Imagine the scene: Michael O’Leary, the 20th-richest person in Ireland and head of Ryanair, sitting in his office wondering how to squeeze customers for more dosh. The airline made only £177 million after-tax profit last year.
Mmmm. We’re already charging customers £3.50 to check their luggage in each way. Ha, that was a fine trick! Office bright spark: “What about charging to go to the toilet? Instead of spending a penny, they could spend a euro?” Not bad, not bad.
Bright spark number two: “Ha-ha! I’ve got it. Charge families for the privilege of going to the front of the queue at the gate. I always thought that was unfair... ”
On November 1, Ryanair quietly introduced a new “priority boarding” scheme. For £2pp, you can be one of the first 60 to board Ryanair’s 189-seat aircraft. Before this, families used to be let on first. Not now, unless you cough up £2 per adult or child (aged 2 or over) each way. It’s enough to make you never want to fly Ryanair again.
Take my friend who has four children — twins aged 2, a four-year-old and six-year-old. This is a family of hardy travellers who visit German relatives in school holidays.
If Maria had to compete with the usual stampede to board the plane, there’s no way she would be sitting next to any of her brood. She has to unfold the double buggy, struggle down two flights of stairs, squeeze out the double doors, hand the double buggy over to the luggage handlers, run back to the stairs for the straggling other children and get all four up the aircraft stairs on to the plane, secure a row for them all and stuff their anoraks/rucksacks and hand luggage in the overhead locker.
Now Mr O’Leary might say, if you offer flights for 1p (usually £40 once you’ve added the taxes) for a flight, why not charge for the privilege of getting on first? A Ryanair spokesman defended the new charge, saying: “It’s an entirely optional service.” Wanting your own children to sit with you is a special service?
But families don’t usually get the 1p flights because they are forced to travel in expensive school holidays. For example, if you were to book a family of four to Valencia in May half-term, the tickets cost £239.76pp return, excluding luggage and priority boarding, which would bring the total cost of this two-hour family flight to £1,003.04. And there’s no financial protection (unlike with a charter as part of a package).
So families not only get the worst travelling conditions, they also subsidise the budget flights for people travelling the rest of the year.
Meanwhile, easyJet has introduced “speedy boarding” for up to 20 passengers paying £2.50 each per flight. But they will be boarded only after the frenzied families have gone on for free. I know which airline I’ll be booking next summer.
