It may be useful to inject a note of reality into the Ryanair threat to Air Malta/British Jet debate by contrasting the attitudes of the three companies to groups of travellers.
This summer, in collaboration with Sue Micallef, president of the Ghaqda Studenti tal-Kriminologija, I organised a criminology study tour to the UK for University of Malta students. We invited Air Malta and British Jet to quote for the 17 Malta-Gatwick return airfares.
Both companies were helpful and happy to facilitate a group, but Air Malta offered flights with more convenient timings and their fare was Lm3 less than that of British Jet. Thereafter, Brian Bartolo, Air Malta general manager corporate sales, and Ray Pulè, Air Malta corporate sales executive, co-operated with us to ensure that the arrangements went smoothly, reserving a block of seats for us to fill and generally being most helpful.
The study tour was a tremendous success, and the students were given unprecedented access to HM Prison Liverpool, where they entered the life imprisonment wing, met prisoners serving life sentences, and interviewed a former hit man for the Triads. They toured the jail and received lectures on "The Concept of Life Imprisonment" and "Rehabilitation through Education".
At Merseyside Police HQ, there were presentations from senior police officers and from the Serious and Organised Crime Squad and witnessed demonstrations of the latest forensic techniques for fingerprint and DNA detection. They visited the UK National Smuggling Museum, climbed a mountain in Wales, visited a hydro-electric power station (built inside a mountain to preserve the North Wales National Park), and also visited Llangollen (site of the International Eisteddfod), and Stratford-on-Avon, birthplace of Shakespeare.
We were based in Liverpool and so the Beatles enthusiasts had their fill. At the end, the students proposed that we organise a similar tour to the Republic of Ireland next year and, inspired by the current hype, they suggested that we try Ryanair's proposed new route from Malta to Dublin.
When I tried to contact Ryanair by phone, I found that they operate from behind an Internet fence, which appears to present a total barrier to direct human-to-human communication. Last week I was in Dublin, having flown from the UK with Ryanair, and I called at their inquiry desk in the airport. There, a very pleasant Ryanair girl advised me that the only way to book a group is to check if the number of seats required is available on the required flight and then to book and pay for them immediately, in the name of each individual passenger.
She was not certain as to how any low price fares would be allocated to the group or whether they would be averaged out. Thus the travel arrangements and fare would be the last thing known and so, when the tour is advertised, it would not be possible to state the cost.
Thinking I might fare better at Ryanair head office, which is at Dublin Airport, I took the opportunity to call there. As they do not take phone calls from the public, I could not make an appointment and so I just turned up at their head office reception, a small desk at the end of a short corridor in their large administration building The company motto has been quoted as "Cheap prices are our service" and the ramifications of this soon became apparent. The two Ryanair staff on duty were very pleasant and polite and absolutely superb at their job, which is apparently to fob people off and not to give out any more information than they must.
I did find out that the Ryanair customer service section is neither open to the public nor accessible by phone and that Ryanair have recently closed their group travel department. I requested a business card for someone I could contact in customer service, but these are not available. This was in distinct contrast to the helpfulness of the staff at Air Malta head office in Luqa and British Jet head office at Qawra.
The Ryanair reception staff confirmed that group tickets have to be booked individually on the Internet, giving the name of the passenger and paying the fare there and then, and that it is not possible to reserve a block of seats and fill them later. Ryanair will change a name on a booking, but at a penalty fee which may make it cheaper to just abandon the ticket, with no guarantee that the vacated seat will be available for the replacement traveller.
Ryanair are not willing to book Malta-Dublin-Liverpool-Dublin-Malta as an itinerary, apparently because they can't guarantee that their flights will be on time or that they will fly at all. It is possible to book this routing as a series of separate round-trips, but it is at your own risk. If a plane is missed due to a prior delay, even although it is to another Ryanair flight, the ticket is lost.
On Ryanair flights, seats are not reserved or allocated, but, as standing is not permitted, every passenger is guaranteed a seat somewhere on the plane. Their flights effectively operate as a bus service and passengers are very much "self-loading cargo".
On flights which last only an hour or so, it does not matter too much if members of a family are seated separately, but on a three- to four-hour flight to or from Malta this would be a totally different proposition, particularly as the sole diversion or entertainment on a Ryanair flight is the safety demonstration and the sale of overpriced sandwiches, drinks and scratch cards. Ryanair will undoubtedly benefit the individual traveller, who wants a cheap ticket and has few time constraints, but the idea that Ryanair is going to bring groups of tourists to spend their money in Malta would appear to be wishful thinking.
Air Malta and British Jet may suffer in the short-run and more Maltese may travel to the UK and Ireland to spend their money there, but, judging from my experience, I do not see Ryanair making any bulk contribution to the inward Maltese tourist industry.