Which bailout is this? Ryanair or the IMF?

My family is notoriously punctual. When flying, we arrive ten minutes before the check-in desks are even open. After a succession of accusations that I was either anal, OCD or both, I  moved to the west of Ireland and instantly felt much better about myself. 

The Irish approach each flight as if it is their very first. Last week I walked into Lanzarote airport three hours before departure. Far across the vast sweeping tundra of empty shiny airport floor, I made out a herd of human folk, circling together like albino buffalo in the distance. I knew they were Irish people with the same certainty that I knew those would be my check-in desks.

My friend had left the day before, abandoning me to watch endless hours of rolling tv news. That was my excuse for arriving three hours early. What was theirs? 

Wandering nearer, my suspicions were confirmed. Red-faced men and women with grey curly and dyed blonde hair respectively; 50 to 60 year-old Dubs who’d been havin’ a rare auld time singing the ballads in the Irish bars and soaking up the beer in the sun.

Not a single tan amongst them. Plenty of evidence of the effect of sun on skin, none of it pretty.

Veering off, I grabbed a seat, because even I cannot see the point of standing in a line for an hour before the desks are open. Their mass early attendance came as no surprise. For many years, Knock was my local airport, where I’d see excited Co. Mayo farmers crushing themselves in a queue to board a plane that wasn’t even there yet. 

So no, I sat down, proud that I could draw a border on my neurotic behaviour. Yet sadly and secretly I was keeping half an eye on the length of the queue. It’s just that, well, there’s plenty of time, but only one plane, and if I wanted to get that Emergency Exit row with the extra leg room...

Inevitably I joined the back of the ever-growing line, only to find the usually effervescent Irish indignant and aggressive. A sign put up on the check-in desk declared that although our Aer Lingus flight was still running, due to a staff dispute it was to be operated by a Ryanair crew flying a Ryanair plane.

They might not have tans, but this shortish, lively, laughy and lardy bunch of Dubs are seasoned travellers. ‘Swallows’ is the term they use in the Canary Islands: those who fly south to escape the cold winter months. There’s a reason we all booked with Aer Lingus. Fear that Ryanair baggage restrictions might be applied swept like bushfire up the queues.

5’2” in all directions, she stood splendid with her hands on her hips, her head rolled back while her eyes picked out all of ours, delivering her speech with the assurance of Caesar in the Senate.

“Righ’ so, if dey say iss fiftee’ kilograms, we tell ‘em to forrrck orrrrrrrff, righ? All of oss is in diss togethe’, righ-?”

Everyone cheered in assent, but excess baggage is a costly business, so before you could say ‘What did we all just agree to here?’ everyone proceeded to haul their bags over to the desks to weigh them,

All of a sudden this Ryanair bailout of the ex-national carrier, this microcosm of Ireland, was in chaos. Knickers and books and towels and shoes were stuffed into hand luggage and as they emptied their bags and exposed their dirty laundry in public, everyone was saying that it wasn’t necessary, that it was still an Aer Lingus flight, so there was no way they’d dare to change the baggage allowance, but just to be on the safe side, d’ya know? 

I love the Irish, but they tend to complain a lot about wanting to help themselves and then instead do what they are told. 

The flight’s ID code had remained Aer Lingus ‘ei’ rather than Ryanair ‘fr’, but that’s where ownership ended. Aer Lingus had no more influence over this flight than any new Irish government will have in running post-bailout Ireland.

Ireland’s next elected leader will be in charge of the national cockpit, in the same way that I only imagined being crammed into a Ryanair yellow and blue plastic plane. According to its ID, it was an Aer Lingus flight, all soft and green and roomy.

The desks next to us opened, and at precisely two hours before the departure of a Norwegian Airlines flight to Bergen, the Scandinavians all arrived. They too are aged between 50 and 60, but they could not look more different. Perfectly and deeply tanned, the gentle smiles on their unlined faces exposing Hollywood teeth. 

