I waited to write something on this, but I can’t hold it any longer. Ryanair, the Irish no-frills discount airline is floating the idea of charging to use the inflight lavatory. If you’ve never flown Ryanair, you have to understand that they charge for everything in order to keep the price of the tickets low. It cost extra to have any baggage, any food, any drink, and you get to see advertising throughout the cabin (kinda like a city bus).
CEO Michael O’Leary caught his PR people off guard when he admitted last week. “One thing we have looked at in the past, and are looking at again, is the possibility of maybe putting a coin slot on the toilet door, so that people might have to actually spend a pound to `spend a penny’ in future,” O’Leary said, using a British euphemism for going to the bathroom.
O’Leary spokesman Stephen McNamara said his boss often spoke tongue in cheek — but he then defended the idea of in-flight pay toilets as part of a logical trend. “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,” McNamara said, adding, “Passengers using train and bus stations are already accustomed to paying to use the toilet, so why not on airplanes? Not everyone uses the toilet on board one of our flights, but those that do could help to reduce airfares for all passengers.”
Talk of the pay-to-pee scheme didn’t seem to phase Samantha Jones, a Ryanair passenger: “If you are given a choice between wetting your knickers or not wetting your knickers, you will pay whatever fee they make you pay, and Mr. O’Leary knows this well,” she said. “Frankly, I’m surprised he’s talking about letting us have a wee for a pound, not more!”
The one that got me is that the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority stated that an aircraft is not legally required to have a toilet on board and that the charge would be legal. But lest you think that everybody at Ryanair is evil and money grubbing, I do have to give them credit for their classy cabin crew charity calender.
Off we go into the wild blue yonder
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“Can’t hold it any longer?” Clever. Having been burned pretty severely by the Ryanair excess baggage fee a few years back, though, can’t say I’m surprised.
But I will give them props for the cabin crew. Although in my experience, the Virgin Atlantic crews are even better-lookin’.