We’d forgive you if you accused us of being pro/anti Ryanair (depending on what you read).
In the past week we broke the news that the Ryanair CEO was considering introducing coin operated bathrooms on his flights.
Then we reported on remarks of a Ryanair spokesperson who claimed the esteemed Ryanair CEO was just screwing with us. Thankfully the official reply is out – Ryanair will NOT be introducing coin operated bathrooms on their flights.
They will be credit card operated.
That’s right, According to Ryanair, they have actually asked Boeing engineers to design a credit card operated lock that can be installed on the bathroom doors. That pretty much removes all concerns about not having enough change, or any worries about currency issues.
According to Ryanair, if 20% of their passengers use the bathroom on each flight, and they all pay 1 Pound for the right to pee or poo, they’ll earn an additional 15 Million Pounds a year (21 Million Dollars).
As usual, there is something smelly about this plan – the extra income does not take into account the cost of installing the actual credit card operated doors, or the extra manpower required to transfer all these transactions to some kind of computer at the end of the day.
Nor do they seem to worry about the possibility that the equipment will break down, and sooner or later someone will break it when they can’t get the damn thing to accept their hotel loyalty card as a valid method of payment.
We are already on our third installment of this silly idea, but I can’t help feel we are being involved in a funny hoax by the airline. Either way, Mr O’Leary and his airline are clearly masterminds at creating free PR – almost getting themselves on the same level as that other brilliant airline PR guy, Richard Branson.
I just hope Ryanair understands what they are getting themselves in to – many of our commenters already said they’d rather take a dump in the vomit bag than pay the airline.
Update: O’Leary has finally admitted that the whole thing was indeed a cheap PR stunt.