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Ryanair plans standing section on short-haul flights

Airline says it will offer free tickets for standing section

By
KELLY FINCHAM,
IrishCentral.Com Editor

Published Monday, July 6, 2009, 8:41 AM
Updated Thursday, July 23, 2009, 5:39 PM

 

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Inside a typical Ryanair cabin - this is the view if you're standing up!
Inside a typical Ryanair cabin - this is the view if you're standing up!

Photo gallery: Ryanair's Michael O'Leary... Click here

Ryanair says it is planning a standing room only section on some of its flights.

The airline's publicity-mad boss Michael O'Leary says it plans to offer free "seats" to people who will fly standing up.

O'Leary said passengers would sit on bar stools with a waist-belt or just stand up for flights lasting less than 90 minutes.

"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'," O'Leary said.

"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," he said.

Given the cramped conditions on the London Underground it is unlikely that any sane person would want to replicate that condition in the air.

But that will hardly stop O'Leary who will do practically anything to get his airline's name in the media.

A spokesman for Ryanair today said they had already asked Boeing about converting its planes or delivering a new fleet with so-called "vertical seating."

"Vertical seating"? Sounds like vertical balderdash.

The spokesman stressed that the standing section would have to get the go-ahead from the Irish Aviation Authority.

I suspect this is where this latest publicity effort will peter out. Ryanair will get maximum publicity and then claim they were stymied by the authorities.

It is extremely unlikely that any aviation authority would give this loopy idea the go-ahead given that they don't even allow cabin crew to stand up during take-off and landing.

O'Leary says he got the idea from the Chinese airline Spring, after they claimed that they could pack in another 50 percent more passengers while also cutting costs by 20 percent.

Earlier this year Ryanair said it was planning to charge passengers for using the on-board restrooms.

At the time, O'Leary said they wanted to put a slot on the restroom door so that "people might actually have to spend a pound to spend a penny."

No idea is too offensive or controversial for O'Leary who has also suggested a "fat tax" for overweight passengers.

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