He's proposed that airlines lose a few rows of seats, allowing passengers to stand up or perch on bar stools for flights that are less than an hour and a half. In
"We might take out the last five or six rows and say to passengers 'Do you want to stand up? If you do you can travel for free'," Mr O'Leary said.
A Ryanair spokesman stressed the non-seating plan would have to be given the OK by the Irish Aviation Authority.
"Why is this any different to what happens on trains where you see thousands of people who cannot get a seat standing in the aisles, and it happens regularly on the Underground," O'Leary added.
As a regular traveller on trains and the tube, when people can't get a seat and they're crammed in (like in the picture above), they get grumpy and they get stinky. It's only because there's basically a monopoly on the tube and mainline trains that people don't choose alternative firms but surely if they have an unbearable Ryanair flight, people will just swap to easyJet or another company?
Why not just stick a couple of seats on each wing and charge for them too?
(Incidentally, last week Current.com user MiguelSanchez cunningly guessed Ryanair might do this when a Chinese airline announced something similar. Good man! http://current.com/items/90332575_standing-room-on-planes.htm)
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- richjm
- added this
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I thought I'd heard a story about another airline with a standing room policy.
I love O'Leary's comment ""Why is this any different to what happens on trains where you see thousands of people who cannot get a seat standing in the aisles, and it happens regularly on the Underground,"
Err because a train isn't 20,000 feet or more up in air, Has he not thought about the safety aspects of this at all?
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Sounds good I'm usually to excited to sit down when I'm going on holiday. Not sure about landing and taking off though.
I think he is talking a load of bollocks as usual.
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- bubbeemonkey
- 4 months ago
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I actually wouldn't mind standing if it was free. Largely as it would be free. There must be some way to make it safe, like a simple harness kind of deal. But then again it's RyanAir, so even if there was a harness type deal, half of them would be missing or broken.
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- emmaboswood
- 4 months ago
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why is everyone so opposing of this idea ... i mean .. its not like its THAT unsafe to stand up on a plane.
However, i think that standing up for an hour and a half could become unbearable.
Also, why would ryanair be interested in providing free flights?
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How will you ever get comfortable enough to sleep??
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I know for a fact O'Leary would never let anyone on one of his planes for free unless they were cleaning it.
He's probably just after some free publicity again.
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- MiguelSanchez
- 4 months ago
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O'Leary is looking for free publicity again, a few months back he said they were looking making people pay to use the toilets on flights. Ryanair then released a statement to say that that they were not going to introduce it and the company representative said that O'Leary just seems to make stuff as he goes along.
Also in relation to the safety issue, planes nearly always have to bank when taking off, and hit turbulence in the air. There is a reason why they have seat bleat sign on planes.
Also it make more difficult to sell stuff from the trolley meaning less money.
