Ryanair serious about charging to use toilets in-flight, may charge extra "breathing fee" for inhaling during flight
Ryanair, the discount airline that operates virtual prison-ships in the sky, is serious about installing pay toilets on its aircraft -- it will cost a pound to go wee. They're also reducing the number of toilets on their cramped, miserable planes. What are the odds that this will improve relations between passengers and the surly, angry flight crew?
The (very) last time I flew Ryanair, they locked us all in a no-toilets departure area for an hour and a half before the flight, then threatened to have me arrested for using the toilet when I boarded, rather than waiting until we were in the air and levelled off (which turned out to be an hour later).
Ryanair's Michael O'Leary defends pay-per-pee fee (via Consumerist)
The chief executive of Europe's largest budget carrier said the airline would also generate extra revenues by removing two out of the three toilets on its Boeing 737-800 jets and filling the space with up to six seats...Asked if he would be interested in charging £5 a toilet visit in order to eliminate the need for the loo altogether, he said: "If someone wanted to pay £5 to go to the toilet I would carry them myself. I would wipe their bums for a fiver."
(Image: Ryanair seats, a Creative Commons Attribution photo from Matt From London's Flickr stream)
Previously:
- Ryanair wants to charge for using the toilet in-flight - Boing Boing
- Ryanair will fine passengers who board with too much carry-on ...
- Ryanair's coin-op emergency masks and slides (joke) - Boing Boing
- RyanAir: Airport security is like a strip-search - Boing Boing
- Judge to RyanAir: no valuables in checked bags? Bull! - Boing Boing
the latest
latest episodes
Oh boy. I bet you all just cant wait for your turn to watch someone pee into a ziplock bag.
Doing a quick check of their wikipedia page finds that the last time they claimed that they would charge for the toilet it was a ploy to drum up publicity for an announcement that followed a few days later.
From the page:
"Eight days later O'Leary eventually admitted that it was a publicity stunt saying "It is not likely to happen, but it makes for interesting and very cheap PR"."
I think this may just be adding fuel to the fire.
I hear that people with hepatitis urinate on Ryanair carpets
I think the best response is to simply shit on the floor, right in the aisle. That would be a hell of a plane ride. Reminds me of the time someone puked on my bus in Mexico, and the vomit just flowed all the way down the bus aisle while we drove the twisty mountain roads. Hmmm... makes me think they should avoid turbulence on the poop plane.
I'd pay someone a fiver to wipe my ass, if it was after a sloppy movement. I'm kinda hairy "back there" and my elbow gets tired.
although this is probably a publicity stunt, they shit all over their customers. most of their tricks involve charging high, last-minute fees for things that other airlines do not. you are trapped, since you're already committed, emotionally and financially on your trip, so they add on a few 10-40 pound surcharges for printing boarding passes and other minutia
Did this guy offer lap dances a while back?
It sounds like an BDSM airline, I can only imagine the quality of people who fly it. Must be like a 'Greyhound' of the skies.
Ryanair is the worst. my wife and i, uninformed on the woes of ryanair travale, used them for a connection from stanstead to treviso, near venice, once. Once.
the checkin process was nuts. there are no dividers for the check in line. there was a different flight that was open for check in at the same time. no one could really tell ten people out from the front which line was for which. a passenger more skilled in the art of ryanair 'bumped me' (read struck me) with their suitcase in order to knock me out of my spot.
their queing process at the gate is also insane. shoving matches ensued to be closer to the front of the line at their gate. side effect of free-for-all seating. after this went on for about ten minutes they announced over the intercom that our flight was now boarding at a different gate on the other side of that terminal. people hurdled unoccupied seats to win the race. a slightly more furious shoving match ensued for line placement.
we were let out onto open tarmac where people ran to the board stairs.
i have never in my life felt more like a part of a herd of cattle being prodded towards my untimely execution. i can't believe in this era of flight security that they haven't lost their right to operate in western airports after what has to be a million incidents of good old fashioned person on person violence.
never fly ryanair. never.
