Thought this was an onion article for a second

that is sweet. if i lived in the uk I would buy a flight

Damn. I mean...damn. That's ballsy.

Resorting to personal attacks and suing negative reviewers is another way to convince people you have a crappy product.

One more company I'll never give my money to!

That video is a first for me.

when i woke up this morning i did not expect to watch another man play with his balls for four mins

Ryanair should not be calling anybody an idiot or lunatic, regardless.

However, the blogger should have retracted the story or put up a more accurate "explanation", considering his original claim was in fact totally bogus.

I've totally heard of them before.

Isn't RyanAir an Irish airline? You may have just ticked off an entire nation and ethnic group, Ben.

Oh the mess you hath dug RyanAir. I see 2 more stories about you in the future: The first will be your public apology, and the second will be RyanAir going out of business. So sad.

I flew RyanAir from Gatwick to Dublin last February...check-in was literally a man with a paper list of passengers; it was like taking attendance at a school assembly. He filled out a boarding card with a pencil. They really mean "no-frills"! There were ads on the overhead bins, too! What an experience...I'm not surprised they have basically no customer service.

Despite Ryanair reacting like this, and people hating flights with them, I always fly them when I travel to Europe. Cross-Europe flights can be as cheap as US$10. Try finding ANY flight in the US for $10.

Come on dudes, the company did kind of call it. Could they have used more diplomacy and tact? Absolutely. Should they offer an apology about their conduct? Certainly. Were they mistaken with regard to the accuracy of the bloggers claims? Nope. Did they get a bit heated about it? Yes. Should I stop phrasing my post as a disjointed Q&A? Oh, yes, alright.

@philmin:

CLARIFICATION: I did not claim to complete the booking process for a free flight. I found a bug that showed a 0.00 price listed beside flights. Orders could not go past the passenger details page. See the less than constructive comments left by Ryanair staff below.

That was there when I read his site shortly after the story went up.

/reply

I'm not your buddy, friend!

I think bloggers are dumb and I hate this post-modernist world in that with the joys of realizing that traditional authority and social norms mean little, we also get a million undereducated pundits spewing opinion without such nice things as FACT CHECKS and STATISTICS.

Anyway, that notwithstanding, I still think RyanAir have to be the biggest bunch of morons ever to answer criticism like that. I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL THEY REPLY TO THIS COMMENT!

I've flown ryan air before, it was like the southwest of Europe (ie no assigned seats, each way was purchased separately, snacks for sale not free). All in all it was a great experience for me because my flight from Paris to Dublin was only around $50 round trip. (FYI this was in October 2001 and I booked after 9/11, I have no idea what prices are like now when they aren't being sold for zero)

I'd make a comment about them obviously net being aware of the old customer service axiom that for ever person that calls to report an issue, there are nine more that didn't bother and just stopped using your service. It is generally accecpted that each first-line customer will tell approx eight people about their experince, each of them will tell another four, and those four will tell another two each. That means that for every person who complains about something, there is an average of 640 people who will know the result by word-of-mouth only.

I guess Ryanair doesn't want that one customer that will try and get the problem fixed.

@jodles: You left out the part where it only cost £40.

@alexawesome: I'm getting sick of insincere apologies. I wish people (or companies) wouldn't backpedal. If the employee and the spokesperson think he's a dateless idiot, fine. I can choose to fly with them or not.

@Cyberxion101:

Can I post a link here? I was following up on further reporting of the story. Its up to our own judgment of whether or not the blogger claimed to be able to purchase a free ticket. Realistically though, a bug that shows something weird on a site isnt a story, a bug that gives a free ticket is.

Apparently, blogger Roe made a very slight modification and added that note after this story blew up in Ireland.

@captainpicard:
FYI, they've got a fair number of options for travel in greater Europe. It's cheap, it's serious low-frills, but they're usually on time.

@hi: Hardly they've been around for a long time, and they are cheap they couldn't care less what people think because they will stay busy.

This is corporate culture I can live with.

Overall, I've found that the cheaper a good or service costs, the easier it is to endure poor service by chalking it up as comedy. This case is the thesis to my theory.

For as cheap as RyanAir's flights are, I'd let a flight attendant sit on my lap and loudly berate the size and condition of my genitals for the duration of the trip. And I'd probably get a good laff about it.

I've flown Ryan Air a couple times on trips to Europe - one to Dublin from Gatwick and back, the other one way from Reus to Stanstead. It's basically a bus with wings, so you can't expect much from it. But it's cheap and gets you where you want to go, and I can't really complain. I don't really ask for much when I'm going to be in the air for less than two hours.

I'm booking another flight with them for a one way flight from Bristol to Dublin - right now the cost is going to be less than $60 total for two people. Can't beat that :).

So just for fun. I'm going to Paris at the end of March and wanted to see how much a quick jaunt out to Dublin would be on Ryanair. I went straight from Consumerist to Ryanair's Web site, input everything, and it returned a fare for the outbound flight of 0 Euros, with taxes and fees it came to E28.22. The fare on the return flight was E4.99, plus taxes and fees total is E28.26.

