Wednesday, May 24, 2006

The Fuel Monty

Here's an interesting pricing -related story...the Cult of Personality at Ryanair, CEO Michael O'Leary, has agreed to bear all in the busiest street of Warsaw if Polish airline and competitor LOT abolish their fuel surcharge by the end of the month.

You can read the Ryanair NewsFlash here.

Reminds me a bit of the challenge laid down by Sir Richard Branson to Geoff Dixon (Qantas CEO) a while back, for the loser to dress up in a (female?) flight attendants uniform and crew and UK-Australia flight. From memory, Geoff Dixon just turned a blind eye to the "bet".

Friday, May 19, 2006

Pricing Round-Up

I've just returned from Liquid Learning's Strategic Pricing 2006 Conference & Workshop in Sydney, where it was great to see so many new faces and industries taking an active interest in pricing.

There was a very interesting story in the press that caught my eye while I was away. On Wednesday 10th May 2006, copper hit an all-time high of $US8,000 a tonne. The Guardian newspaper in the UK pointed out that if you have 146 pre-1992 two-pence coins, which contain 6.9g of copper, you've got yourself a kilo of copper.

Even better if you have 145,000 of these coins lying around, as you'd be sitting on a cool $US8,000 worth of copper...with a face value of GBP 2,900 .

Time to empty those money boxes?

Petrol/Gas Pricing Ver 1.0

Here's the first of two light-hearted looks at petrol/gas pricing. The cartoon opposite appeared in a week when not only did prices at the pump reach a new high, but the Reserve Bank of Australia also raised interest rates... Posted by Picasa

Petrol/Gas Pricing Ver 2.0

...and here's the second. Posted by Picasa