I've flown Ryanair before. When living in Dublin I flew to London on Easter morning. It only cost $100 round trip with the tickets purchased a week before hand. I got what I paid for; I'm 6'2" and sat sideways the entire time. I also had to board and disembark via stairs at each stop. But I would fly them again because as a poor graduate student a $100 round trip was a Godsend. It's no frills and they charge for what extra you use...
...this is starting to sound like Comcast's internet service.
You get what you pay for. Ryanair is basically a Yugo with wings. Want better service? Hand over some more nice green pictures of lovely Liz (part 2)
Remember: Peeing on the floor during a Ryanair flight is still free.
(Toilets aren't for customers per se; they're for the airline to minimize cleaning costs. Ryanair seems to have forgotten this. But they'll learn soon enough.)
Ryanair is actually a company established to reduce the confidence the masses have in low cost air travel in order to make people either take the train or not fly anywhere. They are saving the earth.
I'm grateful for the post and comments. I'll make sure to avoid this airline this summer in Europe.
Seriously, Ryanair is a ruthless and unsympathetic capitalist enterprise - just like British Airways, American Airlines, Honda, Microsoft, Google and a zillion other companies.
I've flown with them a zillion times, and I've not had any bad experiences (well, except getting held up on the runway once for half an hour after a landing in Stansted, but that wasn't actually Ryanair's fault). They don't operate "virtual prison-ships" more than every other airline does.
The idea of charging people to pee is a stinker, though, and if they're really going to do it I problably won't fly with them again.
But normally, I think their basic point-to-point service is fine. Just as good as most other airlines I've ever flown with, anyway.
Anyway, O'Leary may still be publicity stunting, though.
"O'Leary added that Boeing's research department would now be able to work on the toilet concept because "war in Iraq and Afghanistan is winding down"."
At least, this sounds like a joke if ever I heard one ...
I flew Ryan Air in college as part of a package tour. I'm 6'2" and I believe that part of my knees are still making the route between Dublin and London.
The flight crew seemed like they actively hated us for flying with them. They served breakfast on the morning flight and when I didn't eat my frozen egg, moldy bacon and rotting tomato the Stewardess asked if I was "A picky eater or something."
The toilet in the back was clogged. I believe some kind of leprechaun died back there and was hastily crammed down the drain.
We sat on the tarmac for 45 minutes when the pilot finally came on and said we'd take off as "soon as the co-pilot showed up".
My final memory was a stewardess accusing my friend of stealing a blanket and threatening to "Have him deported back to Mexico." My friend is Filipino, and a Canadian national. He also is not a blanket thief, they never gave us blankets.
When I went back a couple years ago I took the ferry and a bus. I added a day to my travels, was a bit sea-sick and had a scary old woman try to sell me cheese I think was made from people-milk.
On the whole, much better than Ryan-Air.
Lol - the first time I flew Ryan Air, I asked the stewardess if they actually had toilets on the plane.
On a subsequent flight, I was reading an interview with one of their "star stewardesses" or something, and it had the question "What's the weirdest thing you've ever been asked?", to which the answer was something like: "One time, a passenger asked if the plane had toilets - can you believe that?"
I guess they get that a lot.
That all said, if you're flying around Europe, it's not likely to be much more than a two hours flight, if even that. There are commutes around European cities that can take that long, and are far less pleasant than a Ryanair flight. I'm still very likely to use them (or whoever is cheapest) for those kinds of trips.
a) If they rip the toilets out to add seats, will they then exceed the maximum evacuation capacity of the airframe? (Airliners are certified for a fixed maximum number of passengers who can be evacuated safely in event of an emergency -- exceeding that number is a big no-no.)
b) In the UK there's an interesting piece of law called the Disabilities Discrimination Act. Given the number of seats on a typical Ryanair aircraft (A320 or B737) and the frequency of conditions such as urinary incontinence, they might well be leaving themselves open to a discrimination lawsuit if they go ahead with this on flights originating or arriving in the UK. Like the one they already lost (when they tried to charge a paraplegic for wheelchair hire).
