More from Ryanair

We dislike Ryanair for their approach to business. We like hearing frm them though, as nothing is as amusing, or produces as much outrage. One in the United States, where we are, might choose to believe they are a joke…a fake airline people tell stories about, the way one does the Boogeyman. But they aren’t. The Consumerist had two posts recently on the bargain-basement carrier, both of which are worthy of attention.

Jason Roe, a freelance web developer, who is looking for web development, design or SEO projects to work on, posted on his blog about finding a bug in theRyanair website. The bug does not allow you to buy a ticket, merely displays incorrect information due to some incorrect session handling. There were some responses from Ryanair that indicated the quality people they have working there.

jason!
you’re an idiot and a liar!! fact is!
you’ve opened one session then another and requested a page meant for a different session, you are so stupid you dont even know how you did it! you dont get a free flight, there is no dynamic data to render which is prob why you got 0.00. what self respecting developer uses a crappy CMS such as word press anyway AND puts they’re mobile ph number online, i suppose even a prank call is better than nothing on a lonely sat evening!!

Or perhaps:

There is another exploit you could try – wait until we’re running a promotion when we give away a million odd seats for free anyway.

We wonder why they hate WordPress. This blog runs on WordPress. It’s a good piece of software for blogging. Not the only one, of course. But it is well-supported with lots of plugins. But either way…

Stephen McNamara, from Ryanair, drafted his official response to the situation:

“Ryanair can confirm that a Ryanair staff member did engage in a blog discussion. “It is Ryanair policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with idiot bloggers and Ryanair can confirm that it won’t be happening again. “Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel”.

We doubt any other company would use terms like idiot or lunatic to describe someone. It is not the quality of Roe’s post that is important, or the usefulness of the information, but the way this company deals with people.

As something of a joke, the Consumerist posted this mockup from a reader. We are certain that an airline that charges an insurance charge of GBP3.35 to cover insuring the aircraft in a post-9/11 environment and a wheelchair levy of GBP0.33 per passenger which was added in 2002 after a passenger took them to court for being charged GBP18 for the use of a wheelchair. A recent article in the Irish Herald claimed this levy is 50 percent higher than it needs to be, and nets the airline as much as one million euro per year. It was revealed in August that Ryanair passengers at Cork Airport were being charged more than EUR15 per head in “taxes and fees” that the airline does not have to pay.

If Ryanair is paying attention, feel free to disagree. But do so in a civil manner. And we will respond in kind.

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• Why Ryanair Needs A Social Marketing Agency (viralblog.com)
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• Ryanair can’t handle the “blog sphere” (gadling.com)
• RyanAir Employee Calls Blogger “Idiot,” And Their Spokesperson Publicly Agrees [Ryanair] (consumerist.com)
• The finger from Ryanair (nevillehobson.com)