Not sure what to buy your loved ones next Christmas?
Why not buy a Ryanair cartoon? This one, see:
shows a picture of a man booking a budget flight. The
booking agent is grinning frantically and says: the flight is
only 99p but it will cost another £120 if you want to
do it inside the plane. Yes, quite.

An interesting article in http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=68464
about a man in the US calling a help line to make a complaint
to Ryanair’s head office in Dublin. Before
calling he noticed that the charges were quite high – 1.75
euro from the Republic of Ireland or £1 from the
UK to call. The message clearly stated that the number was
for an Irish office. He called several times and each
time spoke with someone with an Italian accent and at one
point was told that he was calling Italy though other people
he spoke to denied this. So he decided to ask what was
the weather like in Dublin and not a single person could
answer him, so he deduced that he was actually calling
Italy. Eventually he managed to speak to a supervisor
who also has an Italian accent and they admit that the office
where all the calls were going was in Milan in Italy.
The supervisor could not explain why the staff were
pretending to be in Dublin while actually being in
Italy. She would neither confirm nor deny that they had
been instructed to lie when asked where they were.
Anyone know why?

Oh dear, it seems that Ryanair is coming under scrutiny for
poor working conditions. A new website has been set up
in September 2004: http://www.ryan-be-fair.org/latestnews.htm
to communicate with passengers and employees of
Ryanair. From this, the website says, two key issues
have arisen:

• Lack of respect and how staff are generally treated
• Salaries and working conditions being as bad as they are.

The International Union Federation said that the website has
attracted over half a million hits and revealed what it
described as a 'shocking catalogue of misery, low pay and
oppression' among the airline's workers.
Ryanair employees have used http://www.ryan-be-fair.org
to talk about the climate of fear that surrounds them, of 12
hour days without breaks, and of how they even have to pay
for the water they need to drink on flights. If you
have any information you would like to share about Ryanair,
contact the website – everything is strictly confidential,
and the website assures that they will not pass your details
on to anybody.

[Beetle: These links seem to be down at present, but you can read them via google’s cache here and here]

Another interesting article in the International Herald
Tribune by a journalist who underwent the Ryanair
experience.

Globetrotter Steve spotted this:

The new partnership between Ryanair and Terravision, the new
low cost coach company, now ensures that Ryanair passengers
will be able to travel between Rome Ciampino airport and Rome
centre, Milan Bergamo airport and Milan centre, Pisa G.
Galilei airport and Florence centre quickly and comfortably,
but above all at a really low cost!

Look for the Terravision icon on http://www.ryanair.com to book
and purchase tickets and avoid queues or alternatively go to
one of the many Terravision booths located in 15 European
airports. Watch out for new openings in other European
city destinations on