Kitabı oku: «Ruinair», sayfa 2

France

Ruinair Flight FR42 – Sunday @ 7.55am – DUB-BVA-DUB

Fare €2 plus taxes, fees and charges €33

I plan to exact my revenge, to beat them at their low fares game and see all fifteen countries in Western Europe for the price of my ruined trip to Spain. And if I can purchase some cheap flights then gradually I will single-handedly reduce their average revenue per seat. My idea might fly but I am not sure if I can do it. I’m not certain if anyone cheap flies to Liechtenstein.

Mick approves of cheap flying. ‘We gave away 15 per cent of our seats last year for free. If we didn’t give them away, they’d be empty, but this way we have got the chance to sell car hire, a sandwich or a cup of tea. We’re working on the multiplex cinema model—they make most of their money from the sale of popcorn, drinks and sweets, not cinema tickets. It is our ultimate ambition to get to a stage where the fare is free.’

So I am doing something I’ve never done before: travelling to a place I never knew I wanted to go to, which is probably not quite where I think it is, and I am not sure what I will do once I get there. My ticket was purchased in one of those unlimited ‘limited offers’, the sort of special fares promotion that they only have on the front page of their website every single week. It was the Irish comedian Dara O’Briain who first noted that when you search for the Ruinair website address on the internet, you are first taken to a nearby website, from where you can catch a bus to get to the intended website address. The fare is two teeny euros. I have lost more through a hole in my pocket or put more into the collection plate at Sunday mass. These low fares are advertised in the media but often garner free publicity, such as the time Ruinair was criticised by the UK’S Advertising Standards Authority for using offensive language in an advertisement. Published before Bonfire Night, the advertisement had depicted fireworks with the headline ‘Fawking great offers’. Even worse was the reaction to their advertisement showing the soles of a pair of feet on top of another pair of feet, with a ‘fare for 2’ of £69, and the slogan above ‘Blow me, these fares are hard to swallow!’ How low.

It’s good to fly to France for lunch. I could have taken the 46A bus into Dublin city centre for a bite instead but the bus fare into town is €1.90 each way, so it’s much cheaper to travel to France for one euro each way. Mick likes these low prices: ‘Our strategy is like Wal-Mart and Dell. We pile it high and sell it cheap. If anyone beats us on price, we will lower ours. We are the Tesco of the airline industry.’ This is cheaper than staying at home for two days. Forget the fact that the taxes, fees and charges are 1,650 per cent of the fare. The only things cheaper are the ‘free’ Christmas cards I receive annually from the Disabled Artists Association.

I am certain that it’s costing this airline more than one euro in aviation fuel to move my butt six hundred miles eastwards towards France. I agree with Sir Bob Geldof’s opinion on low air fares to unknown destinations: ‘If I can get a £7 flight to somewhere within two hundred miles of Venice, you know, destination unknown, magical mystery tour, well, I’ll take it. Seven quid, I don’t care where I fucking go.’

Flying is now all about queuing. We queue at the check-in to receive a boarding card, we queue at security to show the boarding card and we queue at the gate while they take back a piece of the boarding card they gave us earlier. After twenty years of flying from Dublin, Ruinair’s boarding cards still show a space for Seat Number, albeit unused. With fifty minutes to go to the scheduled departure time, some passengers are already standing around at the gate. These are the passengers classified by this airline at an Investors’ Day presentation as ‘well-trained passengers’. More specifically, airline pilots officially refer to us passengers as ‘SLF’ (self-loading freight). There are signs and lines to queue but Irish people as a rule don’t queue. The same guy who put the chocks under the nose-wheel asks us to form two orderly queues. ‘Jaysuswha’didhesay?’ I hear.

This airline has inadvertently created two classes of travel: early class and late class, much like business class and economy class in the old days. If you are late for check-in, you are doomed, and Mick agrees. ‘We don’t care if you don’t show up.’ Many of my fellow passengers have evidently passed the Advanced Masters Degree in Queue-Jumping. This airline formerly used the same policy as on the Titanic when they used to invite passengers with children to go first. It was almost worth borrowing a child for the day. Now, like everything else on this airline, they charge passengers to stand in a queue. If you are a parent and you wish to be sure of a seat alongside your child, then that will be three euros each. I don’t know what the mad rush is for anyway. I mean, we’re all going to get seats. It’s not like some of us will be left sitting on the cabin crew’s knees or on the toilet seats if we are the last to clamber on board.

Or maybe we will. A few years ago Ruinair flew from Girona in Spain to Stansted with people seated in the aircraft’s toilets. The airline, which was reported to the regulator following the incident, acknowledged that the flight was overcrowded and that it should not have happened. ‘Ruinair does not overbook its flights,’ a spokesman said. ‘We are taking it very seriously and it is the subject of an internal investigation.’ The passengers seated on the toilets for the duration of the flight were Ruinair staff. Other staff not on duty on the particular flight sat in jump-seats in the passenger cabin. Ruinair said the incident occurred because too many off-duty staff were allowed on board. This is what’s known as a Loo Fares Airline.

