Ruinair. Paul Kilduff

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СКАЧАТЬ do so depending on your strongest arm. I prefer an aisle seat. We all wish to establish our personal comfort zone with no one sitting next to us. Years of research by Boeing’s head of aircraft seating found that one single factor most powerfully affects perceived passenger in-flight comfort: whether or not the seat next to you is empty. Even if the aircraft only has one free seat, then that free seat needs to be right beside me. Today I take an aisle seat where the window seat is already occupied by another solo flyer. We nod in an unspoken agreement and pile everything we own in this world into the empty middle seat: coats, newspapers, books, food, bags, scarves, the kitchen sink and a few dead rabid dogs. It usually works. The seat remains empty.

      More extreme strategies are required to keep an entire row of three seats all to yourself. First take the aisle seat to block easy access for others. The Bag technique is where I take a sick bag and hold it over my mouth and as people come past I heave into the bag and make eye contact with my tired teary eyes looking for sympathy. The Zombie technique is where I sit tall in the seat, eyes wide and staring straight ahead and from that position I bounce my head back and forth until I am dizzy. The Busy technique is where I put down all the trays in the row, spread out my papers, lunch, water, mobile telephone, briefcase, pens, books and whatever else I can muster and look too busy and annoyed to move anything for anyone who dares ask me if the seats are free. The One-Liner technique includes saying to any would-be neighbour, ‘It sure feels good to be out of prison.’ Another technique which works only for men is the Love technique where I grab an aisle seat and as passengers walk past, I boldly look them up and down, smile at them and occasionally give them a nice stare. Women think I am trying to pull them and men don’t really want to know what I am thinking. If someone makes a move for the two seats I reach over and pat the seats and wink. This latter technique never fails. Either way, I am sitting on my own in an empty row.

      Today there are lucky latecomers. The penultimate passengers are two flustered red-faced Dublin girls. ‘Jaysus, we wus sittin’ at the right gate but lookin’ at the wrong screen. I don’t know wha’. We’re the ones hirin’ a car when we get there. How are we gonna find our way around northern France when we can’t find our way outta the bleedin’ terminal building?’ The very last passengers to board don’t seem bothered at all as they stand around like a bunch of eejits in the aisles. They are all French. Naturellement. The aircraft is about 85 per cent full, which is typical for this airline. I am convinced they would achieve their average load factor of 85 per cent if they commenced a new daily service with one cent fares from Dublin to Timbuktu (South).

      I wind my watch forward by one hour because France is one hour ahead of Ireland, plus about ten years. It was the Irish writer and Nobel prize-winner George Bernard Shaw who said that Ireland is the safest place to be on earth during an earthquake, since everything happens here forty years later. The pilot announces there will be a delay in departing. He says there is fog in France. All Ruinair pilots graduate with highest honours from the Aviation School of Expectation Management. We are advised we will sit in the aircraft going nowhere for one hour. We get another explanation. ‘We were also a bit delayed here earlier with all the planes moving about at this hour of the morning. We had to get the plane from the hangar.’ So that’s where they keep them. I have seen them tow many aircraft to gates at 7am, as if they manufacture them around the corner. We groan and curse, anger rising. He announces later it’s only a thirty-minute delay and we all smile. We take off thirty minutes late but somehow we all feel ecstatically happy about it. One excited child becomes vocal before the take-off: ‘We’re leaving. Quick. Put something in your mouth.’ The same child will later utter upon our planned descent: ‘We’re going down. Watch out. Mind the road.’

      On board there are unending announcements made at foghorn volume about smoking, the lavatories or asking us to buy things. I know why they make so many announcements. Because they cost nothing. What’s wrong with putting a sign up somewhere and letting us rest in peace? When I get on a train, no one stands in the aisle each time to announce I can’t use the lavatory when the train is in a station. They put up a sign instead. And I just know it. We all do. The safety announcements are unintelligible since they are delivered in a language unique to this airline, referred to as Spanglish. A gentleman behind mutters under his breath, ‘Sure, I’d understand it better if she spoke it all in Spanish.’ The girl has such a heavy Spanish accent that I doubt even a genuine Spanish passenger could understand her chesty pronouncements.

      One part of the safety announcement always grates. ‘In the event that we land on water, life vests are located under your seat.’ I’m not sure that if we do land on water this will be the first matter on my mind. More distracting matters such as staring at the fish outside the windows may take precedence. A life vest? Who’s going to need a life vest? I would rather have scuba diving equipment under my seat. But the most annoying aspect is when they ask us to read the safety card stuck on the back of the seat and some guy across the aisle leans forward and starts reading it intently. We are all experienced, nonchalant, big-time travellers so no one dares to follow suit and read the instructions, but we all sit there and worry that if we hit a mountain, he will appear on the RTE News to explain how he alone survived and watched us perish at Mach One. ‘The safety card I read made it clear what I should do in the event of plunging into a mountain.’

      The cabin crew are vaguely good-looking in a lost, vacant sort of way. The lights are on but there’s no one on board. Some might be Eastern European since they don’t have much English. All they can utter is ‘Any drinks or snacks to buy?’ These are the people who will save us in the event of an emergency. They joined this airline to see all of Europe but now they only get to spend 25 minutes (maximum) in a range of ex-military airbases, where one of them draws the short straw to go face us passengers in the terminal.

      There’s something fairly awful about these blue staff uniforms. The female crew are either very tall or very short, or are very thin or very not-so-thin but they all wear the same size uniform. I don’t know if Ruinair would consider doing uniform fittings for their staff? A small sum spent on what people would call uniform rules would go a long way to raising personal pride and corporate appearance. Grown men with bad haircuts wearing stained jackets and grubby off-white shirts try to sell us scratch cards, then tickets and telephone cards and Baggies of neat alcohol (and if we drink too many Baggies they will sell us a Lifeline ‘hangover preventer’ cure for three euros) and then perfumes and toys on this flying hypermarket.

      The secret of success of this airline is that the seats are free but everything else costs us big-time, including checking in, boarding, luggage, food, drinks and even wheelchairs. They operate like Gillette where razors are cheap but blades are expensive; or like Vodafone where mobile telephones are cheap but minutes cost. Ruinair management don’t think like other airline management, they think like supermarket retailers. No passenger purchases a scratch card so evidently we’re not as stupid as we may appear. Mick has a view on selling scratch cards and so much more to passengers. ‘They’re for morons. On board our flights we don’t allow anybody to sleep because we are too busy selling them products.’

      The coffee on sale on board is Fairtrade coffee but not for the right reasons. Mick says: ‘The fact that our tea and coffee supplier is a Fairtrade brand is a welcome bonus, but the decision was based on lowering costs. We’d change to a non-Fairtrade brand in the morning if it was cheaper.’ I never purchase their tea on board on principle. Ruinair charge €2.75 for a cup of tea. Last time I was in Tesco, 80 Lyons tea bags cost €2.78. Once they sell the first cup, Ruinair are making a profit. But I am thirsty.

      ‘Can I have a bottle of water please?’ I ask.

      ‘Still?’

      ‘Yes, I still want it.’

      I always carefully read the description on the label of the bottle. A few years ago this airline’s highly profitable brand of bottled water did not come from a pure mountain stream or a rocky highland spring. It was mere tap water. Ruinair’s Blue Rock water, which cost £1.85 for a 500 ml bottle, СКАЧАТЬ