Mallen Baker's Blog

Ryanair does it again

2 Mar 2009

I love this spoof safety card for Ryanair - especially the bit about a member of the crew being on hand in the event of an evacuation "to collect your emergency disembarkation fee".

Of course, Ryanair's real crime is not the fact that it is talking about introducing a charge to use the on-board toilets on its flights, but the fact that it continues to champion its 'cheap and nasty' business model. There are plenty of others that promote a cheap rate approach to flying - the superb Southwest Airlines - for instance. Ryanair is the only one I know of whose effective line in the face of customer complaint is "you got the ticket for ten pounds, so shut up and stop complaining".

And then there's that quote from Michael O' Leary, which I still quote (you will spot it was said before the current recession started): "We will double our emissions in the next five years because we are doubling our traffic. But if preserving the environment means stopping poor people flying so only the rich can fly, then screw it".

The environment, that is. You know, the life support systems of the planet? Mustn't be allowed to get in the way of Ryanair's business model.

Presumably he hoped this argument would strike a populist note with the huddled masses. Environmentalism would be recast as a middle class plot to stop the poor from enjoying their birthright. That kind of thing.

Richard Branson strikes a more convincing populist note, as someone who has traditionally positioned his businesses as standing up for consumers in the face of entrenched, lazy big players. His take on the same issue is, of course, rather different. "Our generation has inherited an incredibly beautiful world from our parents and they from their parents. It is in our hands whether our children inherit the same world".

Sadly, Michael O' Leary - popular champion of the poor - now wants them to pay for using the toilets. You couldn't make it up.

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