Ryanair Flight Give-Away
by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK on 05.17.07
Ryanair’s website crashed under the weight of 4 Million views yesterday, as people clambered to take them up on their latest offer. The low-cost airline gave away a million flights, not at a cheap rate, but for free. They even paid the taxes and charges that are normally left, even with regular low-cost offers. Recently such airlines have been struggling to fill flights, as passenger duty rates have been doubled. "This is about getting bums on seats. We are paying to get passengers into our planes - we'll be paying the tax that they would normally have to pay. There's no point in flying planes empty," said a spokesman for the company. Friends of the Earth called it "grossly irresponsible”, adding that, "passengers may be getting a free ride, but the planet certainly isn't." Many news organisations have suggested that this desperate move indicates a dip in demand due to rising costs to the consumer, caused by green-tax hikes. :: The Guardian
See also :: 'Take the Train', or 'Screw Them, Let's Fly'?
Let's pay people to drive, too! Oh wait, we already do that through welfare for oil/auto companies, private military contractors throughout the world, and lower air quality.
You can drive... if you want asthma and obesity! What a price!! (check out LivesPerGallon, great read by Terry Tamminen. Only problem is the hydrogen hype.)
err... no it won't. the plane uses a lot of fuel if it flyes empty. The real tragedy here is not the environment, it's the poor townspeople of Europe who will have to deal with trashy drunken brits running rampant through their streets...
There should be a limit to the amount of service an air network provides, maybe something in relation to the amount of budget airlines that are popping up all over Europe. But who am I to talk, just yesterday I was enraged by the £150 single flight to Amsterdam, why?
We have become to complacent, if we can just rewind it a notch to when flight tickets were expensive for a reason.