Pricing policy

I spent the past couple of weeks trying to figure out Ryanair's pricing strategy. People on the Internet tend to consider Ryanair's pricing strategy a mystery, but I couldn't find anyone that had a closer look at it. I believe that by watching the prices, we should be able to learn at least something about them.

I created a spreadsheet, containing the oneway prices on the Brussels Charleroi-Kraków relation. Return prices are twice the oneway prices. I did not specifically look for it, but I did not find evidence that Ryanair tampers with prices depending on your cookies, location etc, so I think we should assume that they don't.

Here is the spreadsheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvOKJaJ46mKAdEd2LUFuY0N4eUoxaExndWU2MzlhakE&usp=sharing

Rows are the flight date (no flights on Saturdays), columns the number of days till the flight. A question mark means I did not check the price at that particular date. (All data is manually corrected, so I cannot exclude typos.)

Can you guys draw any conclusions based on this data?

Some preliminary conclusions:

Ryanair works with price classes. Based on Ryanair's price breakdown, they can be distinguished into 'Free online check in', 'No taxes' and 'Regular fare'. The cheapest three 'No taxes' classes also have a discounted version (20% discount before extra fees). The price for the Free online check in class changed on 21 March, and the price for the No taxes classes changed on 22 March (for all future flights). On Brussels Charleroi-Krakow, there are the following classes:

Free online check in:

Up to 20 Mar: 22.
From 21 Mar: 19.99

No taxes:

Up to 21 Mar: 29.99; 35.99; 44.99; 53.99.
From 22 Mar: 27.99; 34.99; 43.99; 54.99.

The first three of these also have discounted versions:

Up to 21 Mar: 27.34; 32.14; 39.34.
From 22 Mar: 25.74; 31.34; 38.54.

Regular fare:

62.11; 78.11; 93.11; 115.11; 135.11; 165.11; 197.11; 239.11.

The flights for the next couple of days are always expensive, seemingly independent of the number of booked places on that flight. There seem to be some patterns: 4 days in advance, the price often becomes 62.11; 2 days in advance, the price often becomes 78.11. However, there are exceptions.

Sometimes flights are expensive long in advance, but become cheaper later on (for example 26/4 and 5/5). If the pricing strategy is based on charging more for flights that fill up relatively fast, this might correspond to a large early booking.

Some more information that cannot be read from the document: some prices changes happen only at (exactly) midnight GMT, such as the high prices a couple of days before the flight. Other price changes, in particular the ones further out, happen at any time.

It's a very good idea to try and find the Ryanair pricing policy (unfortunately, I can't access you spreadsheet).
It would certainly be most interesting to know the pattern of the prices changes - in order to grap the cheapest one ! - but there are too many factors that we don't know, beginning with the load factor at a given time.


I did not find evidence that Ryanair tampers with prices depending on your cookies, location etc, so I think we should assume that they don't.
It's a good news, in my view.

Another cause of a price hike is when it's the "last seat at that price". And it's true - I once or twice happened to buy that "last seat" and when I came back on the site just to have a look, the price had indeed been raised ...

Math 1985 - Any analysis/ theories are welcome (Respect for putting in the hard work) .. If I tried to do the same my head would simply pop/burst, the only figures I can sustain mentally are the figures submitted in the Ryanair calendar (ooh controversial - news headliner) I am more the Geographical type, I am not very good with numbers but know where I am going.. I've not lost myself in months

I have been monitoring Ryanair and prices for several years .. without designating my life to the fare structure and how a price is created, I don't think there is such a fixed plan in place but more random and prices are set to that particular week or month.
Conclusion-Without losing my hair trying to figure out when the cheapest seats are/will be on offer, I find sitting back and simply visiting the Home Booking Site Frequently sometimes daily is my best strategy and I have grabbed myself a bargain with 99% of my bookings.


Regards

Atoutprix, which error do you get? Did I set up something wrong?

We have some limited information about the load factor: it is possible to buy 25 tickets at once, so it's possible to find out the load factor if there are less than 189 (?) - 25 places available.

Also, Ryanair indeed indicates if there are 1, 2, 3 or 4 seats left at a given price.

The other information we have of course is that the load factor is 0% at the moment the time table is loaded. So probably we can learn a lot by looking at the prices just after the time table is loaded.

Basically we have the following options:
- Same prices for all flights -> Prices are purely determined based on load factor.
- Pricres around weekends and holidays are more expensive -> Prices are not only based on load factor, but some dates are inherently more expensive.
- A more complex pattern -> They use a more complex pricing policy.

Of course the pattern gets disturbed when bookings are made, so we should look at the time table as soon as possible after it's made available. The winter time table should be loaded one of these days, right? Does anyone know the exact date?

In the past I have noticed... (On several flights)if you book more than 2 tickets on one booking the price per person increases, so it is cheaper to purchase a 2 and a 1(for 3 pax) or a 2 and a 2 (for 4 pax) etc... something to think about if you are purchasing tickets in bulk.

Regardless of how many tickets I require - I always look for the price of one ticket first and then try a few combinations..

Yes, I also noticed that. On a given moment in time, there are always a limited number of tickets available per given price class. For example, there could be 2 tickets available for 34.99, and 4 tickets for 43.99. If you buy more tickets then available in the cheapest price class, then all tickets are charged at the price of the most expensive class. So if you buy 3 tickets in the example, all of the tickets will be sold for 43.99. Buying first 2 tickets (for 34.99) and then another 1 (for 43.99) is indeed cheaper.

What I don't know yet, is what is the remaning number of tickets when you buy the 3 tickets at once. Would there be 2 tickets for 34.99 and 2 tickets for 43.99 left, or would there be only be three tickets for 34.99 left?

Ryanairlfyer, you also don't know when the winter timetable will get loaded in the system?

Hi, Sorry I do not have an accurate date for the winter timetable but dates for 2012/13 were as follows...

http://www.ryanair.com/en/questions/can-i-book-a-flight-for-next-year

Ryanair endeavour to load flight schedules at least five to six months in advance of operation. For example, the 2012 winter season which commences on the 30th October and was loaded for sale on 19th April 2012.

My estimation is next week, that is if they work on the same timescale as last year.

Regards

I travel each week CCF / EMA and back and keep a reasonable record of how the fares change over time. They always start high then drop to a low point (usually with a few up and down blips along the way) before rising again as you get nearer to flight day. Last year the low point was about six to seven weeks out from flight date but this year it seems to be about 4 weeks out. One thing I do know is that when you get the "hurry only x seats available at this price" message then that is not necessarily the low point as they often go down again after that! Note the clever wording - it doesn't say that this is the lowest price that you will get but a lot of people will think it is.

Brian

Thank you, Brian, for your comment.
It's always the same big question with FR : when do I get the best price ?
The record you have kept shows a trend that is more or less the same for many routes - and can be of much help to all of us.