Today the arriving passengers are still deplaning as we begin to get ready to board. Someday soon we will rush them at the two doors, like on the Tube. In fact this airline reminds me of the London Underground in many respects, but without the sense of personal space I enjoy on the Tube. Boarding is monitored in a simple manner. None of this new-fangled computer or electronic rubbish, as used by other airlines, is required. A staff member sits at a desk with an A4 page of numbers 1 to 189 and uses a highlighter marker to cross off our sequence number as we board. When a few of us have passed him by I expect him to leap up with joy, show us his completed fluorescent grid of work and shout Full House.

Getting onto the plane is by the scrum method. Two packs of burly passengers line up in opposite directions, wait for the signal and charge. ‘Crouch…touch…hold…engage.’ Like the Six Nations. We don’t depart the terminal, rather we escape in a circuitous double-pronged pincer movement. Obstacles such as passing freight traffic, abandoned electrical machinery and lethal rotating jet engines don’t matter because we want to get the best fucking seat. It’s such a race that it seems other passengers genuinely do not believe there will be seats for all. I’m on the inside and past the departure gate, but a girl cuts through the walkway and comes up fast on my rear, so without indicating left or right, I move ahead and speed to the rear steps, until the girl breaks into a fast stride last seen in that ludicrous Olympic walking race and makes towards the same rear steps, so I edge her off at the steps with a shoulder charge and we board the aircraft with myself in pole position to find…there are lots of vacant seats so we’re both gutted. I wonder if we boarded only by the rear steps, could the arriving passengers exit by the front steps simultaneously and save time?

My preference is to use the rear steps to board. There’s no point using the front steps unless you’re the pilot. It’s also proven to be safer to sit at the rear because you never hear of aircraft reversing into mountains. Also the ‘Black Box’ flight recorder is located in the tail and even when jets plunge into the Florida Everglades or the Amazonian rainforest, they always find the ‘Black Box’ intact, so that’s encouraging. It’s great to choose your own seat on board to avoid sitting beside large, loud or drunk people, teary babies or beardy loonies. I rarely sit in the emergency row with the extra leg room. Firstly you will spend the next two hours sitting ten feet away from the noisiest mother of all jet engines. And if that over-wing door blows out, you’re hoovered.

The tray tables of the seats in a few of the back rows of the aircraft are down and have tatty photo-copied multi-lingual notices advising we cannot sit there. I don’t know why. Maybe the crew dine there? I try to sit in one of these blocked seats but the cabin crew are having none of it and propel me along the aisle. This certainly undermines their treasured principle that we can sit anywhere we like when we board. ‘I think we certainly have democratised flight, in that there’s no curtains anymore, there’s no business class anymore, you’re not made to feel, you know, two inches tall, like, “Here you go, down with the poor people at the back.” Everybody is the same on Ruinair,’ says Mick.

I take a row of seats only to find others before me had a food fight here and I’m sitting on their bread and crisps. The new B737-800 aircraft sports a nausea-inducing puce-yellow interior. This is the only airline in the world who employ an interior designer suffering from colour blindness. It’s the same colour they use in McDonalds restaurants. Yellow is inviting and instantly warming but once you’re sitting for ten minutes you want to vacate your seat and leave. This is not so easily done at 500 mph and at 32,000 feet.

A fellow passenger holds her boarding card towards me. ‘Where is the seat number, please?’

‘You can sit anywhere,’ I advise helpfully. She is a veritable virgin. So rare these days.

Getting the optimal seat is a priority and it’s not easy because there is some excellent top-notch competition out there these days, so practice and discipline are essential. It’s important because the average elbow is wider than the seat’s armrest and the middle seats create a war zone on two fronts. I am entitled to the entire armrest, and that means both of them. When selecting an aisle or window seat, do so depending on your strongest arm. I prefer an aisle seat. We all wish to establish our personal comfort zone with no one sitting next to us. Years of research by Boeing’s head of aircraft seating found that one single factor most powerfully affects perceived passenger in-flight comfort: whether or not the seat next to you is empty. Even if the aircraft only has one free seat, then that free seat needs to be right beside me. Today I take an aisle seat where the window seat is already occupied by another solo flyer. We nod in an unspoken agreement and pile everything we own in this world into the empty middle seat: coats, newspapers, books, food, bags, scarves, the kitchen sink and a few dead rabid dogs. It usually works. The seat remains empty.

