"Ladies and Gentlemen, you WILL experience some turbulence"
Following a two-week period in which I had no fewer than four scheduled flights with the low- cost airline Ryanair, I thought it would be appropriate to give a little 'State-of-the-Cheap-Airline Address'. The so-called low cost airline is a relatively new animal in the travel business, and in the last decade or so has become a rather hefty animal at that.
Now, Ryanair must certainly be mentioned in any first breath about this new way to fly, and after rapid growth and adding loads of new destinations has comfortably asserted its position atop the poorman's-tourism foodchain. So how exactly does a low cost airline work, and what makes it different from a normal, run-of-the-mill, bankrupt-and-federally-subsidized airline like Delta, United, or any other American airline that isn't already a relic of the past (i.e. TWA, Pan-Am, u.s.w.)?
Many people who fly Ryanair for the first time look at the €0.99 price tag and think its a cruel joke. I mean its obvious that 200 passengers paying €0.99 a piece clearly still fails to pay even the baggage handlers for that flight, right? In fact, the €0.99 fares are only sold to people traveling a relatively unpopular route and who book their fare well in advance, so this simple arithmetical exercise is actually pointless and inaccurate. The answers to why Ryanair is so damn cheap are actually quite simple: 1.) Ryanair is, bluntly put, the crappiest airline in the world. They don't offer you a nice warm wet towel, they don't offer you quality canned tomato juice, they don't offer you a pillow, a newspaper, a bag of oversalted peanuts, and they sure as shit don't offer friendly service. Unless you're sleeping like a corpse as I was for the majority of the ride, you will be noticeably uncomfortable from the moment you line up in the airport to the moment you are given a half-hearted "bu-bye" from the crew. 2.) Ryanair has gone the route of many other companies in hiring a skeleton crew consisting completely of, A underqualified, B underaged, or C psychologically unstable employees. In looking for the worst and least qualified in airline services, Ryanair further tightens their budget belt and puts an exclamation point on reason number one for Ryanair's cheapness. On each flight I seem to encounter a new way in which the steward(ess)es are unfit to serve. Though this contributes to a certain suspense as to what will happen on the next flight, this feeling is understandably undesirable for most people boarding and signing their lives over to what must also be a cheap airplane. 3.) Ryanair flies to airports in the middle of bumblefuck nowhere. London Stanstead is a perfect example of this. The airport carries the prestigious and famous name of the capitol of England, but is located a whopping 2 hours from the city center (and that's if you don't find yourself in the 10-mile-long Schlange that often plagues the freeway). This fact obviously holds true for other cities like Bratislava (which is billed as Vienna) and Copenhagen (they land in Malmö, Sweden in another fucking country, for Petesake!). 4.) Perhaps the most intelligent and useful of the reasons Ryanair can charge €0.99 is that they have frighteningly fast turnover times. Because of the one-bag limit, the no assigned seat policy, and the fact that they never use the jet-ways, Ryanair is able to get old passengers off and new passengers on in about 30 mins., allowing them more flights. It's all a matter of efficiency, and foregoing such tedious excercises as technical inspections and checklists.
These are just a few of the ways Ryanair manages to be so cheap, but what is it really like to fly with the crappiest airline in the world? The experience begins two hours before flight time. The check-in gate opens, manned by the fantastic people that will later try to hawk you worthless goods on the plane. And by the way, when I say the gate opens, I mean exactly that. It seems that when an airline becomes cheap and unpolite enough, so do their passengers. As you will see throughout this description, everything about the Ryanair experience is a free-for-all, pack-of-wolves-on-a-gutpile type of experience. You are usually hit multiple times in the ankles by rolling luggage and sworn at a few times in various languages before you reach the counter (note: said free-for-alls become horribly worse in Austria, where people - even in everyday situations - don't queue). At this point you present your passport and hopefully very light piece of checked luggage. 15 kg are allowed, so you can basically pack two days worth of clothes and a toothbrush. After that they bend you over and charge you about €10 for every additional kilo. I surmise that this is another big way Ryanair is making ends meet despite bottom-basement prices.
The boarding process is free-for-all number two because there is no first class and there are no assigned seats. Though to me most of the seats appear more or less the same in a plane, it seems quite important to everyone be the first one into the machine. The kicking, swearing, and jockying process begins anew. I am reminded both of the skibus at Feldberg and pizza day at lunchtime in Elementary school as some smelly Irishman rubs against me with his massive Guinness-gut intent on getting an aisle seat so he has a spot for all of his extraneous girth.
Thankfully one is usually so exhausted by the first two portions of the trip that the flight passes in an unconscious state. However, if you were unlucky enough to have a 7 hour layover like myself, you probably did a lot of sleeping at Stanstead Airport and will therefore have to endure the salespeople disguised as stewardesses with all 5 senses in working order. For the next three hours or so the lovely crew lopes up and down the aisles not serving you cold coke, but peddling plush 'CrazyFrogs' and duty free cologne. It's not a baseball game for fucks sake. I don't want any cracker jacks or porcelein products.
So sit back in your non-reclineable seat and relax because you're basking in the luxury of an incredibly cost-effective flight. On the bright side, the feeling of satisfaction and relief upon reaching your destination is two-fold if not three, but you still find yourself pondering whether it was all worth it. It's appropriate to end with the motto of the poor traveller: "...But hey, at least I saved a few Euros, right?"
posted by der Mistfink @ 04:51
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