Ryanair licks donkey bottom Pt1

Ryanair - Pleasure you can't measure

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We've just returned from a long weekend in Sardinia courtesy of Ryanair. I am not a fan.
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Over the last four years or so Ryanair has totally transformed European air travel in terms of cost and customer expectations. Offering a totally no frills service, Ryanair has developed a radically different revenue model to traditional airlines. Tickets are cheap, sometimes very cheap. A couple of people on one of our flights had paid 99p for their seats. Ryanair pulls this off in a variety of ways:

• Flying into airports in the middle of nowhere
• Charging savage prices to people who, for one reason or another, need a ticket at short notice (facilitated by the fact that Ryanair operates a virtual monopoly in many of the airports it serves)
• Charging for all onboard services
• Cutting costs in a variety of dodgy ways
• Even though their sales are web based you can only contact them through premium rate phone lines, even if they are at fault. They let the phone ring a bit before answering
• Fast turnarounds. Planes land and take off in as little as an hour. On my outward journey, our flight crew, 'Garcia and Schweitzer', swerved their 737 off the runaway to a dead stop and cleared the plane for unloading within a matter of seconds. I've been on buses with less efficient turnaround times
• Ryanair is actually paid a bounty by town councils for each passenger it flies in

Ryanair economics originate from some bizarre parallel universe and in some locations they could still make money even if they didn’t charge customers a penny for advance tickets.
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Ryanair's CEO, Michael O'Leary, likes to make out that he is some kind of social crusader, making travel affordable for the masses. He's a dickhead, but a very rich dickhead. Typical O'Leary quotes:

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"For years flying has been the preserve of rich f*ckers. Now everyone can afford to fly." (PS Ryanair is strictly anti-union)

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"We don't fall all over ourselves if they... say my granny fell ill. What part of no refund don't you understand? You are not getting a refund so f*ck off."

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My first problem with Ryanair is that it is not as cheap as people like to kid themselves. We paid £11 each for our return tickets to Sardinia. This is not untypical. For the last few years offices throughout London have been buzzing every Monday morning with the same tedious conversations …
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'Oh Yah, I just spent the weekend in Belsen. I only paid five pounds for the tickets'

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Well, yes, that may be so, but for some reason few if any Ryanair passengers mention the cost of getting to the airport or airport taxes. Our £11 trip actually cost:
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Ryanair Tickets £11
Train to Stansted £24
Taxes £24
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Total cost £59. Admittedly, still not a king's ransom but getting within shouting distance of the cost of scheduled flight with a traditional carrier from an airport closer to London.
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My second problem with Ryanair is that it scares me. The company equipped itself for expansion by picking up a fleet of 20+ year old 737-200's which were, to use the industry definition, knackered. Ryanair argued that they had been well maintained by their previous operators; as in those disgracefully overpriced mainstream airlines they are in competition with.
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A couple of years ago one of the planes caught fire in Stansted airport. Firstly, Ryanair aircrew struggled to open the emergency doors. The investigation by the UK Air Accident Investigation Board discovered that the aircrew was given insufficient training on opening doors in an emergency situation. During training, it was not made clear that doors are more difficult to open in an emergency due to the need to activate the air chutes. Also, Ryanair aircrew evacuated six passengers onto the wing of the aircraft where the engine fire was raging. Fire-fighters were forced to order the passengers back onto the aircraft to use other emergency exits. Media reports on the investigation also focused on Ryanair's training methods which include: aircrew training taking place in Eastern European countries; aircrew having to pay for their own training (which was stated to cost in the region of £2,000); and aircrew having to pay for their own uniforms and airport security passes.
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Though not strictly a safety issue, a story broke this August 2004 when a customer, on developing film from a camera that had been in the baggage, found pictures taken by Ryanair staff of a smiling baggage handler throwing his bag around the baggage area.
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The third thing that bothers me about Ryanair is the unrelenting way they try to extract as much money off their passengers as possible. No source of potential income is left untapped. On my 2 hour return flight I was offered:

• Sandwiches and drinks (overpriced)
• Train tickets
• Cans of Smirnoff Ice and Bacardi Breezers ('Hurry! We only have a few left!')
• 'Exclusive' Ryanair souvenirs
• A London city guide for five Euros (24 pages long, filled with ads)
• Ryanair lottery-style scratch cards

Scratch cards? Was I really trusting my life to an airline that needed to sell bingo tickets to keep its planes in the air? Even the seat head rests are commercialised and carry, nine inches in front of passengers' faces, the snappy slogan:
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'Mars. Pleasure you can’t measure'
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Actually, I can. About 40p per bar. As with the scratchcards, I couldn’t help wondering just how little revenue this particular wheeze was generating and what kind of attitude would such a company have to such expensive matters such as, um, aircraft maintenance.
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And the cabin attendants. How little self-respect must they have? Ryanair has totally changed the cabin crew service ethic. Ryanair cabin staff exist solely to sell crap and break up fights between passengers arguing over seats. As we filed past our attendants on the way out of the plane I couldn’t bring myself to utter even the most insincere expression of gratitude. What could I say?
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'Thank you for trying to sell me scratch cards and alcopops'

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'Cheers for not directing me towards a burning engine'

I almost thought about asking one of the crew if they would sell me their own grandmother or suggest they start selling theme park style pictures of passengers enjoying their flight experience, but then thought better of it. They might have taken my seriously.

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I have only flown Ryanair once before, a couple of years ago, and then the cabin crew were largely Irish. On this flight they came from everywhere but Ireland. Presumably, the original staff have found better paid, more honourable work, in slaughterhouses and cleaning public lavatories back home in Dublin.
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But all of the above is but nothing compared to Ryanair's greatest sin …
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They don't allocate you a seat. ...
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