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I promised I wouldn’t do this. 

I promised I would never fly with Ryanair again, regardless of how convenient the departures or destination airport is, but I have gone and done it again. 

This time Marie booked for me, priority boarding, which is genuinely like something off of Come Fly with Me with David Walliams and Matt Lucas. 

I arrive at the boarding gate after having deposited my bags in an entirely non-human, environment (it kind of suits me fine regarding Ryanair staff that) and I look for the priority boarding queue, and I am pointed in the direction of the queue to priority boarding by a member of the Ryanair team, a queue which is longer than the normal queue? 

I’m reminded of that scene on Come Fly with Me where, Melody, one of the checkout girls booked an old lady on to priority boarding and then explains to her that everybody on the flight has bought priority boarding. 

Not really a priority if more than half of you are in the priority, but never mind it doesn’t matter to me, I’m travelling alone. 

The priority boarding queue does go through the scanner first, and we walked round the corner towards the jetway and almost immediately we hit a queue which is enormously long, getting repeatedly shouted at by a member of the Ryanair crew to bunch up to fit more people in, so that we really are like sheep in a cattle transfer lorry. You then realise that the people on the plane that we’re boarding hadn’t got off yet and they started to come off and we stand there sweating, cursing, fretting for all of about 25 minutes, so that it’s more convenient for Ryanair. 

Getting on the plane is no better, although the plane design is a masterclass on how to fit the maximum amount of seats in to the inside of an airplane, with about 180 passengers on board that flight and I bet any other airline could only get about 140. It’s the most uncomfortable seat I have ever sat in, but I did arrive in Barcelona only 20 minutes late and I was alive. 

It’s funny when you have a monopoly on a service, because Ryanair are the only people flying that route, which was the most convenient one for me, it means that you can just do whatever you like to make the most money and not give a s*** about your customers. Sounds an awful lot like what some of the corporates did in dentistry, when they just made it s***er and s***er, to extract more and more money out of a depleted pot, with no concern about the “human assets” associated with this, neither patient or staff.  

In another world if I had enough money, I would set up a rival airline with less flights, with just much better service, and it would be a bit more expensive, but people would smile and give good service and the seats would be big enough. 

Oh no, hang on a minute, that was Monarch wasn’t it? And not enough people bought that, and so it died and then everyone went back to Ryanair. 

#Despair   

Blog Post Number - 1992