They were simply beautiful. I wanted to be one of them. Looking from the two rows of Irish (and my ‘orrible self), all flabby and sweaty and burned and ragged to these fine specimens felt like some dreadful ‘Before’ and ‘After’ of humanity.

But from our tatty herd there rose a constant rambling chatter and frequent laughter, and even in the face of adversity (or, to be honest, where the Irish are concerned, sometimes because of it) there was a sense of community. Feeling hard-done-by and made to suffer, the Irish are insistently exuberant. Those Norwegians will live a lot longer, but it might just feel longer.

However, I’ll bet that when those Bergen passengers were allocated their seat numbers at check-in, they corresponded fairly accurately to the seats on their Norwegian Airlines plane. 

We too were awarded seat numbers, which made us feel a little more like we might really still be flying with Aer Lingus. 

I was in 22A, by the window, but no,’twas not to be. The tragic parallels between this Ryanair bailout of Aer Lingus and the IMF’s bailout of Ireland continue. Just when it might have started to sort of make some sense in a small way, the whole process was thrown once more into meaningless disorder. 

As we boarded the plane a Spanish Ryanair employee with an incomprehensible accent repeated constantly over the tannoy: “Lez and Ginman pliz for yoy sefteeee take hannee havillible seat. There his no sitting hallowcation. Pliz lez and genman quickly and seffleeee take henny seat, henny seat you want, pliz. Henny seat henny seat, take henny seat pliz.”

Just when I thought there was no hope, there came the Angel of Aer Lingus!