I have a word to describe Mr O'Leary's flying knacker's yard, but it might get me banned. So I'll just stick to giving all my money to Air Lingus and KLM and British Airways instead (who usually work out cheaper when you factor in all the incidentals, including travel time to and from the airport Ryanair use from the country you're trying to fly to -- often they use cheap regional fields 50-plus miles from the destination because an airport actually at the destination costs slightly more).
you are aware ryanair owns air lingus, right?
anyway ryanair, you get what you pay for.
£45 to paris ryanair.
£150 to paris by eurostar.
sorry eurostar and the environment, you need to get real.
#19 Yer Maw, spot on.
Aarhus (Denmark) - London by Ryanair, £45
Aarhus - London by SAS, £300
Maybe if you're rich it doesn't matter, but for some (including me) this is the difference between possible and not possible.
@19 YER MAW
Although Eurostar does have £150 fares they also have £79 fares if you don't mind travelling after lunch and before the evening rush. This price is also "all in" no nasty extras and you can use the nice loos for free. You also get taken to the Gard Du Nord station in the middle of the city.
Yer Maw and Agger - are those the headline prices or what you pay at the final stage of booking? With Ryanair the two can be very different. The headline prices are cheap, but the price you actually pay, especially if you need to take more than hand luggage, can easily and often be more than on an "expensive" airline like BA.
Me, I generally fly Easyjet, which isn't as bad, and uses real airports which are actually near somewhere.
I'm not quite sure what all the hate for Ryanair is for.
You get what you pay for. If you are an organized person (ie. you print out your boarding pass before getting the airport, make sure your hand luggage is the correct size, and don't need a suitcase), then Ryanair do what they claim - offer you very cheap flights.
I flew to Dublin with them last year, at a total cost of £10, and to the south of France earlier this year for £40.
"you are aware ryanair owns air lingus, right?"
I didn't know this. I'm a bit gutted.
I appreciate Ryanair, in that they broke the monopoly (and outrageous pricing model) Aer Lingus had on Ireland for so many years. But in the same way, I appreciate Aer Lingus for keeping some minimal level of customer service.
I dread to think what the future of Aer Lingus is? Will it be an uber classy, over priced, upper-tier version of Ryanair? Or will it be dragged down to further popluate Ryanair's economy-priced offerings?
/Also, just to make the point a little clearer than my casual assertion, above.. it's Aer Lingus.
"The name Aer Lingus is an anglicisation of the Irish form Aer Loingeas, which means Air Fleet (as does the name of the Russian airline Aeroflot)." ~Wikipedia
@19 Yer Maw:
This attitude is surely the entire problem with contemporary air travel?
Ryanair can get away with their shockingly poor standards, hidden charges and ruthless profiteering precisely because people just want, want, WANT to get somewhere as cheaply as possible as often as they like.
I can't understand how and when it became reasonable to expect to fly through the air in a MULTI-MILLION POUND JET PLANE to another country and back for less than £50?
You can get to and from paris on the Eurostar for £150 using a bit of nous, as someone has already pointed out. That is a reasonable price.
'Nipping' across to Paris on a plane for the weekend because one feels like it absolutely exemplifies the selfish excess of the Western world (cliched rhetoric, I know, but true nonetheless).
Flying anywhere should be a rare, expensive treat, that you have to work hard for. Not an unassailable human right provided to a minority of the world's population by the lowest, most exploitative bidder.
Not to mention the emissions...
I don't think I've had a bad flight with Ryanair - they pretty much do what they say on the tin, ie get you somewhere on time and usually cheaply. Several I took have been 1 penny plus taxes (£20) to Budapest; so if you want to go to Budapest on the right day and time and have no check-in luggage, go ahead, it won't kill you for a couple of hours...
