Survey Identifies Ryanair As The Worst Family Brand

November 25, 2009 at 3:59 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

You can scoff at us as we take our recurring and regular potshots at Ryanair, but you can't scoff at science. 1,500 people were surveyed using some vague methodology by some random outfit interested in "family brands." Thus surveyed, they collectively indicated that the Irish low cost carrier—which has been known to make a point of informing customers that they'll take abuse because they're cheap—ranked at the very bottom.

Key concepts like socially responsibly, good listening, caring, and family values were all tested. We have very little idea what any of those mean in a social scientific context, and we're skeptical they could be applied to airlines. But we do know that they're Good Things and that Ryanair ranked dead last when evaluated on them. So whatever else we know about this survey, we do know that it was more or less accurate. We remind you again to put aside whatever skepticism you might have since this is science:

Ryanair has been named the worst 'family' brand in a list dominated by airlines... The low-cost carrier was described as doing little to look after family values and not enough to listen to customers. The Irish airline charges a family of four a �40 booking fee for a return flight, on top of the other costs. 'Ryanair is the worst family brand we studied,' said Steve Hastings, of ad agency Isobel, which commissioned the FamilyBrands Survey. 'The airline's mounting ancillary costs and the furore surrounding the proposed "�1 to spend a penny" have done little to endear them to the British public.'

The only travel company to break the top 50 was Virgin Atlantic, which apparently can't stop racking up travel awards for being nice and helpful. And yet somehow they still manage to turn a profit, which is Ryanair's usual pretext for non-existent customer service. Their reaction to the survey, by the by, was to mock it with a reference to something "Family Fortunes." That makes it the second time in as many months that Ryanair execs have responded to negative press by referencing a random TV show—demonstrating pushbacks that are exactly as persuasive and rigorous as this survey.

[Photo: Luigi Chiesa / Wiki Commons]

Related Stories:
· Ryanair named worst family brand in poll dominated by airlines [Daily Mail]
· Ryanair [Jaunted]
· LCCs [Jaunted]

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