SKYMONSTER, Who do you fly with?

In the last year, I have flown with:

bmi (mainline/regional) – 5 sectors
bmibaby – 5 sectors
KLM – 1 sector
Lufthansa – 29 sectors
Singapore Airlines – 4 sectors
Turkish Air – 1 sector
United Airlines – 16 sectors

I also have at least 8 more sectors on United Airlines, at least 2 more on Lufthansa, and 2 on TAP Portugal booked/confirmed before the end of the year – I guess I’m a bit of a Star Alliance sort of person! 😉

As you can see, I am not TOTALLY averse to the low-fare sector having done 5 sectors on WW this past twelve months (I live near EMA and where needs must / no other sensible choice, except Ryanair that I absolutely refuse to fly with under any circumstances). And before you try to claim its easy for me to go with the “full-service” airlines, I’d point out that the flying I do is not necessarily on my employers money – all the remaining UA flights I have this year are paid for by myself, and all of the bmibaby flights were work-related so paid for by the company.

Andy

Do you mean MICHAEL O’LEARY:diablo:

No I didn’t. I know what I meant… :dev2:

I detect a slight (?) anti-Irish feeling in this whole Ryanair debate. How dare an Irishman run one of the most successful airlines in the world?

Not at all… My hating Ryanair (and never ever flying with them) is well known and well documented and has nothing to do with where the airline comes from. I hate Ryanair, and in general I dislike most other low fare airlines, but that’s not a race issue. My hate/dislike comes from having worked in the industry for many years and having seen what they’ve done to the business, and is primarily related to the low-fare sector’s way of working and their business practices, with Ryanair being at the very most distasteful end of the low-fare business.

Can’t wait to hear what Andy (a.k.a Skymonster) has to say…

OK… :rolleyes: I was rather underwhelmed – it really didn’t tell anyone much that we didn’t already know. I’m surprised that Scumbag O’Riley got so worked up about it – on the whole, I don’t think it painted Ryanair in a particularly bad light at all. In fact, it seemed to me to be a fairly well balanced view of Ryanair – yes the service etc isn’t great, yes you might get stung for more money than you thought, but yes often it will be cheap(-ish) and they’ll usually get you somewhere near(-ish) to where you want to go fairly safely and fairly punctually.

Certainly there were issues of concern expressed by the program in a rather light-weight way – examples being pilot pre-flight preparation time, cabin crew who’s motivation and reason for being seems to be more about selling butties than safety (and that’s certainly not appropriate prioritisation of focus), “hidden” charges, and touching on baggage foul ups at STN.

I don’t know what I expected from the program – it was certainly never billed as a big expose of the airline. I guess it was interesting in a harmless sort of way, and whilst it managed to convince me that my choice never ever to fly with them is the right one (for me!), I doubt Panorama has done anything to put the great unwashed (and by that I mean relatively niave of the real issues) 😉 off of flying Ryanair.

Andy