O'Leary made the news again last week.
He suggested that his airline start to charge people for going to the lavatory during flights. He argued that it has long been the practice for railway stations to charge for access to public conveniences. That was how "spend a penny" (a British euphemism for having a pee) came into existence in an earlier century. At today's railway stations the "going rate," if we can call it that, is 30 pence. Garrulous O'Leary argued that air travel was much the same as the railway business. So it might be time to start charging.Forbes fell for it, Glenn Reynolds fell for it, a whole bunch of people who should know better fell for it. There won't be a charge for taking a leak or dropping the kids off at the pool. O'Leary is a master at getting free publicity, and he got his airline millions in free publicity over the past few days just by uttering some words.
You say it's bad publicity? Hogwash. The people who fly Ryanair know what to expect, and budget travelers who haven't flown Ryanair yet won't spend more money to fly on another airline just because of O'Leary.
6 comments:
I lived in the UK, and I can tell you, we had some smiles with O'Leary's remarks! He actually revels in being the cheapest of the cheap when it comes to service, and you know when you get on his flights, it's probably not going to be "fun and relaxing", but you also aren't paying a lot for it.
I've never flown Ryan (having flown for near-nothing with my various employers), but I have myself often said "Yeh, I'll sit in that cramped middle seat with no food for three hours to save 50 quid" because I know I'll have loads of money left for a good night of beer at the end of it. :-)
I am from Rockford, IL and Ryan's international HQ is there.
http://www.flyryan.com/
I still get back to Rockford for business, and one of the bean counters for my business is in the same building as the Ryan Air control center that you can see in the photos from that site. I got a tour of the place since everyone in the building was friends. It was very impressive.
They had closed circuit cameras on planes all over the world, and you could see where their planes were on the maps at any time.
Huh, now that I look at it, there appears to be more than one Ryan Air?
http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/
Who knew?
When that blowjob comment came out, I though this guy is Jan Carlson, Herb Kelleher and Richard Branson rolled up in one.
You are right that there literally is no such thing as bad press. Especially when you are going for the laid back image O'Leary does. In a way, the more insane and outrageous things he does and retracts, the more he looks like he really cares for his customers.
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