Ryanair’s really, really keen to let its passengers use their mobiles during flights.
Ryanair said yesterday that it is close to a deal with a telecoms company that will install kit into its fleet of aircraft to enable passengers to use their mobiles while on board. Though use during takeoff and landing will not be permitted, passengers will be able to make calls or send texts in the air. This autumn, BMI and TAP Air Portugal will trial a similar service.
The move is another Ryanair wheeze to increase the amount of money it makes from its customers. It is also still looking to introduce in-flight internet games and gambling.
Given that flying Ryanair is already pretty unpleasant, and that any time I fly budget I seem to be sharing a plane with thick, loudmouthed drunks, the thought of mobiles adding to the general clamour inside the aeroplane is a superb advert for Ryanair’s more expensive competitors. Would you pay an extra £20, £50, £100 to be spared endless loops of the Nokia Theme and the bellowing of pissheads? I would.
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0 responses to “Ryanair: we’re shit and we’re about to get worse”
I’m not sure I’m with you on this one. The drunks and idiots are going to be loud and crass and annoying anyway. The idea of being able to call a friend while on a long haul flight to Australia or the US is quite appealing. Actually, the idea of being able to speak to a friend on any flight anywhere without being charged ridiculous airline rates is appealing.
Maybe it’s a girl thing.
I get a wee bit fed up with mobile phone nazis telling folk off for using their mobiles in places where there’s no reason for a “no mobile phones” policy. In the petrol station for example. Or, more recently, while waiting in the hideously long passport control queue at Edinburgh airport. I mean, why? Does anyone have a decent and proven reason why mobile phone use is banned in those places? And I stayed in a hospital overnight once where mobile phone use was encouraged (to save the hosp from having to provide phones and maintenance, I presume) so why can you use your phone there and not in other hospitals? Mind you, I wouldn’t go back to that hospital unless I was lying in the morgue but that’s by the by. OK, rambling now….. Time to go.
I’m certainly not a phone nazi, and I don’t see any problem with phones in general. But in my experience of airports (and budget airlines in particular) the people with phones welded to their ears are loud and annoying, have the most annoying ringtones possible, have the ringing volume up really, really loud, and don’t give a flying shite about other people. And worst of all, you can be 100% sure they’d be seated next to me. They’re the same people whose phones go off in cinemas, and they should all be shot :)
I do think that Ryanair has inadvertently solved the problem of budget flying’s environmental impact: by turning their planes into flying versions of Gala Bingo, they’ll make flying even more unpleasant than it already is. Going by the ryanair vision of the future, being drop-kicked across the irish sea would be more attractive than flying.
> Does anyone have a decent and proven reason why mobile phone use is banned in those places?
Combination of hysteria, inability to keep up with technological changes and good old-fashioned profiteering, I reckon.
AFAIK the petrol station thing is because of the metal connectors on the majority of mobile phones. When dropped they can cause a spark which could ignite petrol fumes. Mobile phones themselves are not the issue.
>>any time I fly budget I seem to be sharing a plane with thick, loudmouthed drunks
Sorry.
BTW. Mobiles interfere with serious life saving equipment in CERTAIN AREAS of hospitals. So, they blanket ban them so you don’t have folk swithing them on an off from one corridor to another. Or, more importantly NOT doing so.
> the petrol station thing is because of the metal connectors on the majority of mobile phones. When dropped they can cause a spark which could ignite petrol fumes.
So they should also ban nylon shirts and hairspray.
Was that ever in question?
Quite.
> Mobiles interfere with serious life saving equipment in CERTAIN AREAS of hospitals. So, they blanket ban them so you don’t have folk swithing them on an off from one corridor to another. Or, more importantly NOT doing so.
What they’re actually achieving, of course, is they’re teaching people that the signs are pointless and that they can therefore be ignored. Fundamental misunderstanding of human nature there.
Ryanair is not cheap,after you add on all the extras!
now this is the best way to beat them at their own game.
1.make some dodgy £1 coins!just use Plasticine as a mould and solder to melt into it.make sure to weigh it!!(that takes care of the loos.)