People persist in going
“Ohhh, hoo, hark at Mister Jetty Setty!”
if you dare to say out loud that you are so fed up with flying.
For some bizarre reason, even those who fly often keep cosseted in their brains a dream of perfect Pan Am Catch Me If You Can flying, wherein the whole process is quite heavenly.
That process is now big business, of which the fights themselves are the product, and we merely fill the seats.
Taking short haul flights in sudden and perfunctory fashion with the likes of Ryanair and Easy jet is as glamourous as feeling a bit vodka-and-white-wine queasy after a nightclub in the back on a minicab with a snogging couple who have forgotten you’re there.
Thankfully, we in Galway have Aer Arran, who are not cheap, but somewhere between the arcane whirr of their propellors, the slightly Alice in Wonderland mirage of their planes appearing just the tiniest tad too small, and the patient and pragmatic smiles of the cabin crew, the spirit of the West is wholly and rather wonderfully represented.
Indeed, Aer Arran do make some effort to nurture that ethereal and nonsensical notion of flying being fantastic darling.
They allocate seat numbers, which always helps make you feel more of a human being and less like a sheep at the boarding gate. They give you a newspaper, which, again alongside the West of Ireland, allows you to believe that you have won something just by being there.
Ryanair do exactly the opposite, but before Michael O'Leary gets all uppity, I’ll admit that they do exactly what they say on the tin.
They fly to from A to B on time.
Yes Michael, but I hate being one of your customers.
From your website onwards, we undergo a trying test of skill and stamina.
No I don’t want to buy your insurance. Yes I do have to pay to check in a bag. No there isn’t anywhere on my hard plastic seat to put a magazine or a bottle of water.
To some extent, I understand where Michael O’Leary is coming from. We are grown-ups, well able to buy newspapers and decide which airlines we want.
Yes, I’ll fly on your planes, Michael, but don’t take the piss.
The last time I flew Ryanair, from Knock to Luton, we were actually airborne only a mere and wonderfully short 55 minutes, yet also we were:
approached by a strained steward with trolley, offering ‘gourmet hot drinks’;
then bombarded by an announcement that there were also on board ‘gourmet hot snacks’,
approached by a stoically smiling steward with another trolley of food to buy; then bombarded by an announcement asking if we wanted to be millionaires, and why didn’t we buy a Ryanair scratchcard;
then bombarded by an announcement trying to sell coach tickets from Luton to London, followed by suffering cabin crew zooming along muttering a mantra of ‘coach tickets coach tickets’ at comically high speed, so they could be ready to do the same with the Duty Free that was already being announced and sold on a trolley up the aisle, while himself was preparing to announce the Gift Shopping, on special today (with an air of Shakespearian doom) essence of David Beckham and scent of Jade Goody;
then bombarded by an announcement trying to sell train tickets from Luton to London, followed by suffering cabin crew zooming along muttering a mantra of ‘train tickets train tickets’ at comically high speed, so they could be ready to put up everyone’s trays, get their seats in the upright position, ten minutes ‘til landing.
Michael, I’ll be your sheep, so herd me if you must, and I’ll even suffer your cheese grater pricing tactics that cut holes all over my wallet in a hundred different ways, but do us all a favour, eh?
Give your staff a break. Allow your customers to draw breath between attempts to score their hard-earned wads.
That flight was so short, there wasn’t even time for those ill-considered 2-for-1 Gin, Whisky and Vodka pouches you usually try to flog to your flying sheep.
People spend more when they’re pissed, do they, Michael?
Proud of those 2-for-1 alcoholic pouches are you?
Away from all these horrors, there exists the act of kindness from the professional who happens to love and be good at their job.
Long haul flights are as different to short haul as riding a bike is to driving a truck.
Well, ideally, but on a recent Aer Lingus flight from San Francisco to Dublin, nothing was going right.
The seat back screens that provide all the in-flight entertainment refused to work. For me, a minor inconvenience, but were I with three kids aged 5, 9 and 12, I might find it difficult to explain
But I wonder, would I let them play instead with my computer, screaming shouting yelling, keeping the whole plane awake for the entire 10 hour flight?
Then I was asked to put away a packet of cashew nuts, because there was a passenger on board who had a nut allergy, and were the subtlest whiff of my nuts - oh please, behave yourselves - to get into the air conditioning system, she’d go purple nasty,
I’d barely had time to consider this, when that old long haul chestnut, the medical emergency, (“Is there a medical doctor on board?”), came along. Poor old geezer two rows back thinks he’s having a stroke, and you feel terrible for being such a selfish bastard to be hoping he recovers and doesn’t die or get worse, because you really do not want to have to land at Cackahooppeee in the Andalusian Mountains to get him to a hospital, and on and on, this flight from hell goes on and on, into this darkest night.
Save for herself, the Angel of Aer Lingus!
Proving me wrong, and giving hope to the cynics of the world, she replaced my nuts with a tube of Pringles. Then, having apparently seen me grimace at the wine I’d bought, she appeared with a swish from behind the curtain to the Slightly Better People Than You Little People section, bringing me another glass of red.
“That might be a little better, Sir,” she smiles.
“ Mmmmm, dapppsh luvbberrrly!” dribble I, as she swishes and clips her way to make other people smile.

She's harmless and innocent, so why do I want to kill her?

