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| December | 02 |
| 2006 |
This sort of drivel gets me going:
On November 1, Ryanair quietly introduced a new “priority boarding†scheme. For £2pp, you can be one of the first 60 to board Ryanair’s 189-seat aircraft. Before this, families used to be let on first. Not now, unless you cough up £2 per adult or child (aged 2 or over) each way. It’s enough to make you never want to fly Ryanair again.Take my friend who has four children — twins aged 2, a four-year-old and six-year-old. This is a family of hardy travellers who visit German relatives in school holidays.
If Maria had to compete with the usual stampede to board the plane, there’s no way she would be sitting next to any of her brood. She has to unfold the double buggy, struggle down two flights of stairs, squeeze out the double doors, hand the double buggy over to the luggage handlers, run back to the stairs for the straggling other children and get all four up the aircraft stairs on to the plane, secure a row for them all and stuff their anoraks/rucksacks and hand luggage in the overhead locker.
If Ryanair wants to charge £2 for priority boarding, there is not one valid reason why it shouldn't. If it wants to charge £500 for every flight, there is not one valid reason why it shouldn't. It can charge whatever it likes for whatever service it chooses, or doesn't choose, to provide. That's because it is a private company which stands or falls by the number of people who choose to fly with it, in one of the most competitive markets on the planet. If Maria doesn't like Ryanair's charges or arrangements, she can go with Easyjet. And if she doesn't like them, there's BA. Or any other airline. Or she can choose not to go at all.
It’s enough to make you never want to fly Ryanair again. So don't.
MessageSpace
Stephen, I take your point about your friends children, on the other hand, look at what Ryanair and Easyjet have done. Many "ordinary people" are now able to visit places they otherwise couldn't have afforded to do so.
I think a bit of perspective is required here.
Stephen,
Yes, the company can do whatever it likes, but isn't this also an example of the "sod the public" attitude you were complaining about recently? Or maybe that should be "sod the family"... I notice the charge was "quietly introduced", which is guaranteed to cause maximum upset. Trying to get on a Ryanair plane with kids was stressful enough under the old system (you'd be amazed at the number of single, childless people who made a point of blocking your way).
What strikes me about this is the sense of entitlement that Jeannette Hyde (who authored the Times article Stephen comments on) has. Entitlement to low-cost flights, entitlement to not being charged for checking luggage in and entitlement to sit with those she is travelling with.
There is a case for arguing here that this strong sense of entitlement, --a defining feature of the British middle classes-- has driven some to forget what companies are for, and what they are entitled to. The same applies to some public services.
"What strikes me about this is the sense of entitlement that Jeannette Hyde (who authored the Times article Stephen comments on) has. Entitlement to low-cost flights, entitlement to not being charged for checking luggage in and entitlement to sit with those she is travelling with."
Absolutely right. It's also so very un-British. At one time Brits would simply get on with things without complaining. Now it's all whine, whine, whine - gimmee, gimme, gimmee. I do think it's a definite case of the more you give people, the more they want. Over the last ten years or so, they have remained as inefficient and lazy as ever, and yet, almost entirely due to a massive housing bubble, they have become richer and richer as each day passes. I suppose this is just one more unintended consequence of pumping up an economy on steroids.
The people of Central and Eastern Europe are so very different. For many decades they've had to get by on next to nothing, but they still tend to meet each and every challenge with courage and style.
No doubt they'll go down a similar path as the Brits as their economies expand.
"Yes, the company can do whatever it likes, but isn't this also an example of the "sod the public" attitude you were complaining about recently?"
But especially in the budget airline sector, "sod the public" will very quickly translate into "where's the public?". That's the whole point.
Unless, of course, Ryanair's strategy is to discourage families from using it, for whatever reason (additional costs/lower margin?). If that's the case, that is their choice: in effect it is not that families are getting screwed NOW, it is that they have been getting something for nothing previously.
(Disclaimer: I have 3 children, oldest of which is 6. My sensitivity to risk of being dumped in the sh*t by a lowcost airline is FAR greater than my sensitivity to price: having your holiday trashed by a flight cancellation and being left with 3 tired miserable children in an airport is a nightmare of such epic proportions that I WILL pay to ensure it does not happen - if you fly Ryanair or Easyjet, you MUST take that risk on board - you cannot have it both ways. Clearly your risk/price balance is radically different if you are on your own)
Also note the magnitude of the charges Ryanair is asking: the example given is of a woman with four children. So for the privilege of boarding ahead of other travellers, the airline is charging the princely fee of a tenner.
There's also no valid reason why Jeannette Hyde can't complain about the service in the pages of another private company, either. Was she calling for state intervention?