I’ve just booked some flights with RyanAir, and I used to love RyanAir, but not any more. I used to plan great journeys involving getting up at 3:30am, travelling through several different countries, running between bus stations and airports and only ever taking hand luggage, just so as I could use RyanAir flights to get to my ultimate destination and thereby save £20. But now it seems they’re getting sneakier and sneakier: “ţigănie” they’d call it here – “Gypsy business”. There are lots of boxes where you must select (or, more cleverly, deselect) stuff, and each thing you want puts an extra £10 on the price. Here’s your RyanAir webpage these days:
1 MILLION FLIGHTS GOING FOR £1, OFFER MUST END TONIGHT!!!
Flight F666: East Burnage “Liam Gallagher” Airport 04:55am – Zgzygrxysk 07:45am - £1
Please select the following options:
On your RyanAir flight would you like to eat: 1) Nothing except your fingernails 2) A blueberry muffin for £3.99 3) A cheese sandwich for £4.99 4) Your words (boom boom!)
On your RyanAir flight would you like the air stewards and stewardesses to be: 1) Well-trained, courteous professionals 2) Slags 3) Leprosy sufferers 4) Deaf
On your RyanAir flight would you like to breath: 1) Air 2) Carbon Dioxide 3) The exhaust from the engine 4) Zyklon B
Upon arrival at your destination, would you like the baggage control staff to: 1) Process your baggage carefully and efficiently 2) Send your skis to Addis Ababa just for a laugh 3) Practice penalty shootouts in their smoking room with any small packages you’ve checked in labelled “FRAGILE” 4) Not even bother coming in to work that day
Would you like to pay for your tickets with: 1) A credit or debit card, or perhaps a postal order or a bank transfer 2) RyanAir’s special “Favoured Customer” Platinum account (interest rate %105 per month) 3) Your family silver 4) Your life
If you’ve selected all No. 1s then the bill is now £51 and that’s just one-way. You’ll wish you’d flown cheesyJet instead.
Right, well, don’t say I haven’t warned you – this time I’m going to give you a damn good thrashing!!
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But can you really thrash an airplane? Where would you begin? I think you'd have to harpoon it like Moby Dick. Which makes you Gadjo Ahab.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't find rude enough words to describe Ryanair, the few times I have been forced to use them, my eyes bled with fury.
ReplyDeleteMy choice cheepie is Cheesy
Are you going somewhere nice?
Personally, I only ever fly British Airways - I still prefer to think of it as B.O.A.C. The boys and girls who fly the aeroplanes so obviously come from decent families - Grammar School and Private Education - and all have proper manners and decent dress sense. If one does need to attend to a call of nature on a flight, one visits the loo to spend a penny; one is not required to pay £1 to visit "the jax". Uggh!
ReplyDeleteI never imagined you with a small fragile package. I thought it'd be large and robust.
ReplyDeleteSx
Rynaair is pretty much what Richard Branson was thinking about when he said that he wanted rail services to run like flights.
ReplyDeleteI've never flown RyanAir. Just think what I've missed out on. But I've never liked the orange of EasyJet. It's just too, well, orange and makes me feel queasy when i see it.
ReplyDeleteOnly Russian airlines let me take my gas bottles as hand luggage.
ReplyDeleteI flew Ryanair once to Ireland and it was like a flying cattle truck. I've never seen a male airline steward actually wearing makeup before. Unfortunately there's no other way to get to Glasgow in a straight line so I'll be having the pleasure again in a couple of weeks. I'll make sure to 'go' before I board. Some might say flying to Glasgow on Ryanair is a case of double masochism.
ReplyDeleteI've flown Ryanair twice, each time swearing it would be my last.
ReplyDeleteFlying to Girona for the Catalan wedding recently (see my blog, passim) we booked a flight that broke down (as it were) as "Flight - £5; fees and taxes - £80". Then we had to pay for baggage (taking posh clothes and a baby). Then for priority booking (having baby) etc etc. I fail to see how anyone can actually pay the advertised price. And they have also saved money by not paying their cabin crew to pretend they like you.
I believe it was David Mitchell who once came out with the priceless line "He's from Luton. Or - as Easyjet call it - London."
Heathrow is in Middlesex. Gatwick is in Suffolk. Stansted is in Essex. STOP PRETENDING LONDON HAS AN AIRPORT, ALL OF YOU!
Heavens Mr Byard, Gatwick is in SURREY. Next to Horley and close to the (now probably wiped out) villages of Charlwood and Povey Cross - the latter once home to Sir Malcom Campbell.
ReplyDeleteI can forgive Ryanair a lot after hearing it stranted David Dimbleby on his outbound holiday flight the other day:
ReplyDeletehttp://dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/117856/Dimbleby-anger-at-Ryanair-/
I'll blog about my favourite airline shortly, and for no commission.
I regret to say that air hostesses are rarely slags these days, although a good time could be had with the Tashkent Lufthansa gals back in the day. Dental hygenieists, on the other hand, are all yo-yo-knickered trollops. A shame that it's difficult to impress them when they're hosing Merlot stains off your tonsils.
I like Sleazyjet. Well, it's really the Sleazyboys and Sleazygirls I suppose, they can be quite fetching (pace Mme DeFarge) in those orange fitted waistcoats.
ReplyDelete(Boyo, can we line up the Dimblebys with Bono in front of the all-party firing squad?)
Hi everybody, I'm back from a long weekend in the mountains and am very pleased to see that we have a quorum and are all of the same mind; now we just need the untraceable plastic explosives. I thought of a few more reasons to hate RyanAir while I was away, but it seems we have enough.