Plus, Bristol Airport is only 30 minutes from where I live, and I am not going to kill myself to schlep to Heathrow to catch some other airline. (Bristol's a smallish place so maybe that helps).
Just be aware of all the other costs if you have a lot of luggage and so on, and the chance your airport is a long way from the city you want to go to, and then use another airline if necessary. A blanket total self-ban on Ryanair is silly - and anyone can have a bad experience with any airline.
@ futbol789 - in my experience, Ryanair and easyJet operate the Post Office system of queueing in their bigger centres, ie just one big queue ("Check-in number FIVE, please") and all the desks can check in all flights. So you don't have all that "I should have stood in the other line" thing when three queues line up before three different desks for one flight, and your line is stuck behind a family of 7, half of whom have lost their passports and they all have too much luggage.
I'd pay O'Leary bus fare plus a fiver just for the privilege of having a filthy capitalist CEO prove that he will do anything for money.
O'Leary may be joking, but this plus the fact his great-grandmother's cow unforgiveable burnt down San Francisco, I hereby swear I am not going to fly his nasty little airline.
May his revenues drop, may his shareholders screech, and may his awful approach to life rebound upon him 8,000 times. I'm thinking camels and fleas, that sort of topical thing.
I will find my own way, thanks Michael.
Actually, Ryanair is only the largest shareholder in Aer Lingus, and still a minority shareholder at that. So it's not true that they own Aer Lingus.
Ryanair have been trying to get a majority share, but have been stymied on several occasions - mainly by the AL unions, who are also a major shareholder.
Ryanair is a tabloid airline. Like The Sun (in the UK) or the National Enquirer (in the US), you get what you pay for, but that doesn't make it a good thing.
Actually it was Chicago that Mrs' O'leary's cow burned down. We had the earthquake.
Yer Maw, Slartybardfast - they have 55 pound tickets to Paris now. That's *return* tickets, not one way.
I mean, seriously, if you're poor but can't be bothered booking a month in advance, you probably *deserve* to be on a RyanAir flight.
If you -really- need to go wee, really badly, does that count a a "liquid explosive"?
Also, does your own urine count toward the 500ml of liquids or gels you're allowed to carry-on for a flight?
Also, if your urine ever does constitute a 'gel' does that mean you should go see a doctor? That's really my question, here.
He could chisel even more money out of the wallets of his unwilling passengers with toilet auctions if there was a queue.
The main reason not to fly RyanAir is that, each time you do, you line the pockets of this repellent individual.
EasyJet has become something with much more resemblance to a mode of transport since control passed from the equally (or more) repellent Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, who's now running vile prison style 'hotels' with windowless rooms painted in his corporate colours.
Grumblefish if you are going to be a smart ar*se then why dont you try and find the price for the day i have to go?
ITS NOT THERE WHEN I WANT TO GO AND THIS WAS OVER A MONTH IN ADVANCE.
This is the oldest trick in the travel company book, put the cheap price on the front page and laugh as the poor fools try and get it.
You are talking rubbish mate, try do a little bit of research and maybe you will come accross like you know what you are talking about.
I despise Ryanair. They have absolutely no regard for their customers and their workers.
I'm ashamed to be Irish when I see that clown O'Leary in the public eye.
"The name Aer Lingus is an anglicisation of the Irish form Aer Loingeas, which means Air Fleet (as does the name of the Russian airline Aeroflot)."
Breaking news: O'Leary is extending his range of 5 quid personal services and renaming it Ani Lingus.
Ani Lingus.. where the only inflight meal is tossed salad, eh?
Yer Maw @19, Arkizzle @ 24: Ryanair does NOT own Aer Lingus. It owns 29.4% of Aer Lingus- 25.4% is owned by the Government of Ireland, and the rest by various smaller shareholders, as Aer Lingus is a public company floated on the London and Dublin stock exchanges.
