Budget airline Transavia fighting Ryanair on service, not pricing

Transavia is finally settled in at Munich, the Dutch budget airline's first foreign base, and its first flight departs from the airport on Friday. Air France-KLM hopes to soon have its budget subsidiary competing with Ryanair and EasyJet, but not necessarily on price. Transavia will compete on service, CEO Mattijs ten Brink said to AD. "We don't want to be cheaper than Ryanair, we are not a company where everything is decided from the top down and it is all about efficiency. We do it our own way", Ten Brink said to the newspaper. "The question is how to give the passenger what he needs." According to Ten Brink, Ryanair should be able to recognize a customer who is afraid to fly, or sad about leaving and be able to act. "These are all small things, which together must ensure that passengers do not choose a competitor, but us." Beating Ryanair on service may not be that big a task. Ryanair was recently criticized for wanting to charge a group of 28 Brits, stranded in Brussels after the terrorists attacks on Tuesday, an extra 6 thousand pounds (about 7,590 euros) to change their flights to go home. The group was scheduled to go home later on Tuesday, but decided to return immediately after landing in the locked-down country. One of them, Chris Webb, called Ryanair's customer service "absolutely atrocious" to British newspaper The Telegraph. While Transavia is a cheap airline, the company is rarely mentioned as competitors EasyJet and Ryanair. Air France-KLM wants to change that. The parent company hopes to soon expand Transavia's bases to more than just the Netherlands, France and now Germany, so that their budget subsidiary can spread its wings internationally.