europe to introduce low fares and it has successfully made useof first mover advantage by negotiating very good rates with secondary airports and locking inlanding slots at these airports.

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Michael O’Leary’s leadershipMichael O’Leary has been the key ingredient of success for Ryanair. His understanding of theSouthwest model and it’s successful adaptation has transformed Ryanair and has made it theleading low fares airlines in Europe.

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Low cost operationsRyanair has the best run low cost operations helping it achieve the best operating margin inthe industry. All elements of it’s operations are geared towards reducing cost and improvingefficiency.

Q2:

Yes, Ryanair’s strategy is sustainable because it’s core competencies of ‘Low Price’, ‘Costconscious culture’ and ‘R&D on aircraft design’ (A5) gives it competitive advantage.

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Low PriceRyanair’s strategy is based upon this core competency. Strategies based upon corecompetencies are usually successful as articulated by Prahalad and Hamel in their article oncore competencies

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