ReplyDeleteBananas: Ahab somehow got attached to his own personal RyanAir 737 with his harpoon - I wouldn't fancy that.
Lulu, the swearier side of the English language advances because of institutions like RyanAir, so maybe there is an upside. We're flying from Turin to Stansted, after flying WizzAir (all praise!) from Cluj to Milan (Bergamo-Gallipoli) to visit Mrs D.'s cousin.
Camilla, indeed, B.A. should start calling itself B.O.A.C. again, the toilets should be labelled "ladies" and "gentlemen", and the cabin crew should be a Palm Court quartet, sashaying effortlessly into "Moon River" as the DeHavilland Comet (for such it is) cruises over the Cape of Trafalgar.
Small and fragile, Scarley, so talk encouragingly to me :-)
Kevin, Branson is, as comedian Jeremy Hardy once said, like one of those solitary drunks one meets on the way home after chucking-out time: "I'm gonna make the trains run like planes... I'm gonna clear all the rubbish up... you fookin' bastards!"
Madame, I know what you mean about about the orange, and I almost puked the first time I saw the name "easyJet" on the side of a aeroplane. But now it's as evocative of my homeland as "Kebab and Chips". (Mmmm)
Alice, do the Aeroflot cabin crew regularly call out (in Russian) "is there a welder on board?"
Gyppo, exactly: I realise now I was slacking and could have added half a dozen extra "extras" in the manner you describe. What ever happened to Biggin Hill - that was in London, surely?
Boyo, I find it hard to believe that David Dimbleby uses low-cost airlines. And I bet the one time he used a bus he snorted with indignation "And, can you credit it, they don't even have a buffet service". Dental hygenieists are indeed as you say: they somehow failed the "go down on the consultant" part of the nursing exam and are determined to make up for it.
Inky, I think we're agreed on Sleazy - and Stelios is such a nice cuddly teddy bear, isn't he - and I'm now determined to write a post in their homour.
Oh b***er - did I really type Suffolk? FOOOL!
ReplyDeleteI *meant* Sussex; it appears that even that is wrong. I shal slap myself with a fish. Bloody Southern counties though, eh? All utterly indistiguishable...
AM I F***ING INVISIBLE OR WHAT?????
ReplyDeleteWho said that?
ReplyDeleteHow much extra for the Zyklon B?
Gyppo, you've let yourself down and you've let the whole class down. Utterly indistiguishable, though, you're right - I'm from Hertfordshire... where's the regional pride in that for f**k's sake?
ReplyDeleteDaphne, Daphne, Daphne, I'm sorry, I don't know how I missed you! Flying RyanAir to Glasgow is indeed well 'ard; but what happened to that Prestwick airport? Supposedly "served" Glasgow but was miles and miles away.
The Jules, I suppose one could actually demand the Zyclon B on RyanAir and see if they came up with the goods.
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ReplyDeleteI'll pack Dimbleby off to be ambassador to somewhere with exploding lavs and no polenta.
ReplyDeleteThen recall him for a good shooting, in a Stalin stylee.
You can't use Hendon Airport without a written chit from Hitler. And since that Neville Chamberlain went public on the procedure it's all got a bit anti.
ReplyDeleteDimbleby could host a political discussion programme in a central African country, and his call for comments from the audience sparks a bidding war for what he's worth as a hostage.
ReplyDeleteKevin, did Chamberlain land at Hendon? I wonder how many takes they had to do of that "I have in my hand a piece of paper" schtick before he sounded convincing.
Well Mr Byard, I suppose we are equal now because I am somewhat surprised - aggrieved even - to see that West Sussex have somehow claimed Gatwick for their own. The boundary between Sussex (a ghastly county full of blazer-wearing bookies and parvenus drinking pink gin) and Surrey was always Lowfield Heath. I expect that little village is now the washroom for Polish slaves at some faceless airline catering service. Of course Surrey, beautiful Surrey, the home of Epsom, great cricket, Stuart Surridge and the marvellous Mickey and Alec Stewart line, will survive. Even though it lost the world's most charming Airport - Croydon.
ReplyDeleteI beg to differ Camilla: the world's most charming airport is North Ronaldsay.
ReplyDeleteCamilla, I've never known where Surrey ends and Sussex begins, but then I've never worn a blazer (as an adult) and never had a pink gin. I hope you'd take me for a Surrey man.
ReplyDeleteNorth Ronaldsay, Kevo, you do choose the remotest of destinations for your holidays. Batumi Airport in Georgia is the most exotic-sounding airport I've been to, but it was surprisingly prosaic in reality.
Daphne - you've never seen an air steward wear makeup? I could give you the address of a club, but you'd be barred unless you dragged up. Never forget the expansion of Qantas - 'Queer And Nice Types As Stewards'.
ReplyDeleteCamilla - Surrey is still full of poncy southerners who drink bottled water and can only talk about property prices. As is Berkshire. As is Hertfordshire. as is... you get my point. I yearn to return to the Black Country and speak in my own voice again, but alas all the jobs have been destroyed by f***ing southerners interfering and I am cast up in the Thames Valley as an economic migrant. I know of only one person in my road who is genuinely local; all the others are migrants...
Gosh Mr Byard, I am sure that was jolly interesting - if only I could understand the accent. I expect you are one of those yam-yams embittered by the successive collapses of British Leyland and Rover - but, as I recall, neither Red Robbo nor John Towers were born in Surrey.
ReplyDelete