took, took, took and left her nothing in his will, Ruinair will add another five euros.
What do you think Mick? ‘People are overly obsessed with charges. They complain we are charging for check-in, but people who use web check-in and only have carry-on luggage are getting even cheaper fares. We are absolutely upfront about charges and the baggage charges and the check-in charges will rise. We will keep raising them until we can persuade the 40% to 50% of passengers who travel with us for one or two days to bring just one carry-on bag. I can go away for two weeks with just my overnight bag. Instead of packing a hairdryer, why not buy one when you get there?’
I have long since tired of playing their checked baggage game. It’s easier to pay the checked baggage fee of when booking a trip of any longer than a few days. So on the day of travel I can put the baggage in the hold or else carry it on and I have found that once you pay the fee they never bother to look at your carry-on baggage and I can take as much as I can carry with me on board so they don’t lose my baggage. This arrangement suits both parties since they have their blood money and I can do what I want with my luggage. A few euros to transport a suitcase to Europe is a steal in every sense. I mean, FedEx or DHL would charge me a hundred euros or more and they would not be as quick.
Check-in is fairly ugly with many long queues snaking around the Departures area but no clue as to which desks they lead to. Lost Ruinair staff with less than perfect English stand and look at us. There’s a queue beside me for a flight to Bournemouth and I’m not sure why. Maybe Bournemouth is close to somewhere more exciting. Near the check-in queue are a gang of teenage Nike Hoodie boys, apparently wearing legitimate tracksuits emblazoned with the names of various Dublin boxing clubs. A gent asks where they are going. One of the freckled shaven-head terriers clenches up a fist. ‘We’re off to kill the feckin’ English.’
This airline, like any multi-million Boeing, is a well-oiled machine. Their operating system is simple. Each aircraft departs from its base on the first wave of flights early in the day (much like when the Japanese set off en masse early one morning for Pearl Harbour), and by the end of the operating day at midnight all crew and aircraft are back home. There is no scheduled over-nighting away from base, so there are no nasty hotel bills to pay. Each aircraft usually makes eight flights per day, from 6am to midnight. I saw a programme on RTE where their pilots said the ‘earlies’ are getting earlier, they don’t get a break for nine hours and cannot even get off the plane to buy a sandwich because they must supervise the refuelling. Landing and taking off many times per day is a more stressful job than flying intercontinental long haul. But on the upside Ruinair pilots do not have to fly to congested hubs like Heathrow and Schiphol.
One cabin crew team works the first four flights, or sectors, then another cabin crew takes the last four flights. Sometimes the pilots can fly a six-sector day which involves three return flights from Ireland to the UK. This airline rosters pilots on a pattern of five early-start days and two days off, followed by five late-start days and two days off, known as 5/2/5/2, which some crews like because of the predictability. But many of their pilots fly so much that they reach the 900-hour annual maximum limit specified by Europe’s aviation regulations before the year is over, and as the airline runs the same rostering year for everyone from 1 April to 31 March, this can lead to a crew crisis and lack of pilots at the end of every March when the pilots can sit around for weeks with their feet up since it would be illegal for them to take to the air.
Some of the pilots feel overworked so they set up a covert website for the Ruinair European Pilots Association called www.repaweb.org in order to communicate privately with each other. Ruinair do not approve but the Irish High Court dismissed an application by Ruinair seeking disclosure of the identities of pilots using the website. Ruinair contended that some of their pilots had been intimidated by postings by anonymous individuals using code names including ‘I hate Ruinair’ and ‘Can’t fly, Won’t fly’. However, the Justice refused to allow their identities to be revealed. He said that there was no evidence of bullying by the defendants to the action and the only evidence of bullying in the case was by the plaintiff, Ruinair. Mick doesn’t agree that his pilots are under pressure. ‘I don’t even know how I would put a pilot under pressure. What do you do? Call him up as he’s coming in to land? They are paid €100,000 a year for flying eighteen hours a week. How could you be fatigued working nine days in every two weeks? They can afford to buy yachts. If this is such a Siberian salt mine and I am such an ogre then why are they still working for the airline?’
All aircraft are left at their home base overnight so fault fixing is easier. There is no slack in the operating system. Turnarounds are scheduled to take only 25 minutes, and any delays are subject to immediate scrutiny. Timing is so tight that the only chance the pilots get to have a break is when they are safely up in the air. If the cabin is absolutely full, 25 minutes is simply impossible, so pilots rely on arriving early at the gate to achieve an on-time departure. If any aircraft become unserviceable, Ruinair has four standby aircraft at the ready: at the time of writing one is based at Dublin, one at Rome Ciampino and two at Stansted. Daily at 8am after the first wave of departures, all the base operations chiefs in Europe join a conference phone call. Each centre sends an email to the Dublin headquarters detailing performance. If there is a reason even for a one-minute delay it is discussed to see if a recurrence can be prevented. At 8.30am every Monday at the Dublin headquarters, all the department heads meet Mick and they review the week’s operational performance. That must be fun. ‘Late? What do you mean f****** late?’
So it’s not surprising that our aircraft is on time. I watch the disembarking passengers trudge past us. There’s also an incoming flight from Liverpool so every second passenger who alights wears full Liverpool FC replica kit. Mick likes Liverpool. ‘Liverpool is the low fares regional airport for the north-west of England. Liverpool doesn’t have all the glass, bells and whistles that Manchester has, but passengers don’t want glass, bells and whistles. It’s always good to see Liverpool give Manchester a good kicking.’ All of the passengers are bleary-eyed and fatigued. I woke up at 6am to catch my flight. I dread to think at what time these fellow travellers awoke. It was hardly worth even going to bed. Often low fares comes at a high price. Having aircraft lying around doing nothing at night-time must ruin this airline. Soon there’ll be 3am flights.
On the plane I read Ruinair, the first edition of their in-flight magazine, which I keep because it will surely be worth a lot of money in years to come. There is an advertisement from the printers of the magazine based in Warsaw. I bet they’re low-cost printers. The magazine includes a model Boeing to buy; a push-fit plastic model requiring no glue or paint, with realistic take-off sounds and flashing lights, like what we fly in today. I read Mick’s message on the first page. I can’t believe he writes this piece himself because of the absence of swear words. He describes the amazing in-flight Movie-Star system. There’s a sample on-screen picture, showing Mick getting on board an aircraft, hands on hips, open-neck shirt and jeans. I think that’s the same shirt. I hope we don’t have to pay €7 to listen to him. Six months of trials later they can the movie system because no one wants to pay to use it. There is an editorial with a quote from Saint Augustine who is the patron saint of low fares air travel. ‘The world is a book and those who do not travel, read only a page’ I keep my copy of the magazine for research purposes but the crew come through the cabin to retrieve all copies. So I sit on my magazine. They pass by. I triumph but there will be a downside. They print 70,000 copies of every issue, and 50 per cent of passengers spend thirty minutes reading it. Tonight the employee who counts the magazines in the warehouse in Dublin airport will shout over to his foreman: ‘Hey, Seamus, it’s happened again. We’re down to 69,999 copies. Some fecker has nicked a copy.’
The magazine has a tacky insert called Buy As You Fly, which features mail order products that no one would ever need or use or want as a gift. There’s a wooden rocking chair. I mean who ever uses a rocking chair except Val Doonican or the elderly gentleman in the TV advertisements for Werthers Original sweets? There’s a Hercules Winch which will uproot an unwanted tree, pull a vehicle out of a ditch or winch in a boat
