Ryanair attempts to bring Vegas to 30,000 feet
Apparently, the new anti-gambling laws don’t bother Ryanair. Now that you can drink, watch shows, and play poker inflight, the only difference between Ryanair and Las Vegas are the lapdances.
The low-budget airline plans to boost profits by joining up with a leading Internet gaming company, Jackpotjoy.com, in order to allow fliers to gamble in-flight. Ryanair’s Chief Executive, Michael O’Leary said he hoped the move could boost non-ticket profits by five percent.
Personally, as someone who spends flights either bored out of his mind or heavily intoxicated, I would prefer an addictive activity to pass the time that doesn’t hurt my liver quite so much. Inflight gambling on poker and blackjack will not be allowed on US flights however, because it is illegal.
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Reading about Ryanair’s latest wheeze to get more money out of its poor, unsuspecting passengers, while ignoring what they really want, after my latest experience I have decided never to fly with them again, and would urge everyone to do likewise.
From 1st November they have introduced two new rules, both of which send a clear signal that they do not want children on board:
1) no longer is any priority given to passengers with children when boarding the plane. If a family is consequently split up, they will then ask other passengers to move. This does not make any sense, and I do not see why anyone would agree to moving, having just “battled” to get his or her seat, with hand luggage stored overhead etc.
2) having already introduced a £5 charge per suitcase, each item of luggage for the hold is now limited to a maximum 15kg. Passengers cannot “share” the allowance ie 30kg between 2 people, nor can you pay “per 15 kg” eg pay the same for one 30kg case as two 15kg cases. Any hard case will weigh at least 5kg on its own; putting a soft case in the hold will simply guarantee all the contents are destroyed; and since you are now severely restricted in what you can take on board, the only option for a family is to use at least 3 cases, which will be virtually impossible for any one car to handle along with 5 passengers, other than estates or people carriers. Not to mention how a family with kids is supposed to “handle” at least 3 large cases in and out of busy airports, God forbid they try to use public transport as well!! Our two suitcases for one week’s visit weighed 12kg and 25kg, so we were charged £55 excess (£5.50 per kg) even though there was four of us travelling! Again, this makes no sense, since I do not mind paying double for one suitcase if it is heavy, because it is more convenient than splitting it between two suitcases. But to get charged £55 for a total of 42kg between 4 people, plus only one piece of hand luggage, is just outrageous. Their only suggestion was for us to purchase a new suitcase in the airport, then repack our bags and come back…. yeh, right… with two young kids and the huge queues through Security, we would have missed the flight altogether!
All these rules from Ryanair are the same… making everything more complicated in the hope to catch people out and get them to pay more, while appearing to offer cheap tickets. It is bad enough that they charge you £3.50 per ticket just for the privilege of paying by debit card (credit card is even more) as though anyone is going to pay any other way via the Internet??
It is a waste of time complaining because they just do not care… even the Ryanair staff at Stansted told us how outrageous it all was, so even they are not listened to.
On top of all that, we were queuing at the check-in for nearly an hour, probably because many people like us were also having to pay excess charges which all takes extra time to administer. And then another half an hour through Security meant we had no time to buy any drinks for the kids for the plane, so had to pay the extortionate Ryanair prices.
And it could have been even worse… there was a group of about 30 very angry Italians who had been queuing in good time at the check-in counter for another Ryanair flight, only to be refused check-in and thus miss their flight because Ryanair had run out of time to check them all in!
It all reminds me of how BA was run a few years ago, when they decided to ignore economy class and focus all their efforts and attention to business class travel. Unfortunately for BA, they forgot that many business class passengers use economy when cashing in their air miles, particularly when travelling on holiday with the family. Consequently I know of many business colleagues, who like myself, refused to fly BA for a long time after. Fortunately for BA, they got rid of their chairman and this absurd strategy, and thus I am pleased to say it is once again a pleasure to fly with them.
How not to run an airline, Mr O’Leary!
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