
Ryanair is one opinionated company - mattjaynes
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1826-ryanair-is-one-opinionated-company
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jwilliams
Ryanair say these things for the publicity. Quite often you'll see a Ryanair
story about charging for toilets, or obese passengers... Keeps them on the
front page.

~~~
catzaa
> Ryanair story about charging for , or obese passengers...

I see no problem with it. It is torture to sit on a flight next to an
extremely obese person. They take up more plane space so they should pay more.
They also turn a 13 hour flight into 13 hour torture for those on the left,
right and in front of them.

The same goes for hand luggage. You get stupid ass people that will remove
your laptop (only luggage) from a safe place and put it so that it can fall
down to make place for their 3 pieces of luggage.

~~~
dazzawazza
Yeah and disabled people and ill people. The take up precious time and space!

Is it not a slippery slope where people who are not standardised are charged
more? Maybe non standard people should sit at the back of the plane so no one
has to see them?

I thought we'd progressed beyond this but it seems we are still a greedy, self
centred species at heart willing to condemn a fellow member for a few pathetic
dollars and a few minutes of our lives.

~~~
axod
Have you not sat next to a morbidly obese sweating person whose mounds of fat
are spilling onto your leg, arm, shoulder? You should try it some day.

The fairest system IMHO would be to give everyone a "total weight allowance"
that includes, you, and all your luggage. And if you're so big you spill onto
other peoples laps, buy extra seats.

Next you'll be suggesting we give terrorists equal rights on flights as well!
They're people too!

~~~
yummyfajitas
New law (based on Godwin): Whoever invokes terrorists or 9/11 in a
conversation unrelated to terrorism loses.

Incidentally, I agree with the rest of your post.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
If we find out that Nazis caused 9-11, it will be the end of civilized
internet discourse as we know it

(ok,ok! -- I deserve the downmod for that one. Just couldn't help myself)

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edw519
_(Southwest manages to take a similar approach without coming off as hostile
to customers)._

[Disclaimer: Raving Southwest fan.]

AFAIC, Southwest is better than almost every other airline in almost every
other category. Why? Because they have built a business the way I would want
to build one, with one thing in mind: the customer.

Almost everything they do is what the customer wants because someone bothered
to ask. Whenever I fly another airline, the differences are noticeable and I
ask, "Don't these people get it?"

Ryanair sounds like they're doing the same thing in a mechanical way. Once
they engage their customers as Southwest has, they'll have raving fans too.

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viraptor
Why is this hacker news? Anyways, it's annoying when they're reiterating the
same line all the time...

"Ryanair promises four things: low fares, a good on-time record, few
cancellations and few lost bags."

Fares aren't low. Easyjet beats them most of the time. Their prices are low
only on the front page. It's only 30£ both ways... just add 50£ airport fees
(I wonder why other airlines charge only <10£ for the same airport) each way,
20£ if you want to add even 1 piece of luggage, 10£ if you don't opt-out of
fast boarding and we're going to ask you to select your nationality many times
(only slightly indicating that by doing that you agree to buy insurance). Oh,
and 10-15£ fee for handling any credit card at the end. And other things...

So you end up paying ~200£ for a flight that's advertised as 30£. They also
wanted to be excluded some time ago from services that listed their real
prices.

Oh and on-time flights... that's easy - just say that a 3h flight will take
3.5h - this way they're always 'on time' and passengers can wait some time at
the airport (I'm used to arriving 30 min. early on my usual flight)

~~~
andyking
I don't fly, but friends who've used Ryanair have tales of people going down
the aeroplane aisle with catalogues, scratch cards, lottery tickets and all
sorts of other junk for sale right through the flight. I've even heard an
apocryphal story of someone being woken up so they couldn't sleep through the
salespeople!

~~~
viraptor
Yes, that happens on every flight. Catalogue after ~1h in the air, and lottery
~1h before landing. The prices are usually lower than on the airport, but
higher than in shops.

