FR = MasochismAir

[marcogiov]

Comment

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Bondage at 36,000 feet

Ryanair has overtaken BA by making the ordeal of flying a selling point

Peter Preston
Monday September 12, 2005
The Guardian


Cry victory for Tampere, Rzeszow, Kaunas and, indeed, Bydgoszcz! They - along with 85 other faraway places with strange-sounding names - have just made Ryanair your carrier of supreme choice: more bums (3.26 million of them) on more seats in August even than BA. It's another triumph for Michael O'Leary, for rampant expansion - and for sheer, unadulterated, un-Irish nastiness. Welcome to MasochismAir.
Here we are again, waiting to check in with 102 people in front of us because the bus from the big city - 60 miles away - arrived five seconds before we did. Nothing's moving. A Croatian girl at the front has left her passport in the hotel (60 miles away). A Spanish boy thought that identity cards would get him on a plane to Stansted.

And the familiar business of the baggage rebalancing is already far advanced. Right down those two stretching, desultory queues, lads in trainers have their suitcases open on the floor, shuffling stuff back and forth. "Is it under 15 kilos now?" "No, still bloody 17.5." Piles of jeans and T-shirts are slyly decanted into a black garbage bag to be carried through below check-in sightlines - then stuffed into hand luggage. The floor itself is strewn with mounds of crumpled cotton debris, as though Mandelson's China boycott has gone flops in a trice.

Occasionally, after glum altercations, company weight watchers dispatch cursing transgressors to queue at an overflow office and pay for their sins. When does a £40 ticket cost you double the money? When you're 10 kilos over a load. Expletives seldom deleted. So back to the crawl through security, and the sharp-elbowed rush when the boys with the black bags disregard any hope of an orderly boarding routine (as explained via a defective loudspeaker system). So to seats so closely packed you can hear the first squeaks of incipient pulmonary embolism starting four rows away.

Nasty? Of course. But insanely cheap some of the time (unless you're old, young, disabled or want to change your booking) and relatively efficient most of the time. MasochismAir takes you to places you never knew existed, destinations without reasonable alternatives. That's not the whole of its branding success, though.

For O'Leary doesn't play emerald super-yob by accident. He's just a "jumped-up Paddy" who "doesn't give a shite", because he says so. Worried about the environment? Then "sell your car and walk". Worried about Europe's commissioners? They're "morons". Fill in the blanks after B and A "and you get bastards". His most unctuous ballad is called "Screw the share price, this is a fares war". He's honed Mr O'Nasty, the guy who liked to charge extra for wheelchairs.

One lurking strand of Ryanair's subliminal pitch, in short, seems to translate BO down that stretching queue into bloody ordeal. This isn't supposed to be a pleasant experience circa 1986, with welcome smiles and blond stewardesses handing out cocktails. This is a carefully constructed obstacle race. O'Leary's increasing operational shift from Stansted to Luton puts the airport of reality TV choice back at screen centre. I'm a nonentity, get me out of here.

And, of course, it works brilliantly, 3.26 million times over. Decades of airline marketing tried to make flying a wondrous experience, full of cosseted comfort and luxurious treats. The truth, though, was always grimly different. The ordeal was constant; it just wasn't made into a selling point.

Michael O'Leary has put that straight for ever. Bondage and humiliation still function at 36,000 feet. Ryanair prospers because indignity sells. There's the same retrospective glow from the standing and scrabbling as you get from kneeling in front of a pile of jeans in Primark, Peckham, and finding a £5 pair that fit. I went, I fought, I endured - and now I have a bargain tale to tell. Call it victim consumerism: classless examination by indignity.

How does BA strike back? The good news, maybe, is that they've finally got the message, courtesy of Gate Gourmet, days of inaction and buckets of bile. On my last long-haul test a few days ago, check-in pushed a scrap of paper back over the desk along with my boarding pass. What's this? It was a voucher to spend $20 (Canadian) on any airport meal before leaving, "because the in-flight food may not be up to our normal standards".

Good, old-style thinking, except that the only "meals" on offer before the departure gate were polythene-wrapped bagels at a bar. I notionally dined on two packets of peanuts, an apple and a Bloody Mary, and left the notional change. The cabin stewards - serving below-normal-standards cheese and biscuits - were surly all the way home. But the captain wasn't on message with his farewell "thank-yous" and "pleasant trips". On MasochismAir, we never forget we have no choice.

· p.preston@guardian.co.uk

[FlyIce]

Bellissimo

... l'ho salvato e me lo rileggo con calma stasera.

[ainicar]

Quel giornalista inglese non sta altro che sostenendo quello che andavo dicendo qualche giorno fa riguardo ryanair nel post :http://www.politicaonline.net/forum/...0&pagenumber=1

more bums(scrocconi) (3.26 million of them) on more seats in August even than BA

Nasty(Squallido)? Of course. But insanely cheap some of the time

"FR offre 4.000.000 di posti a 15 €"
Certo che è furbo O'Leary, si vede che è in simbiosi con la mente del tirchio taccagno pezzente...

E' vero bisogna essere proprio malati a pagare un biglietto aereo 0,01 euro, io ne ho conosciuti di tirchi nella mia vita ma obiettivamente quelli che volano Ryanair vanno oltre ogni limite...

Il viaggiatore Tirchyanair non solo è tirchio ma è pure uno sbafatore (scroccone).

Ryanair prospers because indignity sells.
La Ryanair prospera perchè l'umiliazione vende.

Mi sa che questo giornalista frequenta questo forum...

[Nicola_LIMF]

A dire il vero in quella frase la parola 'bum' mi sembra intesa per quella che è la sua accezione principale, ossia l'equivalente della parola italiana di 4 lettere che inizia per 'cu' e finisce per 'lo'

[sarrebal]

In USA bum significa "barbone", inteso come senza-dimora.
Pero' non so in UK...... d'altronde lo sapete come dicono "accendere una sigaretta?"
Roba da smettere di fumare subito...

[wondo]

In Origine postato da sarrebal
In USA bum significa "barbone", inteso come senza-dimora.
Pero' non so in UK...... d'altronde lo sapete come dicono "accendere una sigaretta?"
Roba da smettere di fumare subito...

Give me fire

[Mr.Mistral]

Ciao ragazzi,

mi sono perso il post "dei pezzenti" e non riesco a trovarlo. Potreste indicarmi la via ?

Grazie !,


Andrea

[wondo]

In Origine postato da Mr.Mistral
Ciao ragazzi,

mi sono perso il post "dei pezzenti" e non riesco a trovarlo. Potreste indicarmi la via ?

Grazie !,


Andrea

http://www.politicaonline.net/forum/...0&pagenumber=1
Ciao!

[fly_TRN]

Bulls**t!

secondo me "bums" qui vuol dire "sederi" e quindi "persone"...

Ci terrei inoltre ad aggiugere che nessun volo da me effettuato con Ryanair è stato unpleasant, basta, al limite, un po' di elasticità, se il gionalista in questione non ne è in possesso può benissimo volare con la sua BA, anzi dovrebbe farlo...