Ryanair has tried to take over the rest of Aer Lingus twice- the first attempt was blocked by the EU Competition Commission on the grounds that it would create a monopoly on European flights from Dublin. The second was blocked by the shareholders.
Also, 19: The expensive London-Aarhus price is because SAS don't have direct flights between London and Aarhus. London-Copenhagen on SAS is £60 all-up: I know because I plan to take that flight later this summer.
Yer Maw -- Eurostar might advertise a cheap deal that sells out, but at least when they say "£79 London-Paris return" they mean it. When Ryanair say "£15 London-Paris", you end up paying 2×£15 (flights) + 2×£8 (luggage) + £8 (paying-by-card fee) + 2×£10 (not checking in online fee) + 2×£20 (airport taxes) + 2×£5 (hand baggage) + £80 (that extra 1kg weight after you bought too many clothes in Paris) + 2×£4 (for the bottles of water you can't take on an airline, but can fill for free at home if you take the train), + the cost of getting to/from the airports rather than the central stations.
In any case, you compared the full-price walk-up Eurostar fare with the book-in-advance Ryanair fair (without fees).
I flew with EasyJet for the first time at the weekend, and after hearing all the horror stories of the budget airlines I was pleasantly surprised. It was basic, but within the limitations of flying, airport security and their pricing EasyJet do a good job.
Does anyone know of a good site that accumulates all the various fees of different airlines, in a nice, easily browseable comparison?
WalterBillington: Mrs. O'Leary's cow started a fire in Chicago, not San Francisco.
http://www.chicagohistory.org/fire/oleary/
Also, why don't people take a train instead of flying? Isn't that the whole point of being in Europe?
Oh, I'm terribly sorry. Is your CHAIR IN THE SKY not comfortable enough?
Seriously, though, I can see complaining about hidden fees, but what is there to complain about something you know in advance? Are you legally required to use this airline, or something?
@37: No, but why should we be constrained from talking about negative experiences many of us have had with the company? They don't pay our wages, do they? Michael O'Leary is entirely open about his contempt for customers, are we obliged to lap that up?
Last month they gulled me out of £20 because their website wouldn't let me sign in online. They wanted another £20 for the return flight for the same reason, but I was tired and kicked up enough of a fuss that they waived the fee (which is in essence a punitive fine, given that you don't have contact with their staff anyway, checkin is by machine)
I have absolutely no idea why people complain about Ryanair.
It's absolutely awful, yes, but it's incredibly cheap.
Just don't use them if you don't like the service.
"All this hate for RyanAir" is because of experience. If you enjoy flying with them, you must be a person who:
* doesn't mind flying without bags
* doesn't mind flying at 5AM on a Wednesday, landing 15 days before the date you are really interested in
* doesn't mind having to rush to the plane to get decent seats for you & your companions
* doesn't mind having to squeeze in so little space, after an hour your knees will divorce you and escape to Hawaii
* doesn't mind going through airports so small and so crowded, the chance you are going to be left STANDING for hours while you wait is higher than the chance you'll find a seat somewhere
* doesn't mind spending another £50 or more to pay for transportation from a little airport in the middle of nowhere to the actual city
* doesn't mind being fleeced for drinks and food. (In all honesty, this is what happens on trains as well, but it's much easier to buy your own drinks in advance and carry them).
So yeah, if you don't mind all that, you are a satisfied RyanAir customer. The word "cattle" also comes to mind.
....buuut you're not buying any of those things. You're buying a cheap flight, that can be so cheap because they pack you in, offer zero free frills, and fly at odd times to little-used airports. If that's unacceptable to you, buy a more expensive ticket from a different airline. If their service isn't even worth the prices they do charge, they'll go out of business. Isn't the free market grand?
if its a publicity stunt then it has the potential to massively backfire. Some people will hear about this and decide to never travel with them, and never hear that it was just a joke. If it is publicity then they need to fire whoever came up with it.