It's just as well that security is so tight at airports these days. The bloke at the baggage X-ray machine told me my Olbas Oil and Anti-Snoring spray had to go.
I shrugged and didn't bother to ask how eucalyptus oil in two differing forms might constitute a threat to mankind, while my snoring might well do just that.
Anyway, in retrospect, I am pleased that he was on the case, and I am delighted that I do not at this moment have a gun in my possession.
Because if I did I would most certainly use it. A pistol would do, but ideally a nice Uzi would be more pleasing. Seeing her shplattered with bullets and riddled with holes.
Then again, probably not such a good idea to shoot too many rounds when you're 33,000 feet up in a pressurised metal box.
One good shot to the head. A deadly blow delivered with cold-blooded venom. That'd do it.
The worst thing is, I'm sure she's a really lovely woman. She absolutely does not deserve to be ruthlessly murdered for anything she has done in the last hour. But I can't help it. I want her dead, gone out of the Universe.
I was the first person to board this Ryanair flight. As a passenger carrying only hand luggage, I had scored the right to check-in online, when I booked my ticket, and printed my own boarding pass at home.
This meant that not only could I go straight through to security and my departure gate, avoiding long queues in the main Departures Hall, but also I was able to join the Priority Boarding queue for the plane.
Mind you, as you might imagine, I didn't feel too great when a young woman with three tiny kids was told she could not join the Priority Boarding queue. She protested that people with small children could always board early.
The sad, embarrassed and harassed ServisAir worker explained that it was not up to her; it was Ryanair's choice; there was nothing she could do; contact the airline; sorry.
Ryanair changed everything about flying.
What was once an expensive and special treat has now become a cheap and dehumanising chore.
Last week on the radio I listened to a mother giving out about how Ryanair had taken her off a flight because she refused to pay ¤75.00 for a wheelchair and helper for her son to board the plane.
Despite explaining to ground crew that she had her own wheelchair, and that she could carry her six year-old cerebral palsied son herself, they told her neither was possible.
Ryanair owner Michael O'Leary has performed miracles. This year his airline will carry over 50 million passengers (more than British Airways) on 454 routes over 24 countries. In tandem, his airline regularly scores humanitarian own-goals, and often makes its passengers feel like miserable cattle.
O'Leary takes the stand declaring that you get what you pay for. On this particular occasion, I have secured a return flight to London for only 85 quid all-in, and now, because my only bag is on my shoulder, I fit Ryanair's' Perfect Passenger profile, and get to board early.
So there I am, sitting smug and sound at my window seat when she comes along, tapping me on the shoulder, asking if there is anyone sitting in the other two seats.
An innocent and perfectly reasonable request, but her tone and style make me want to throw my hands up in the air and declare
"Ja! Ich bin Jude! Ich bin Jude! Point me to your death camp! I'll come quietly!"
As to exactly why she elicits this reaction I cannot tell you. She's in her fifties, of medium height and build, with grey hair, a white blouse and brown trousers. She's a completely typical west of Ireland farmer's wife. Abrupt she was, but nasty, no. Not a bone of her body was evil, and yet, a hour later, I wanted to kill her.
Having secured permission to sit, she brought along her slightly larger friend, who sat next to me, and placed herself on the aisle seat.
She could have been one of those souls you see on RTE when the Angelus sounds, hesitating whilst doing some kind of inane task to look contemplative and heavenward as the bells rang out over the Haemorrhoid Isle.
From the moment the plane's wheels left the ground her mouth did not stop farting words.
When she talked, every single sentence was prefixed with that stalwart of Joe Duffy listeners
'Wayll ennyweh...'
and when I say every sentence I mean every single sentence.
'Wayll ennyweh...''Wayll ennyweh...''Wayll ennyweh...''Wayll ennyweh...''Wayll ennyweh...'
Thankfully she was polite and respectful enough to allow her friend to do most of the talking, but even then she managed to turn your friendly neighbourhood colyoomist from an accepting and liberal human into a nascent insane killer.
Every two words, not three, not five, but every two words spoken by her companion were accompanied by
'Yes yes yes.'
Sometimes she gave in to the rebellious nonconformist nutter insider her, and varied her song to sing
'Yes yes yeh.'
Hence the soundtrack ran something like this: 'So Bridget-'
'Yes yes yes.'
'-told Tom-'
'Yes yes yeh.'
'-that she-'
'Yes yes yes.'
'-was cooking-'
'Yes yes yeh.'
And so it went. The two harmless women chatted away in easy patter, of topics jam and Am-Dram, while the bloke to their right went silently and seriously apoplectic.
Was she like this all the time? Did she not realise how annoying, and indeed rude it was?
Had not one person in her life admonished her, or ever pointed out that it really kind of helps to be able to get at least half a sentence out of your mouth without the person you are speaking to doubling your words for theirs.
Or maybe it's just me. Maybe somebody should accuse me of being an intolerant grumpy old bastard from wayback, who has lost the ability to enjoy the company of his fellow human.
'Yes yes yeh.'
cadley1@eircom.net
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