DarwinAir

I had some good flights with RyanAir and believe in The Economist’s thesis that low fare airlines do much for the emergence of the “I am citizen of the European Union!”-feeling. Booking months in advance and travelling with little luggage helps to save money and thus quite narrows europe.

Why do people criticise Ryan Air? You might feel like ‘budget-cattle’ and the old ‘romantic ideal of flying’ is finally destroyed (particularly disgusting at Ryanair: This 25cl Wodka in little plastic bags for 5 Euro). Flying becomes like the rides in rotten busses  in our childhood.

But hey, it’s cheap. And why is it so? RyanAir puts some pressure on airports and preferably takes cheap and small airports. But another point is the fees that RyanAir charges for STUPID (Sorry, I mean temporarily stupid, as everybody is sometimes) customers that carry too heavy or oversized luggage (30 Euros penalty). Or if you forget to Check-In Online (40 Euros penalty).

Ryanair says very clearly what you have to do IN CAPITAL letters and Bold type and at least two times (on their webpage and their emails). So to actually get a penalty you have to be very stupid, dizzy, drunk, or whatever.

I met such passengers, forgetting to check in online (3 people, makes 120 Euro for Ryanair) and developed a theory: I guess there is some calculated kind of Darwinism at work à la the most stupid customers pay for the many ones that do everything right and pay very little. Off course, this is a cynic thesis that implies in its ultimate consequence: “You are stupid, or too lazy to read, so you pay for that and are NOT worth travelling around europe for such low fares. And you pay for the ones that were clever/made an effort to read.”

Analogous to the survival of the fittest thing, possibly disgruntled customers that were charged heavily because of their mistakes are selected out (means: they don’t fly with RyanAir again) and thus make flying more expensive for the ones that read everything properly. So ultimately there is no survival of the fittest anymore, if the stupid ones are missing to make flying so cheap for the clever people.

I wonder whether Ryanair has a calculation on how many “stupid customers” they need for every flight in order to finance the passengers that do everything right. If they have such a calculation I say thank you too every stupid/lazy RyanAir passenger to subsidize my flights — and a particularly happy year to them!