More extreme strategies are required to keep an entire row of three seats all to yourself. First take the aisle seat to block easy access for others. The Bag technique is where I take a sick bag and hold it over my mouth and as people come past I heave into the bag and make eye contact with my tired teary eyes looking for sympathy. The Zombie technique is where I sit tall in the seat, eyes wide and staring straight ahead and from that position I bounce my head back and forth until I am dizzy. The Busy technique is where I put down all the trays in the row, spread out my papers, lunch, water, mobile telephone, briefcase, pens, books and whatever else I can muster and look too busy and annoyed to move anything for anyone who dares ask me if the seats are free. The One-Liner technique includes saying to any would-be neighbour, ‘It sure feels good to be out of prison.’ Another technique which works only for men is the Love technique where I grab an aisle seat and as passengers walk past, I boldly look them up and down, smile at them and occasionally give them a nice stare. Women think I am trying to pull them and men don’t really want to know what I am thinking. If someone makes a move for the two seats I reach over and pat the seats and wink. This latter technique never fails. Either way, I am sitting on my own in an empty row.

Today there are lucky latecomers. The penultimate passengers are two flustered red-faced Dublin girls. ‘Jaysus, we wus sittin’ at the right gate but lookin’ at the wrong screen. I don’t know wha’. We’re the ones hirin’ a car when we get there. How are we gonna find our way around northern France when we can’t find our way outta the bleedin’ terminal building?’ The very last passengers to board don’t seem bothered at all as they stand around like a bunch of eejits in the aisles. They are all French. Naturellement. The aircraft is about 85 per cent full, which is typical for this airline. I am convinced they would achieve their average load factor of 85 per cent if they commenced a new daily service with one cent fares from Dublin to Timbuktu (South).

I wind my watch forward by one hour because France is one hour ahead of Ireland, plus about ten years. It was the Irish writer and Nobel prize-winner George Bernard Shaw who said that Ireland is the safest place to be on earth during an earthquake, since everything happens here forty years later. The pilot announces there will be a delay in departing. He says there is fog in France. All Ruinair pilots graduate with highest honours from the Aviation School of Expectation Management. We are advised we will sit in the aircraft going nowhere for one hour. We get another explanation. ‘We were also a bit delayed here earlier with all the planes moving about at this hour of the morning. We had to get the plane from the hangar.’ So that’s where they keep them. I have seen them tow many aircraft to gates at 7am, as if they manufacture them around the corner. We groan and curse, anger rising. He announces later it’s only a thirty-minute delay and we all smile. We take off thirty minutes late but somehow we all feel ecstatically happy about it. One excited child becomes vocal before the take-off: ‘We’re leaving. Quick. Put something in your mouth.’ The same child will later utter upon our planned descent: ‘We’re going down. Watch out. Mind the road.’

On board there are unending announcements made at foghorn volume about smoking, the lavatories or asking us to buy things. I know why they make so many announcements. Because they cost nothing. What’s wrong with putting a sign up somewhere and letting us rest in peace? When I get on a train, no one stands in the aisle each time to announce I can’t use the lavatory when the train is in a station. They put up a sign instead. And I just know it. We all do. The safety announcements are unintelligible since they are delivered in a language unique to this airline, referred to as Spanglish. A gentleman behind mutters under his breath, ‘Sure, I’d understand it better if she spoke it all in Spanish.’ The girl has such a heavy Spanish accent that I doubt even a genuine Spanish passenger could understand her chesty pronouncements.

One part of the safety announcement always grates. ‘In the event that we land on water, life vests are located under your seat.’ I’m not sure that if we do land on water this will be the first matter on my mind. More distracting matters such as staring at the fish outside the windows may take precedence. A life vest? Who’s going to need a life vest? I would rather have scuba diving equipment under my seat. But the most annoying aspect is when they ask us to read the safety card stuck on the back of the seat and some guy across the aisle leans forward and starts reading it intently. We are all experienced, nonchalant, big-time travellers so no one dares to follow suit and read the instructions, but we all sit there and worry that if we hit a mountain, he will appear on the RTE News to explain how he alone survived and watched us perish at Mach One. ‘The safety card I read made it clear what I should do in the event of plunging into a mountain.’

The cabin crew are vaguely good-looking in a lost, vacant sort of way. The lights are on but there’s no one on board. Some might be Eastern European since they don’t have much English. All they can utter is ‘Any drinks or snacks to buy?’ These are the people who will save us in the event of an emergency. They joined this airline to see all of Europe but now they only get to spend 25 minutes (maximum) in a range of ex-military airbases, where one of them draws the short straw to go face us passengers in the terminal.

