Ryanair the Business of how not to do it.

On May 16th May I blogged about Ryanair insisted that all new bookings would require online check-ins. If you don't print your boarding pass from the company's website, you're charged an extra £40.Nice, Well Ryanair have done a IT classic and now announced that for ten hours next week, its website will be completely unreachable.

The Ryanair site will be closed from 7pm (Irish summer time)* Wednesday June 24 until 5am Thursday June 25 due to "an essential upgrade maintenance."

*Does Irish Summer Time even exist as a time standard?

They are haveing a laugh aren't they if your entire operation can only be accessed through a website, you'd better make dam' sure that website is 100% reliable. With online shopping, the risk is less - as you retain the stock if people can't buy it. Businesses like airlines and hotels deal in a very perishable commodity: one that ceases to exist, once it's day has passed. It was once joked to me by an IT Manager I asked how did he know his internet connected was up he said he wrote a little script to ping www.playboy.com. I asked why playboy he said the servers were always up 100% of the time as they didn't want ot lose a single cent of revenue so he could always tell it was his connection at fault and not them.

Therefore for an e-commerce site to be down is bad news for the retailer, but it's a total disaster for an airline that has put all it's eggs in one, online, basket. Especially if they think they can charge people £40 to get their tickets at the airport. You think like any good airline Ryanair would waive the fee for one day. but no in their statement.

"Ryanair will review the number of passengers who fail to check-in online and make a decision at that time."

Which I think we can all take as they will charge you!