Ryanair is one opinionated company
37signals.com
37signals.com
I see no problem with it. It is torture to sit on a flight next to an extremely obese person. They take up more plane space so they should pay more. They also turn a 13 hour flight into 13 hour torture for those on the left, right and in front of them.
The same goes for hand luggage. You get stupid ass people that will remove your laptop (only luggage) from a safe place and put it so that it can fall down to make place for their 3 pieces of luggage.
Ryanair annoy me in other ways though, such as the mad dash for the seats, and their habit of introducing hidden fees late in the booking process. (they happen to be the only airline to service the journey to my girlfriend's parents with direct flights, so we use them a few times a year)
Odd: from the article:
“Will we give you a refund on a nonrefundable ticket because your granny died unexpectedly?” he asked. “No! Go away. We’re not interested in your sob stories! What part of ‘no refund’ do you not understand?”
whereas Ryanair do actually fully refund tickets if an immediate relative dies.
Is it not a slippery slope where people who are not standardised are charged more? Maybe non standard people should sit at the back of the plane so no one has to see them?
I thought we'd progressed beyond this but it seems we are still a greedy, self centred species at heart willing to condemn a fellow member for a few pathetic dollars and a few minutes of our lives.
The fairest system IMHO would be to give everyone a "total weight allowance" that includes, you, and all your luggage. And if you're so big you spill onto other peoples laps, buy extra seats.
Next you'll be suggesting we give terrorists equal rights on flights as well! They're people too!
Incidentally, I agree with the rest of your post.
(ok,ok! -- I deserve the downmod for that one. Just couldn't help myself)
These are completely different issues. A lot of disabled people are able to sit still in their allotted space. A disability is usually also not a lifestyle choice (as obesity is in 99.99% of cases).
I have great empathy for a disabled person. But my empathy does not stretch to people who to supersize their burgers.
> Is it not a slippery slope where people who are not standardised are charged more? Maybe non standard people should sit at the back of the plane so no one has to see them?
They use up more of a service. If a fat person is in a restaurant and he eats to burgers instead of one, is he charged more or not? If you use more of a service then you should pay more.
Also, I pay good money for my small piece of seat. If you sit alongside a fat person he will unapologetically take up 30-40% of your seat space. If you do not want to charge him more, can you at least charge me less? (Since I do not get to use the seat space).
Or why not let fat people sit alongside each other? That way they can feel themselves how they make other people on the plane feel.
The very least an obese person can do is to minimise his carryon luggage – but unfortunately the opposite seems true.
Likewise, if a person does not physically fit into an airline seat, it does not seem unreasonable to me that they would need to pay for a second seat (or a first-class seat, or an extra large seat, however the airline chose to handle the situation).
[Disclaimer: Raving Southwest fan.]
AFAIC, Southwest is better than almost every other airline in almost every other category. Why? Because they have built a business the way I would want to build one, with one thing in mind: the customer.
Almost everything they do is what the customer wants because someone bothered to ask. Whenever I fly another airline, the differences are noticeable and I ask, "Don't these people get it?"
Ryanair sounds like they're doing the same thing in a mechanical way. Once they engage their customers as Southwest has, they'll have raving fans too.
"Ryanair promises four things: low fares, a good on-time record, few cancellations and few lost bags."
Fares aren't low. Easyjet beats them most of the time. Their prices are low only on the front page. It's only 30£ both ways... just add 50£ airport fees (I wonder why other airlines charge only <10£ for the same airport) each way, 20£ if you want to add even 1 piece of luggage, 10£ if you don't opt-out of fast boarding and we're going to ask you to select your nationality many times (only slightly indicating that by doing that you agree to buy insurance). Oh, and 10-15£ fee for handling any credit card at the end. And other things...
So you end up paying ~200£ for a flight that's advertised as 30£. They also wanted to be excluded some time ago from services that listed their real prices.
Oh and on-time flights... that's easy - just say that a 3h flight will take 3.5h - this way they're always 'on time' and passengers can wait some time at the airport (I'm used to arriving 30 min. early on my usual flight)
I paid 16 Euro for a Ryanair flight from Belgium to the UK, I'd say that's pretty low.
If you look at current "offers" you get a 12£ Bratislava flight (chosen at random - really)... if you click "continue" enough times, it's actually: Adult @ 12.99 GBP, Taxes/Fees details 28.27 GBP, Coming Back (Web Fare) 1 Adult @ 12.00 GBP, 1 x (Web Check in) 5.00 GBP
Total Cost of Flight 58.26 GBP
Yay - that's really almost 12£ ;) And you have to pay for the payment too, so it's ~68.26£
Startups should think about their core values and choose a set that they think will work the best.
Hey.... wasn't Hacker News that website with news-links of interest to hackers and startups?