£1 to spend a penny?
The BBC reported yesterday that no-frills airline Ryanair was considering charging people £1 to use the lavatory on flights. Chief Executive of the Dublin-based airline, Michael O’Leary, was interviewed on BBC television – you can watch a clip of the video and read the full story here:
BBC News: Ryanair mulls charge for toilets
A friend tweeted this news on Twitter and I replied, “Are you sure they’re not taking the piss?”
2 Responses to “£1 to spend a penny?”
I’m afraid this story was a publicity stunt. They had no intention of implementing such a charge, for reasons I won’t repeat but posted as comments on a number of blogs, when this story first appeared in Feb.
They then run a competition for passengers to suggest discretionary charges and nominated 5 winning ideas. They were shocked that get a charge on obese / overweight passengers topped the poll. This went on to be known as the “fat tax”. They then suggested ways of implementing the charge. Finally they decided it would not work”because there is no way to collect it without disrupting its 25 minute turnarounds and its online check-in process”.
They make outrageous statements purely to get free publicity. However they are probably sitting on my suggestions after giving the €1000 euro prize to the first person to suggest charging extra large passengers. I will be more than a little miffed if they decide to implement them.
Hi John
Thanks for taking the time to comment. Yes, I’ve seen – and participated – in other discussions about this elsewhere too. In particular, the one on Aardvark business forum where we compared Gerald Ratner’s failure with Ryan Air’s success with this strategy.
Fat tax? LOL! I’ve been going on about this for years. I weigh just under 8 stone and get peed off if they quibble about an extra kilo of hand luggage when there are many other people who weigh twice as much also being allowed exactly the same baggage weight.
I expect they didn’t choose your suggestions because they weren’t outrageous enough to generate yet more publicity.