09 Jun 2009 | WTF? Ryan Air is think about charging to use the toilet.

This one came across my radar screen sometime ago.    The CEO of Ryanair, Michael O’Leary told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that he is serious about charging to use the toilets on the airlines (MSN’s Money Blog).   He want’s to charge £1.00 (that is about $1.60 for those across the pond or €1.16 for those on the other side of the Channel) to be payed via credit card.  In addition he wants to cut down on the number of bathrooms from 3 currently on his airlines 737s to just 1, and add another 6 seats in places of the 2 missing loos.

He justifies this by saying that because “We are flying aircraft on an average flight time of one hour around Europe.  What the hell do we need three toilets for?”

Hmm,  sure Ryanair is basically the aerial verision of a bus, however the local bus companies usually treat their passengers better than this.   Ryanair’s CEO seems to love extra fees and making the passengers do the airlines work.   He has proposed that that passengers load their own baggage into the airline!

I have no desire to fly Ryanair.   Typically this airline flies into out of the way airports that are far away from the cities they serve.   A good example is Paris,   the airport Ryanair flies to for Paris is around 90 km from Paris.    I would rather take the train.   Europe is blessed with an excellent passenger rail service.    Sure it helps that I live in Turin which is served by SNCF’s TGV out of Lyon and Trenitalia’s Eurostar (no relationship to the Channel Tunnel’s Eurostar service) to Milan and beyond.   With the train I get, center of the city service (most European trains stations are near the center of the city they server), a comforable seat even in second class cars, no airport security headaches, and I am treated like a human.   That’s right a human, not some steer going to the slaughterhouse.   Ryanair will not be getting any buisness from me.