Ryanair has announced that they hope to get regulatory approval for a highly odious scheme to allow passengers who can’t bear to be out of contact from their loved ones / pointy haired boss while at cruising altitude the luxury / millstone of being able to use mobile phones and other communications devices on planes. Which is just a-grade fantastic. At least wondering how best to punish various mobile owners as their novelty ringtones and suffocatingly meaningless conversations compete with the background noise might take my mind off the general lack of elbow or leg room, or the fact that my table drops to a 45 degree angle every time the bloke in front of me heavily shoves himself into the back of his seat, or even on longer flights that I have to lie on the cabin floor to be able to get a decent view of my own personal screen in the back of that seat in front should said bloke ever have the timerity to lean his seat back ever so slightly.
The evil-doers working behind the scenes with ryanair to bring this further misery to air passengers go by the name of OnAir. Bastards.
It’s not all bad news, however, as current predictions put the cost of making a call at around £2.50 per minute, while making a call will cost an equally unreasonable £2.00 per minute. Hooray!
Here’s a press release, in the form of a word document, that’ll attempt to make it all sound more palatable by using words like ‘advanced’ and ‘revolutionary’ and ’solution’. It even offers this:
“This is a win-win for Ryanair, OnAir and most importantly our customers. The revenues generated by onboard mobile telephony will reduce our costs and help us to keep offering the lowest fares in Europe while at the same time doubling the size of our operation over the next five years as we grow to carry 80M passengers annually by 2012.”
Who’d have thought you could double your customer base by allowing them to check up on TPS reports when they really don’t need to?
And here’s RyanAir using bright colours and a picture of a really old mobile phone to make it all seem like a really great idea, which a frankly hard to believe 70% of passengers already do, apparently.
Who’ll start me on a launch date for a new cabin class that allows you to pay slightly more to be assured of a mobile phone free zone?