Ryanair solicits ideas more ridiculous than pay toilets

by Alison Brick on

Remember that little brouhaha that Ryanair stirred up a few days ago about pay toilets? (Also known as “The Most Ridiculous Thing I’ve Ever Heard.”) Seems as though they’re riding that train (or low-fare airline)…and seeing how far they can go.

The latest in their busy week of announcements: a competition. Yes, they’re asking travelers to suggest other “ingenious, wacky, and creative ideas” for discretionary charges (if not pay toilets, which the company has admitted it was “only joking” about). Among the ideas listed as examples are charges for using the oxygen masks and emergency exits.

Can I just say: thank goodness we’re finally getting to the culmination of what’s turned out to be a PR stunt…so we can potentially forget that it was suggested. After the past few years of charges so strange that you’d expect them to be fake, we wouldn’t want airlines to get any crazy ideas, right?

But anybody wanting to play along can submit ideas for the contest by March 30th. €1000 cash is the prize for the winning idea.

Good news! Ryanair will NOT make you use coins to enter their bathrooms

by Scott Carmichael on

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.

Alaska Airlines made fun of paid airplane bathrooms long before we did

by Scott Carmichael on

OK, so the whole Ryanair paid bathroom thing was probably just a hoax by the Ryanair CEO, or another of his cheeky ways to create some free publicity for his low cost airline.

But it turns out that we here at Gadling were not the first to make fun of the concept of a paid airplane bathroom – Alaska Airlines beat us to that way back in 1987 with this hilarious vintage commerical.

And is it just me, or does the passenger at 0:06 into this clip look like a young Andy Dick?

Ryanair – to pay to pee or not to pay to pee?

by Scott Carmichael on

Oh Ryanair, how you mock us.

Yesterday, every news source in the world (well, many of them) were abuzz with the news that Ryanair exec Michael O’Leary announced he’d be introducing coin operated bathrooms on his planes.

Normally, when an airline owner announces something on the news, you take it seriously. Apparently that is no longer possible when it comes to stuff O’Leary says.

The latest update in the “paid bathroom concept” comes from a Ryanair spokesperson who’s actual statement was:

“Maybe O’Leary was just taking the p*ss this morning. Michael makes a lot of this stuff up as he goes along and while this has been discussed internally there are no immediate plans to introduce it”.

Someone might want to keep O’Leary away from the press for the time being, before you know it, he’ll be saying something really stupid like that he wants his flight attendants giving free oral sex on his upcoming transatlantic flights.

Check out these stories of booze gone bad in the skies

Making fun of Ryanair – paid oxygen masks?

by Scott Carmichael on

When Ryanair insulted bloggers and announced they’d start charging people for using the bathroom, all in the same week, all bets were off. Normally I’m a huge fan of low cost carriers, because they help keep the legacy carriers awake, but now it’s just getting silly.

An enterprising artist over at the b3ta boards has redesigned the Ryanair safety briefing card to show how things will probably be on board the airline by next year. Check out their board for the full version of the design.

The sad thing is that jokes like this only seem to inspire Ryanair to come up with new ways to make money, just like what happened when I joked about paid bathrooms 3 days ago.