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    Sod off Ryanair

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8205445.stm

    I'm not sure anyone in aviation can be regarded as goodies, but I like the cut of Manchester's jib here.

    Ryanair said it had offered Manchester an additional 28 weekly flights if the airport agreed to reduce its charges, but that it had rejected the offer.
    Offered? You tried to get a big discount and they told you to go away. How ridiculous of them not to want to subsidise your giveaway flights.

    Ryanair's announcement comes a month after it said it would cut flights from London Stansted by 30% over the winter period, also as a result of a dispute over airport charges.
    I think we might just manage.

    #2
    Sod off Ryanair

    Travelling by Ryanair makes me feel dirty. Michael O'Leary makes my skin crawl. Forza easyJet.

    Comment


      #3
      Sod off Ryanair

      Went on Ryanair once, for 50 cents, after 9/11 when they were giving flights away. After that I learned about their bully tactics and saw more of O'Leary in the media... never flown with them since. Their routes are shitty anyway.

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        #4
        Sod off Ryanair

        I fly with them almost exclusively, because I live nearest Edinburgh airport and it's the only way to get a direct flight anywhere good for an affordable amount.

        Still, I wish they would conduct themselves with a bit of dignity. Asking people to stand on flights, for shame!

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          #5
          Sod off Ryanair

          And check out the latest 'London' airport.

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            #6
            Sod off Ryanair

            I never could understand what the big problem is to be had with RyanAir. They're one of the main reasons I can get on a flight to Milano from Gothenburg for a couple of hundred Euro. It used to be bloody expensive to fly before they entered the scene.

            And I think it's brilliant that there quite often are flights for 20-30 euro, incl tax to other places as well.

            What's wrong with standing on a plane? No one's going to force you onto it, so if you're OK with it, why not?

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              #7
              Sod off Ryanair

              Ryanair are (a) total cunts, and (b) brilliant.

              They aren't going to introduce standing-room. Of course they aren't, it would be insanely dangerous.

              It began as a joke about the frugality of their service. Michael O'Leary, as ever taking the line that all publicity is good publicity, started repeating it himself. People started talking about it and repeating it as fact, it got discussed on t'internet, Ryanair rises in people's consciousness, if not their estimation; result.

              I'm also not sure what CTT's link has to do with Ryanair - they aren't mentioned anywhere in the piece that I can see.

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                #8
                Sod off Ryanair

                Same with the fat people tax and the coin operated toilets. The media keeps lapping his bullshit up and publishing it. Free advertising.

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                  #9
                  Sod off Ryanair

                  Hmmm. Unconvinced of the benefits of being seen as a cheap and nasty penny-pinching operation run by a cunt, though. Easyjet and others seem to get by without having to employ some culchie yob to take the piss in the papers every week.

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                    #10
                    Sod off Ryanair

                    Easyjet and others seem to get by without having to employ some culchie yob to take the piss in the papers every week.
                    Well sure; but Maxjet, Silverjet, XL, Jetgreen, Zoom, City Star, Oasis, and about a half dozen more over the last year... not so much.

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                      #11
                      Sod off Ryanair

                      We have a section in the paper where we list the biggest wills left in Ireland each week. About a month ago, it featured by far the largest will I have ever seen in that particular space -- €250 million, left by one Cathal Ryan.

                      He was the son of Ryanair founder Tony Ryan, but he only outlived his old man by about ten weeks. They both died of cancer in late 2007.

                      Cathal achieved unwanted public notoriety in the 1990s when, at a party in a very swanky stud farm in Co Kildare, he got involved in a bedroom altercation with his ex-girlfriend Michelle Rocca, a former Miss Ireland (who has been Van Morrison's partner for the last decade or so), leaving the latter with minor injuries.

                      After five years of the Ryan family unsuccessfully trying to buy her silence, the case went to court in 1997, providing masses of entertainment for what passes for Ireland's glitterati, and dominating the front pages for weeks.

                      The highlight was when Rocca's barrister asked her on the stand how she had felt after being slapped around. "I felt like a Belsen victim," she replied.

                      But what does all this have to do with Michael O'Leary, you might ask?

                      Well, O'Leary's own career at Ryanair was just getting off the ground (no pun intended) back then, and he was Tony Ryan's personal assistant at the time. The Ryan family used him as a go-between during their attempts to pay Rocca off, which saw him spend the following months scurrying hither and thither between the massive Ryan mansion in Tipperary and Rocca's home in Dublin.

                      His efforts were unsuccessful. He was called to give evidence himself during the case, and suffered the indignity of being humiliated by Rocca's barrister in the witness box, who asked him: "Tell me more about being the Ryans' bagman. If the Ryans wanted someone to, say, go to the shop for a bag of sugar, would that be you?"

                      As Alessandro alludes to, I'd imagine his nauseating gobshittery and boorishness has cost Ryanair a lot of lucrative custom over the years. I know it's certainly cost them mine.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Sod off Ryanair

                        My custom as well. I fly Aer Lingus whenever I go over to Ireland. I really don't like O'Leary and the whole airline seems to seep his cuntisness.

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                          #13
                          Sod off Ryanair

                          Toro: Count On It wrote:
                          Ryanair are (a) total cunts, and (b) brilliant.

