Patrick Crozier

Last week Michael Jennings and I sat down in a Central London café to record a podcast on low cost airlines.  Here’s my favourite bit.

We talked about how the low cost airlines operate, the lengths they go to to cuts costs, and the lengths they don’t go to, the situation before deregulation (bizarre as well as amazing) and how the low-cost way is now starting to spread to Asia.

Listeners will notice there’s quite a lot of hubub in the background.  I can only hope it’s not too distracting.

Oh, and there’s an odd bit of distortion as the microphone saturates.

Patrick Crozier

Upstart starts up

The Advertising Standards Authority have banned a Ryanair advert on the grounds that it was misleading.  The advert related to travel between London and Brussels and as I haven’t seen the advert or the underlying stats on journey times and punctuality I really have no idea where the truth lies. However, judging by the way the matter has been reported, the amount of deception involved seems pretty small and certainly nothing that would shame the average politician.

Which makes me think that this ban probably has little to do with the facts of the case and far more to do with power politics.  Ryanair is an upstart not only for what it does but also for what it (and its boss, Michael O’Leary) says. For some time I’ve thought that “they” would eventually “get” Ryanair.  This could be part of that process.

Rob Fisher

I noticed this story on the front page of someone else’s newspaper on the tube today.  The Office of Fair Trading wants airlines to include “taxes, fuel fees and other charges” in their advertised prices.

They should definitely announce the taxes loudly and boldly.  It’s always good to make people very aware of how much tax they’re paying.  I’m not sure I understand “fuel fees”, though, any more than I would tomato sauce fees when buying baked beans.  The point seems somewhat moot anyway, given that airlines always tell you the total price before you agree to fly.  Unless the government back-dates a tax that is…

Patrick Crozier

You’ve got to admire RyanAir and particularly boss, Michael O’Leary’s attitude to all things political.  He is a true hero-capitalist.

Unfortunately, in the long run I reckon the hyper-sensitive Lilliputians who run this world will eventually get him.  Maybe they’ll lean on the shareholders.  Maybe they’ll legislate his business into bankruptcy.  Maybe they’ll find him guilty on one of their nebulous statutes so written that you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.  We shall see.

But it’ll be fun in the meantime.

Brian Micklethwait

Jackie D goes for Virgin Atlantic:

I just booked a flight on Virgin Atlantic, and every step of the booking process was full of overtures to book an upgrade to Premium Economy, because now you get your own dedicated cabin, better seat, etc. Except you don’t, not necessarily: They’re only just rolling out the new, improved Premium Economy service, and it is only available on a few flights. “Read the fine print,” you grumble. Actually, there is no fine print involved. Virgin Atlantic is flat-out lying to people . . .

It would all be a total scam were it not for the fact that Virgin’s basic non-Preimium service is pretty good.  Maybe they are losing money on that, which is why they want people to pay quite a lot more for very little more.

All of which makes no sense whatever to me.  RyanAir to France is my limit these days.  Sit in a flying armpit for three hours, pay RyanAir about ten quid, and various governments another thirty, for RyanAir Cattletruck Class.  That’s air travel for me.  Actually, I quite like RyanAir, provided I can sit by a window and take stupid photos of the engines, and slightly more sensible ones of Channel Islands, the Millau Viaduct etc.

Anyway, on this Virgin thing, Adriana is apparently the source on this, and she must blog about it Very Soon, according to Jackie.

Ryanair to charge for priority boarding. Pollard lays into the critics.

Emirates first to offer in-flight calls. They've beaten Ryanair to the punch, apparently. Engadget have their links in a twist, but one of them is to this BBC report.

Brian Micklethwait

Dave Barry has a rather alarming Atlanta Airport Update today:

So I'm waiting to get on the plane, and the pilots arrive at the gate, and as they walk past, one of them says to the other - this is a direct quote - "Hey, it flew in, it'll fly out."

That's it. That's his entire posting. As I say, rather alarming.

I was a bit surprised that the RyanAir plane that took me home from Brest to Luton a few weeks back had just been taking a load of people from Luton to Brest. If the Luton to Brest bit was delayed, so was Brest back to Luton. No maintenance, and hardly any cleaning. I suppose they do enough maintenance for about five trips, at night.

That A380 image

When I was a kid, passenger airplanes were called "liners". Now an entire major airplane making enterprise comes straight out with it: they're buses. Here's an Airbus snap I took recently in Brittany, through the grubby window of a travel agency. And I've another Brittany transport picture here, along with a London duck, which is also for transport.

Ryanair bids for Aer Lingus. Good luck to them in getting past the evil (warning: placeholder) competition regulators.