So from a pure "fare" standpoint, the outbound flight WOULD be free. Am I an idiot, a liar, or just confused here?

@ekthesy: You're right, but the taxes and fees thing is not consistent. When looking for flights from Bristol to Ireland, I noticed trying to fly from Bristol to Shannon on one day would cost 0 Euros plus 25 Euros in taxes and fees. Going on another day would cost 20 euros plus 0 taxes and fees.

They also charge almost $15 per checked in bag.

I personally find this HILARIOUS, and in terms of the "ethnic implications" of referring to RyanAir as an Irish airline,

a) It is an Irish Airline, just like Southwest is an American airline and Toyota is a Japanese car company.

b) This refreshing honesty is hilarious to the point of being rendered inoffensive, and makes me even prouder to have Irish heritage.

@alexawesome:

I think I seperate bloggers from "civilians". Say a random customer in the airport made a bogus claim about AirRyan. It would still be totally inappropriate for AirRyan to insult them or be public about it at all.

This guy Roe, however, is totally willing to publicly post information about air ryan... when it turns out to be misleading, he might have to take flack for that, and I think thats OK.

@jodles: I flew RyanAir ages ago out of the world's tiniest airport in the ass end of nowhere in Ireland, and I had to get a ticket that day because of a series of unfortunate events that meant I had to get back to London ASAP. So I went to Tiny Airport and went to the info desk (only desk staffed) and asked the lady if anyone from Ryan Air was available. She said, "One moment, I'll go get someone." Disappears into the back, and comes out wearing a green blazer at the Ryan Air desk, acting like she hadn't seen me 30 seconds ago.

I was like, "THERE WAS TOTALLY A HOME IMPROVEMENT EPISODE WHERE THIS HAPPENED AND I WILL NEVER MOCK THAT SHOW AGAIN!"

The whole experience went on in this vein. It wasn't BAD, exactly, just ... verrrrrrrry low-budget and bizarre. A slapstick comedy waiting to happen.

@p322401:

I did. Although not on a computer.

@warf0x0r: i ain't your friend, palooka...

@Eyebrows McGee:

Sounds more like a Monty Python sketch to me.

@alexawesome: The low prices are paid for by hiring soccer hooligans and chavs as customer service and PR people.

@philmin: Just post the link in your comment. If it's a problem they'll delete it, but I'm certain they won't unless it becomes clear you suddenly decided to take up an extremely odd method of spamming. Don't leave us all in suspense like that! :P

But yeah, it seems like this was really a non-story to begin with. The author really should have at least tried to complete a sale before posting. Lesson learned, hopefully.

The two responses from Trans Air (were they from the same person?) seemed like they were posted by, to put it delicately, someone who also was not completely thinking things through.

@LetMeGetTheManager: You, sir, have a good point. I'll /sign.

I refuse to shop companies that openly show contempt for their customers, regardless of how cheap they are.

Ryanair's going right on the list of businesses I will never patronize, right next to Wal-Mart.

@DeloresPompeii: are you kidding? if I EVER have the opportunity to take a flight from RyanAir, I will!

What a great company. finally someone has the balls to stand up to idiot bloggers!

Although there are a lot of horror stories about Ryanair, I definately appreciate them supporting the snarky but accurate comments of their employees.

Reminds me of when I worked at a snowboard shop and angered a patron by telling him we didn't sell "fruit booters." He asked to see the manager (who was also the owner) of the shop who also told him we didn't sell "fruit booters." Ahh...customer service nostalgia...

Looks like the bilious leprechauns at RA have been celebrating St. Patty's a few weeks early...

Isn't RyanAir the airline that said they would be offering blowjobs on their flights?

I think it's embarassing for the company, but I can't get that worked up about it. He didn't suffer the verbal abuse while being a customer. If they talked to him that way at the ticket counter, or disembarking, that would be different. But what the hell, you post on message boards or in comment sections, you get flamed. Happens.

I'm glad I don't work for that company, though.

@Eyebrows McGee:

That made me LOL at work!

@p322401:

Wow, his balls are both massive and numerous!

@philmin: I don't see why you can't, man. If there's more to the story, I think we ought to know.

That said, I don't know why people insist on questioning what bloggers choose to write about. The guy is a web-designer, so I can see how this would be relevant to him, even if it doesn't seem particularly news-worthy to us. He's not writing for the NY Times after all, it's just his personal blog. ;)

"The Travolution site reached out to Ryan Air and got this response from their spoketwat:"

"spoketwat"?

I'm not even sure how to comment on that phrase other that that it's making me re-think what kind of a site this is supposed to be about, if this is the type of language being used to describe a human being.

And people wonder why the world is the way it is.

@Reid Antonacchio: Tell that to Circuit City.

@Rob Weddle:

You had me up until the part about the size and condition of your genitals.