@moriarty: you forget we're supposed to be shilling for virgin airlines here. if my plane doesn't have absinthe and BB access, then it's shit and deserves negative publicity every few months.
but seriously, if you're a poor college student who can shove a pack under your seat and hold your wee while you hop around europe for cheap, ryanair and easyjet are both great options.
xaxa, no. Over a month in advance eurostar does not have that priced ticket available ON THE DATE I WANT TO GO.
im sorry you think that people cant add up. I include taxes, airport transfers and fees before i consider the price and eurostar still comes WAY WAY above the price. Im not stupid i know how the low cost airlines work, but i also take hand luggage and travel alone.
eurostar really need to sort out their website and their prices, they seem to think that aeroplanes dont exist. Id take the train every time but not at 3 times the price.
AlexG55,
When I read Yer Maw's comment, I went to wikipedia and read the same numbers you did, and think it's fair to say RyanAir own Aer Lingus, because RyanAir holds the controlling stake.
While I knew they had tried to buy them out in the past, the fact that they own the majority share was definitely news to me.
If the Irish government wants to buy up another 5%, they can own Aer Lingus, again.
To put things in perspective: it is possible to run a low-cost airline that isn't shit. Easyjet manages to do it quite well; aside from the very basic service level and occasional air-traffic control delays (which afflict all airlines, budget or premium), they're perfectly acceptable. And they've got a good attitude. I remember back in the old days (late 1990s) being at Luton airport one time when a flight was delayed for over three hours. Who do I see coming out to apologize to the annoyed and tired passengers in person but Stelios -- the then CEO!
That's because Easyjet was at least founded on two ideas -- cheap airline travel and customer service. Whereas Ryanair was founded on the principle of cheap airline travel and fuck the public, they don't count.
When you're in business, your #1 goal is to turn a profit. But you can do that without being evil. Ryanair is one of those companies that I refuse to do business with because, in their own petty way, they're evil. Period.
Aren't there any damn laws mandating the minimum amount of bathrooms and restricting carriers from charging? Seriously!!
Last week my wife and I flew from Edinburgh to Rome with Ryanair. It was the only airline that
a) flew direct
b) departed in the morning
c) cost under £250 return for the two of us, including all taxes
The alternatives would have meant us paying double for a flight that took twice as long, leaving us with less time at our destination. Both flights departed and arrived on time, and the cabin crew were pleasant.
The thing is, I don't consider Ryanair as an airline. To me they are a bus service with wings; sometimes I just want to get from A to B, and for the most part, they manage to do that. If you want comfort, you pay the price. As for this 'story', O'Leary says a lot of things that ain't so.
It turns out they only charge for anything higher than a Bristol 4.
Pull out the toilets and the seats. It can be like the old football specials. If you need to go, just piss down the leg of the person in front of you.
Don't fly a shitty cheap airline if you want a shitty experience. That was easy!
Listen to the second song, "Fly Me to the Moon."
It's relevant.
http://www.myspace.com/pellecarlberg
Now that the super wealthy all have their own fleet of aircraft and the pilots to fly them, the unrelieved masses will be treated like the voiceless minions we always were.
i wish there were an airline in he US that could operate with sustainable cash flows (so they would be around and not go out of business) and would have prices like ryanair. if they charge for toilets and other services to unbundle prices and let me pay a low price, that is fine with me.
Charlie Stross @ 18 asks, "If they rip the toilets out to add seats, will they then exceed the maximum evacuation capacity of the airframe?"
I believe that reducing passengers' ability to evacuate is the point, innit?
(tried to work in a pun about leaving their bladders in a halting state, but it was too strained...damn, everything about this thread makes me need to pee.)
My brother and I flew Ryanair going to Aruba. They sent our bags somewhere else, and the staff was very rude. I told my brother in the plane (it was kinda smokey) that this must be what it is like to fly in a Klingon warship. He did not laugh.
