Schadenfreude - simply too, too delicious!

Of course, taking pleasure in someone else's distress and misery is not a nice way to behave, er, except if the sufferer is Mr. Michael O'Leary and his crap airline Ryanair!  I may have mentioned before that a few years ago the 'Memsahib' and I had to fly to an obscure airport in rural France and Ryanair was the only carrier.  Almost from the beginning the experience of dealing with them was deeply unpleasant.  The hectoring tone of their e-mails and their constant warning that everything, like breathing in, let alone breathing out, would be charged extra was nearly enough to make me cancel the trip.

So you can imagine me hugging myself at the recent news that Ryanair has been forced to cancel thousands of flights for a variety of reasons including the fact that their pilots are decamping en masse to join a new start-up airline run by Norwegians.  I actually began to dribble with pleasure seeing that jumped-up, greedy, little Paddy, Michael O'Leary, looking utterly miserable as he was forced to cancel thousands of flights which will cost him a few zillion quid, to say nothing of the acres of bad publicity which have filled the prints for the last couple of days.

 

 

Suck it up, Paddy, just like your customers have been forced to do all these years!  Ms. Janet Street-Porter sums it all up in The Mail:

 

This pugnacious, mouthy character- the one that ‘joked’ he’d like to charge passengers to use the bathroom, and told customers ‘you’re not getting a refund so f*** off’- is in serious danger of losing his job (even though he’s the largest shareholder) after suddenly cancelling 2,000 flights over the next six weeks, affecting over 400,000 passengers.
O’Leary says he has simply ‘messed up’ and there are no staff shortages, just pilots who need to take their holidays. 
Insiders reckon that 140 pilots have left Ryanair in the last year to work for one of his rivals.

As I said in my title, too, too delicious!

 

 

Comments

[Up2L8]

Next he might have to start selling aircraft.

[The Jannie]

Would you buy a second hand Boeing from this man?

[Andrew Duffin]

I simply do not believe their excuse.

It's not remotely credible that such a large company could make such a hash of a simple administrative change.

Clearly then the cancellations are a smokescreen for something else: probably the cancelled flights were not full enough to be profitable and someone has decided that the bad publicity is less of a problem than running a few loss-making flights.

We shall see.

Will anyone ever trust them again? Not me, certainly.

[AussieD]

As I see it getting a ticket to fly Ryan Air was a bit like buying a [supposedly] second hand car from the Dodgy Brothers. Caveat Emptor.

Sympathy for Mick O'Leary zero. Sympathy for those buying a ticket from Dodgy Bros Airlines almost zero.

[Peter G]

I wonder why these pilots are leaving to join another airline and one based in a country that actually has a deal with the EU. Could it be that they realized you have to get out early because if you wait until Brexit and British airlines lose their European landing rights then you will be part of the stampede of unemployed pilots looking for work? But you won't be able to because you'll need a EU work visa. Which you get automatically if your employer is Norwegian. It's been in the papers.

I ask because the whole British airline industry has been publicly worried about the same thing. Reciprocal airport landing rights have to be negotiated with the EU post Brexit and with each individual country in the EU. In the meantime let us celebrate the loss of a whole bunch of good jobs in Britain that will now go to Norway. I'm sure Norway will appreciate the tax revenue.

[Peter G]

Just so everyone understands clearly, that obscure airport you spoke of probably wasn't an international airport with customs clearance facilities was it? Not all airports have them. That's why ones that do are called international airports. Oh oh. I guess that means there will be a lot of regional airports where British airlnes will not be able to use once their passengers must clear customs. It's a border thing. Let me know when you sort this out.

[mike fowle]

Trouble is O'Leary is quite shameless. Ryanair awarded a passenger free flights for life and for a nominee as she happened to be the millionth passenger. Generating good publicity. It worked well for a time, then O'Leary decided it was costing too much so he reneged. Mrs O'Keefe took the airline to Court and was awarded the value of the flight she had been refused and £60,000 for future loss. She said she found O'Leary bullying and hostile.

[Peter G]

Well Andrew Duffin you are right not to believe that bullshit which I just finished watching. That was a Trumpian performance if ever I saw one. Ryan was accepting full responsibility while blaming German ATC and, of course, the weather. I think maybe he should consider changing careers. He must be, without a doubt, the best weatherman the world has ever known. Apparently he knows that the weather will suck particularly badly for six weeks and force the cancellations of about fifty flights a day. It's damn near miraculous.

[missred]

Ryanair is Irish fool

[Whitewall]

Ryanair sounds like Icelandic air of decades ago.

[KevinS]

As Missred says, Ryanair is an Irish company and, at the time of writing, IREXIT hasn't been announced.

[Cuffleyburgers]

O'Leary is an obnoxious git, but in fairness to Ryanair, they have improved their customer service from appalling to mildly annoying and they do offer millions of routes at cheap prices.

The low cost airlines have done us all a favour exerting stong downward pressure on fares.

So I agree let's have a good laugh at O Rileys discomfiture but hope that Ryanair as an institution survives.