Mullingar: Airline Mecca

When Leon Uris RIP was writing about swarthy rural Irish nationalists, we doubt that he had in mind that Ireland would one day be a country where the Wall Street Journal would urge airline corporate chieftains to look for the future of their industry. But so it is in Wednesday's paper, in which the virtues for airline profitability of the Ryanair model are extolled (may require subs). Ryanair chief executive Micheal O'Leary prides himself on his ability to get in the news for any reason, so as he sits in his mansion in Mullingar (about 40 miles west of Dublin), he will be enjoying his image as sage to the world's biggest domestic air market. There is something to the Ryanair model: one way to put it is that American Airlines CEO Robert Crandall became famous for his cost-saving measure of taking the olives out of the salad; Ryanair's idea was to put them back in, but charge per olive.

But there are elements of the Ryanair experience that we hope are not replicated by too many other airlines anytime soon. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the airline exudes contempt for its customers. Even for the favourable WSJ piece, a spokesman is quoted is saying "Our primary business is putting bums on aircraft" and that only begins to capture their attitude. If you read the Sunday travel sections of any Irish or British newspaper, go to the page dealing with bad customer service experiences, and Ryanair will account for a big chunk of the complaints. The complaints typically relate to Ryanair's strict reading of its check-in and boarding policies, as they relate both to people and their luggage. P O'Neill's uncle was denied boarding his connecting flight from Stansted to Dublin because his luggage had not been transferred from the previous flight from France, and Ryanair will not deliver delayed baggage under most circumstances. The airline blames the airport and tells the affected passengers that they will have to wait for the next open seat on a later flight, which at peak times could mean an overnight wait. And don't bother asking about vouchers.

The airline's rote response to the deluge of complaints is to point to their small proportion of total passengers carried, but we really wonder if it's a feasible business model to be counting on 20 percent growth per year while continually courting such a poor image with one's customers. And by the way, Americans planning on "doing" Europe this summer would do well to remember that Ryanair's fee-for-service model has infected the entire flying experience. To pick one that's probably illegal in the US, plan on paying $15-$20 each time you use a wheelchair to get to and from the plane. That adds up pretty fast, and all of a sudden one of Europe's stodgy state carriers suddenly seems like a better deal. In fact, one achievement with which Ryanair can be credited is to get us Irish over our tendency to be boosterish about everything homegrown, regardless of quality. We know that if O'Leary wasn't running an airline like this, someone else in some other country would. So good for him. But quite a few of us are not sure we'd ever want to fly with him.