2.get hold of one of those useless electron cards and pay for your fare(no charge on their site)
3.get some of those “vac”bag thing’s that shrink down your stuff to nothing then bring it on as hand luggage.
4.bring your own sandwich and drink.
5.bring some ear plugs!!
I can’t really imagine how much more annoying it would be possible for Ryanair to get. The fact that they are trying to charge for every possible thing you do – pretty soon, the air that you breath onboard will only be availably via coin slot operated oxygen masks. And I really do think – let’s just not have mobile phones on airplanes – it’s the one goddamn place on the planet that you get away from them – and I mean mine as well as everyone else’s – can’t there just be a place in the world where you don’t have to be on call – and yes – having to listen to someone’s pointless conversation and tedious texting about how they’re on the airplane now – just fills me with dread. The only good side of all this charging for every extra item of clothing you wear or whatever is that they now cost about the same as any other regular airline and so it’s not worth flying with them anyway – i’ll look forward to their imminent demise… yours with bitterness (sorry just got charged £20 at the airport for a boarding pass, because i hadn’t checked in online – which I had tried to do – but the computer said no)…. oh the joy of it all.
> just got charged £20 at the airport for a boarding pass, because i hadn’t checked in online – which I had tried to do – but the computer said no
Yeah, I got that. Incredibly stupid. What gets me is that you go to the automatic check-in machine at the airport, give it all your details, and it says you owe them 20 quid. And there’s a chip-and-pin card-reader on the machine. But it still tells you to go and queue up for forty minutes. Ryanair have dozens of these machines at Stansted, and presumably they cost money, yet Ryanair have programmed their credit-card-reading machines to tell customers to go and hand their credit card over to a human and do it the slow — and expensive — way. That’s just weird.
(Wouldn’t usually fly Ryanair, but it was for work. Tsk. At least the various extra charges weren’t paid by me, though.)
Frankly I am suprised that they still have so many clients and are doing so well. So much shit can be heard about them, but still it seems that people are/were/will be caught on their 1 pound flights which turn out to be 90+ in the end..
I agree. Which is why I fly with CrynAir instead.
http://www.crynair.com
Ryan Air is crap! Any normal individual knows this, that’s why all the muppets still choose to fly with this bunch of blood suckers. The muppets only see the fare and not the extra’s and when confronted with them they just pay, as generally they are half cut. Personally I think you have to credit O’Leary with some degree of intelligence, as he seems to know how to milk the muppets. Should call it Muppet Air
are teh spawn of sATAN BUT HAVE JUST PAID £75 ALL IN RETURN TO SOMEWHERE NEAR vENICE. nOT BAD. ps IT’S NOW £40 IF YOU fail to book in online. SLainte Mr O’Leary
I totally imagined that literally breaking into shouting in the middle bit. :-D
[…] with the other airlines I’ve mentioned. I don’t know anyone who thinks RyanAir is a joy to fly. I will do almost anything to avoid them, cheap or not. EasyJet just joined my shit list having […]
The best action:
Send a letter to your local airport authority requesting that the airport allocate slots for the same destinations to airlines different than Ryan Air (Polish, Checz, Portuguese, Austrian, Scandinavian, etc..). They have about the same fares and do a much better job especially at check-ins and security gates. The seating and organization is much better as well.
The aim is that Ryan Air has fewer slots in your local airport so you have a choice of good airlines for your destinations.
Unfortunately they are the only airline to fly to Zaragoza and they know it. I would never use Ryanair if I had the choice. They are shit.
Yeah, it’s not as if you have a choice. The big worry with ryanair – other than their endlessly inventive ways of getting more money out of consumers – is that they’re flighty too. No pun intended. If you rely on them to get to and from a particular place, you’ve got to cross your fingers that they won’t decide the airport fees are too high, or that they don’t like the colour of the runway, and cut the route.
Nice hook up, and agree, the service, overall, is crap :)
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003564411810
took a flight from dublin to tenerife two years ago,still have nightmares about it,drunken knackers from ballymun on a freebee on benefits,squashed in so bad my toe turned black,i have diabetis so didnt notice until we arrived,staff all east european shot putters,attitude dont like it shut the feck up!I would pay anything not to fly with this airline,if you do you are a mug,this is just robbery with violence.