@ #16 posted by mgfarrelly:
"people-milk" is my new favorite word
"virtual prison-ships in the sky"…
Huh-huh.
An analgam of Eastern philosophy, CIA methods and Western logic brings you:
"The journey is the destination"+Extraorinary Rendition=Ryanair
@#18,
Airliners are certified to carry as many people as can leave the cabin in some amount of time, I think it's 90 seconds. But given a typical airliner's proportions between cabin floor space and the number of emergency exits, you have to really CRAM a whole plane FULL of zero-leg-room seats before you come anywhere CLOSE to having too many people to evacuate in 90 seconds. Your typical long-range airliner could hold half again as many seats and still be able to evacuate everyone in time. Shorter-range airliners are packed a little tighter (no first/biz class, less leg room... which is bearable for 2 or 3 hours) but they still hold way fewer people than they're certified for. One recently-introduced 737 modification installs a smaller pressure bulkhead at the very back, i.e. the "back wall" of the cabin is further back into the tail, allowing one more row of seats (maybe two if you get rid of the galley, I forget exactly). It's expensive and it's heavy, but it pays for itself.
And I don't see why people are getting so upset about how RyanAir operates. If you don't like it, just fly with another airline. Simple. What's the big deal? No one HAS to fly RyanAir. And if some people do have to (because they can't afford more expensive airlines), then until RyanAir came along, people with that budget could not fly at all. In general, "more options" = "good" in my book. And sure, I wish there were a whole spectrum ranging from RyanAir to super-luxurious Emirates-style first class, since then we could each get exactly what we're willing to pay for (On longer flights I'd get something a LITTLE better than economy class; Say, 1.5x the leg room. On shorter flights I'd get whatever is cheapest). But unfortunately airlines, like most non-online businesses, can't go after the long tail practically.
As long as I'm allowed to fly wearing adult diapers and go whenever I please in the privacy of my own pants, Ryanair's policy doesn't bother me at all...
You get what you pay for, and Ryanair is very cheap.
Honestly, it beats flying in the US. I'm willing to put up with some discomfort for the ability to travel places. Even then, Ryanair's jets were actually more comfortable than some other (more expensive) short-haul airlines I've been on.
when handed lemons... Ryanair should cater to the BDSM market. There are plenty of people with money who pay to be humiliated and abused.
This is a stunt. The FAA have yanked Raynair's chain over similar bad behavior, and would do it again over pay toilets. Not to say that Raynair won't try to (and succeed) in charging for countless other things along the way.
To people saying that RyanAir opened a new market and new possibilities for us poor folk: yes, they did.
The problem is that they couldn't stop there, like others did (e.g. Easyjet). They started going out of their way to squeeze every penny they could, with a blatant race to the bottom. It's like McDonalds selling uncooked hamburgers, without bread or sauce ("Hey, you wanted a hamburger, right?"), or Amazon forcing you to collect a book from Jersey ("hey, you wanted the book, right?"). They treated customers so badly, the EU had to intervene and write a new law to stop them.
And the fantastic thing is, they are losing customers (like me) faster than they get new ones, but they simply don't get it.
This totally bleedin'ly HAS to be a stunt.
One thing Michael O'Leary is good at (yup, opening up new routes of travel at very cheap prices, and creating a real competitive market, etc) BUT - and possibly more importantly, is garnering very, VERY good publicity.
Congrats BB - you've helped him!
Ok, let me see if I'm understanding you, Mr. Moriarty:
Unless I'm promised more service than I'm getting
or am legally obligated to patronize a business,
it's inappropriate for me to complain about how I
am treated as a customer of that business?
I say awesome. I just got back from Europe and flew from London to Ireland and then to Italy with my wife on Ryanair and the whole thing cost less than $100. Ryanair doesn't even fly anywhere that takes longer than I can hold it. I say keep bringin on the cheap flights.
#61 - Ryanair doesn't fly to Aruba!