Sky Pirates

Whilst waiting in line to check my baggage with RyanAir for my trip to the Czech Republic, I could not help but notice the guy in front getting charged £58 as his bags were four kilos over the allowed fifteen.

Half of me wanted to ask him if he would like me to carry his excess for twenty quid.. That should by a sandwich and a drink on board.. Just. Then I remembered the question you get at the desk.. “Are you carrying anything for anyone else?” .. and I thought it not worth the trouble.

There has been much publicity around the no-liquids-in-the-hand-luggage rule being a farce, but at the same time, through conspiratorial eyes, I can see how it all ties in with the baggage weight limits also dropping by five kilos. All this excess liquid in our hold luggage must be earning the airlines a tidy penny or two. There must be a stat somewhere stating how much more we are having to pay to put our liquids in the hold and at the same time increase the amount of overweight bags..

So when it came for my turn to weigh in and my hold luggage was a massive eleven kilos under the limit, I asked the girl if I could have a refund.

She gave me a blank stare.

I asked if this was not justified and if no money was available, could she please offer my weight credit to a nice old lady behind me who seemed to have packed her greenhouse and contents.

Another blank stare.

She printed my boarding card and told me that if credits were offered, mine would be over £130 and as my ticket only cost £30 this was not really fair was it..

I gave her a blank stare back.

So.. You can offset your carbon use in other ways.. why not offset your baggage weight against other passengers? Maybe it’s obvious.. The airline has to itself offset these great looking low prices by stinging us in as many other ways as possible. Perhaps with oil prices doing what they are doing they may just have to up their prices and hopefully their standard of service too.

If you are going to charge for a service, no matter how much or little, at least make it a pleasant experience. There is so much cost cutting now it is getting ridiculous..

They have even cut using coloured ink from their boarding cards which saw myself and a couple of other passengers ushered onto the wrong plane! Can you believe it..? As paranoid as airports are about security, I managed to find myself on the wrong plane and only realised when I heard a fellow passenger talk about not being able to wait to get on the beach. Last time I looked at a map, the Czech Republic has no beaches. As I left the attendant apologised saying all the boarding cards look the same now.

One hour later, on the right plane, as as I stared down at my plastic sachet of gin, that I had been sold by a slightly guilty looking flight attendant for £6, I realised I should have taken the advise of the lush in the coffee shop. “Flying Ryanair” she said wobbling as she dunked a biscuit in her coffee. “Yes, I said.”
“Make sure you eat and drink as much as you can before you fly.. They will rob you blind.”