Ryanair Asks Passengers To Decide New On-Board Fees
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14/03/2009 – Ryanair Asks Passengers To Decide New On-Board Fees
Ryanair is well known for its odd publicity stunts and even more infamous for its on-board fees. I can make dozens of “cheap” jokes about Ryanair, their removal of passenger window shades, installing non-reclining seats…and even the customized 737-800s they fly that have the cockpit ‘eyebrow’ windows removed (standard production 737 aircraft have two small overhead windows above the pilot and co-pilot).  How cheap is an airline to remove cockpit windows used by those flying the planes?
Ryanair even skimps on the use of proper grammar (not that I have any grammatical skills) with sections on their web site with titles like this “Do Ryanair permit passengers to smoke onboard?”
On the 12th of March Ryanair announced a new contest for its flyers. This new contest allows their customers to choose the next “Discretionary Charge” to be put in place.
Ryanair already charges for all drinks, snacks, baggage, priority boarding for those with special needs, bringing a car seat/booster seat, infant in lap, payment handling fee (they charge you to process your payment!) and just about anything else you can think of.
Currently Ryanair is even exploring the concept of having passengers pay a fee to use the on-board lavatory, as I discussed in this post: 04/03/2009 – New Low Cost Airlines Fees Hit A New Low
…so what are the details of the Ryanair contest? Here are the details as quoted directly from Ryanair’s lead public relations spokesperson Stephen McNamara
“Ryanair is Europe’s largest low fares airline and we plan to continue to reduce costs and fares by stimulating ancillary revenues. We have always provided passengers with choice, if you don’t want to pay for food – don’t buy it, if you don’t want to pay checked in bag charges – don’t bring checked in bags, if you don’t want to pay handling charges – then just use Visa Electron entirely free of charge.
Since we confirmed that we are considering a toilet charge we have received a huge number of ancillary revenue suggestions from passengers and we want more. We are asking passengers to submit their ideas with the most creative winning €1,000 cash.”
Well folks, for €1,000 you can decide the financial fate of your fellow flyers on Ryanair!  The following are the current top suggestions in the competition
·       Charging for toilet paper – with O’Leary’s face on it (Michael O’Leary is the CEO)
·       Charging €2.50 to read the safety cards,
·       Charging €1 to use oxygen masks,
·       Charging €25 to use the emergency exit,
·       Charging €50 for bikini clad Cabin Crew.
If you have a suggestion you’d like to pass on to Ryanair, you can e-mail your entry to the airline directly, before the 30th of March at competition@ryanair.com
Here is my suggestion. Ryanair should charge passengers to be allowed to bring an additional carry-on bag on-board. Currently Ryanair allows for a single carry-on bag only, no exceptions.
Charging passengers for the option to bring a second carry-on meeting specified ‘personal item’ size restrictions.  The ability to bring a personal item bag on-board reduces passenger stress, reduces the work load of the ramp crew, makes flyers happier…and it could bring additional ancillary revenue.  A personal item would be defined as a bag not exceeding the following dimensions 17 in x 13 in x 6 in/43 cm x 33 cm x 16 cm (length x width x height).
Ryanair is charging for everything else. Why not institute a fee that gives passengers a little more comfort when flying your airline?
Below is a Ryanair graphic from their contest. I like that Ryanair is able to mock its self, and I love that the graphic shows passengers exiting a 747.
Also below are two photos of 737s, showing British Airways 737 with the ‘eye brow’ windows and a Ryanair 737 without the ‘eye brow’ windows.
Happy Flying!
–Click Images To Enlarge–
Pescado!
How about charging 2.50 to have the stewardess NOT read the safety stuff out loud. This is especially irksome on Jetblue because they interrupt the DirecTV feed to pipe the safety speech in. I think us figuring out what to do with the mask, life preserver, rafts, and the emergency exit lights is part of natural selection.
Make it 5 bucks, and omit any systemwide messages from the crew. If I wanted to hear from them, I’d press the little button to call for their assistance.
Max
Actually, new 737s don’t have eyebrow windows. From wikipedia;
“Most 737 cockpits are equipped with “eyebrow windows” positioned above the main glareshield. Eyebrow windows were a feature of the original 707. They allowed for greater visibility in turns, and offered better sky views if navigating by stars. With modern avionics, they became redundant, and many pilots actually placed newspapers or other objects in them to block out sun glare. They were eliminated from the 737 cockpit design in 2004, although they are still installed in military variants and at customer request. These windows are sometimes removed and plugged, usually during maintenance overhauls and can be distinguished by a metal plug which differs from smooth metal which appears in later aircraft that were not originally fitted with the windows.”
Oh dear, what Matt said or copied is correct. How seriously do I take this article comparing a BA 737 400 to a RYR 737 800……need I say more.
RYR cutting costs hahahah- brand new a/c with top nav avionics, and some people who clearly know nothing, think we navigate using stars ahahahahah