A ruse by the 'orange' one

[P]

Looking for flights yesterday and looked on the 'orange' website.

There it was 'PRIORITY BOARDING - just £5 per flight'.

Exactly what does 'no frills airline' mean.

I now have visions of boarding a flight and the safety announcements:

Under your seats, for those who have paid the £10, you will find a life jacket. After these announcements a member of the cabin crew will be passing through the cabin offering lights and whistles to go with the life jackets at £4 each.

In case of a sudden loss of pressure masks will drop down. For those who have paid the £6 supplement oxygen will be provided. For those who have not then laughing gas will be provided.

In addition, the cabin crew will be selling tokens in order to access the lavatories. he price is £1 prior to take-off and £2 once airbourne.

We apologise about the noise, that it is the baggage being loaded, if you can call it that, where passengers have not paid the £7 'CareofBaggage' supplement.

Mind you, it does pay to check the cost of the major carriers - at least one of which is sometimes cheaper than the 'cheap' ones AND you get to choose your seat, a snack and a drink for the price.

Paul.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

[:D]

Perhaps they should rebrand themselves as "Buffet Airlines" or "Fly Pic-n-Mix"

At the end of the day, they bear most of the same costs as the

mainstream service providers. To maintain a veneer of cheapness they

need to be a little more imaginative than the others in extracting

money from their passengers rather than simply telling us how much they

are going to charge us from A to B. In a sane world, no airline would

be allowed to advertise fares net of tax in they way that so many of

them do because it is not a true representation of the actual cost of

flying. But they are allowed, so they do.

It is up to us to read the T&Cs carefully. I've said elsewhere once

that I've given up on Ryanair because I'm bored of the chaos and (what

I see personally) as sharpe practice. Plus, the mainstream lot are

frequently better value overall. These things are always fluid and

competition throws up funny effects sometimes.