                          They aren't going to introduce standing-room. Of course they aren't, it would be insanely dangerous.

                          It began as a joke about the frugality of their service. Michael O'Leary, as ever taking the line that all publicity is good publicity, started repeating it himself. People started talking about it and repeating it as fact, it got discussed on t'internet, Ryanair rises in people's consciousness, if not their estimation; result.

                          I'm also not sure what CTT's link has to do with Ryanair - they aren't mentioned anywhere in the piece that I can see.
                          Well I thought this would turn into a general airline/airport thread, but I see GY started another thread on what I posted.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Sod off Ryanair

                            Ah, fair enough. I suppose I was confused by the fact that it's so very close to one of the most common (and accurate) complaints made about Ryanair's fishy practices.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Sod off Ryanair

                              Or indeed, so far away.
                              (poached on the goal line.)

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                                #16
                                Sod off Ryanair

                                You couldn't pay me to fly Ryanair. I'd rather walk.

                                Besides when you add on the charges for tickets, checking in (!), bags, "priority boarding" and no doubt access to the steps up to the plane, you'd be better off flying with a proper airline. One that treats you with some respect. Their attitude is the tickets are cheap (ha!), so what do you expect? Take it or leave it.

                                I'll leave it, thanks.

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                                  #17
                                  Sod off Ryanair

                                  Priority boarding's a complete swizz, unless they guarantee that you'll be boarding via an airbridge rather than a bus when you make the reservation - which presumably they logistically can't do ... Online checkin is only worth it too if they guarantee there is a separate bag drop desk from the regular checkin queues (Hello aerlingus at BFS on Monday morning) ...

                                  Comment


                                    #18
                                    Sod off Ryanair

                                    Villain wrote:
                                    My custom as well. I fly Aer Lingus whenever I go over to Ireland. I really don't like O'Leary and the whole airline seems to seep his cuntisness
                                    You should try the scenic route by train and ship via Chester and Holyhead. Leave Croydon at breakfast time and you're in Dublin by 2 pm.

                                    Walk on price currently £59 which I imagine is less than Ryanair or Aer Lingus.

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                                      #19
                                      Sod off Ryanair

                                      Ryanair have many faults, but never in my experience have they flown from Dublin, arrived within a couple of hundred metres of the destination, so that you could actually see the airport walls, then decided after two hours of bouncing around on the waves and people being sick everywhere that it was too bumpy to land and they were going home.

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                                        #20
                                        Sod off Ryanair

                                        Ha ha. I'll admit the smaller, faster ships are sometimes cancelled in bad weather, but confident that technology can overcome this.

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          Sod off Ryanair

                                          Bill Poster wrote:
                                          Besides when you add on the charges for tickets, checking in (!), bags, "priority boarding" and no doubt access to the steps up to the plane, you'd be better off flying with a proper airline. One that treats you with some respect.
                                          Except that depending on where you live, you're not better off. For example - I'm going to fly to Rome in a few weeks with Ryanair because they are the only airline that goes direct, and even if I was to get a proper airline, I'd have to stop over at Heathrow and get there at 10pm for about 2 or 3 times the cost.

                                          So really, even if it is a shit excuse for an airline, I'm not going to pay for comfort. Just for a route from A to B.

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                                            #22
                                            Sod off Ryanair

                                            The only defence I'll make of Ryanair is that it gets a hard time because it's fairly recent. People will talk about the growth in aviation and focus on them as though that meant the aviation firms who've been polluting for longer were OK. And the boozer going to Amsterdam is considered worse, for some reason, than the businessman going there. Both of them are the problem.

                                            Talking of Amsterdam, any sign of those trains going through the Channel Tunnel straight there? Christian Wolmar argues that the tunnel has been a relative failure because there aren't yet trains going to more destinations through it. Some of this is apparently down to Britain's opt-out from Schengen which means that you have to build separate passport areas in destination stations, and quite rightly they think they can make better use of the space. But even allowing for this, seems to have been little discussion about it.

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                                              #23
                                              Sod off Ryanair

                                              They are building a high speed line between Amsterdam and Antwerp. The bit in Holland is nearly done but they're still working on the bit in Belgium.

                                              The main problem was that the Dutch railway network was never built with international rail in mind, so they have built an entire new line between Amsterdam and the Belgian border, via Rotterdam. The other bottleneck was Antwerp, which was always a terminus station, so they've built a tunnel from Antwerp station north to the Dutch border. Antwerp station is really quite impressive now, with multiple levels of platforms.

                                              I think it's all nearly done, so the only non-high speed bit of line left between London and Amsterdam will be the short bit between Antwerp and Brussels. So hopefully they'll be introducing direct high speed trains between London and Amsterdam soon.

                                              In the meantime it takes 14 hours by train from Amsterdam to Copenhagen, compared to 9 hours by car and 1.5 by plane.

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                                                #24
                                                Sod off Ryanair

                                                Schengen is probably the main stumbling block, but new EU liberalisation rules mean that Eurostar can't have a monopoly, so there could be, for example, DB ICEs from London to Cologne.

                                                Which would be cool.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Sod off Ryanair

                                                  There are also voltage and signal issues with that degree of integration, though as it stands now, there are decent connections from the Eurostar at Bruxelles Midi to the Thalys/ICE to Koln Deutz.

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