There’s something fairly awful about these blue staff uniforms. The female crew are either very tall or very short, or are very thin or very not-so-thin but they all wear the same size uniform. I don’t know if Ruinair would consider doing uniform fittings for their staff? A small sum spent on what people would call uniform rules would go a long way to raising personal pride and corporate appearance. Grown men with bad haircuts wearing stained jackets and grubby off-white shirts try to sell us scratch cards, then tickets and telephone cards and Baggies of neat alcohol (and if we drink too many Baggies they will sell us a Lifeline ‘hangover preventer’ cure for three euros) and then perfumes and toys on this flying hypermarket.

The secret of success of this airline is that the seats are free but everything else costs us big-time, including checking in, boarding, luggage, food, drinks and even wheelchairs. They operate like Gillette where razors are cheap but blades are expensive; or like Vodafone where mobile telephones are cheap but minutes cost. Ruinair management don’t think like other airline management, they think like supermarket retailers. No passenger purchases a scratch card so evidently we’re not as stupid as we may appear. Mick has a view on selling scratch cards and so much more to passengers. ‘They’re for morons. On board our flights we don’t allow anybody to sleep because we are too busy selling them products.’

The coffee on sale on board is Fairtrade coffee but not for the right reasons. Mick says: ‘The fact that our tea and coffee supplier is a Fairtrade brand is a welcome bonus, but the decision was based on lowering costs. We’d change to a non-Fairtrade brand in the morning if it was cheaper.’ I never purchase their tea on board on principle. Ruinair charge €2.75 for a cup of tea. Last time I was in Tesco, 80 Lyons tea bags cost €2.78. Once they sell the first cup, Ruinair are making a profit. But I am thirsty.

‘Can I have a bottle of water please?’ I ask.

‘Still?’

‘Yes, I still want it.’

I always carefully read the description on the label of the bottle. A few years ago this airline’s highly profitable brand of bottled water did not come from a pure mountain stream or a rocky highland spring. It was mere tap water. Ruinair’s Blue Rock water, which cost £1.85 for a 500 ml bottle, was supplied by Britvic Soft Drinks in the UK. While the label did not claim the water to be genuine spring water, neither did it make it clear that it was tap water. The same product was pumped into thousands of homes by Thames Water at a cost to consumers of only o.o6p per litre. This is what is known as a L’eau Fares Airline.

It’s an inevitable fact of aviation that when people are stuck in a small metal tube for several hours with not much to do, one of the few distractions open to them to pass the time is to look at the cabin crew. The cashiers and shelf-stackers who double as flight attendants have exotic European makey-up unisex names such as Rosalba, Vaida, Danija (email me!), Edyna and Lorana but blondie Beata still remains the happiest crew member I will meet on my extensive travels. Most of the cabin crew appear to still be of schoolgoing age and are bunking off from lessons by having these day jobs. Their job description is to make really sure we don’t want anything to eat or drink. I buy something else for the one-hour flight but the girl leaves me twenty cents short in change. I assume she’ll return with the change but she doesn’t remember or care. I don’t bother asking. Twenty cents from each of their 50 million passengers will add an extra €10 million to their profit. Never in the field of human transportation was so much owed by so few to so many. Before we land we pass any of our rubbish to the crew, thereby becoming the world’s first self-cleaning aircraft.

There is a programme on BBC where the actor Tony Robinson looks at The Worst Jobs in History. He’s included jobs like Public Executioner, Rat Catcher, Sewer Cleaner and Collector of Bodies during the Bubonic Plague. In the next series he’s looking at working as cabin crew for this airline. This is in contrast to the best jobs in the world, such as coach to the Swedish women’s soccer team or Chief Taster for the Guinness quality assurance team with responsibility for all pubs in the greater Dublin area, who drive vans around Dublin on which locals have handwritten on the side: Emergency Response Unit. Or indeed the easiest jobs in the world, e.g. weather forecaster in southern Spain (er…tomorrow it’s going to be hot).

However, never dare to confront a member of the Ruinair crew. They might be armed and dangerous. Ruinair once sacked an air hostess who admitted keeping an illegal stun gun at her Strabane home. Sinead McDermott had worked for the airline for four years and was dismissed for gross misconduct and bringing the company into disrepute. The stun gun, which was shown in court, was capable of discharging 500,000 volts and could incapacitate somebody causing localised pain for up to five minutes. The brunette, who appeared in court wearing a low-cut top, skirt and boots, received a 200 hour community service order. McDermott listed the reasons for having the stun gun, saying she had received nuisance phone calls, her car had been burned, she had been followed and she feared for her safety. The resident magistrate said he took into account the fact McDermott had pleaded guilty at the first opportunity, which showed an element of remorse, her clear record and the fact she had lost a ‘good job’ as Ruinair cabin crew.

France is a country with the same population as the UK and has double the land mass of the UK, yet there is not a single domestic French low fares airline, thanks to the state-sponsored monopoly of Air France. In a war amongst low fares carriers, providing cheap flights to all five corners of France is the last remaining battle yet to be fought. The French countryside is a clichéd patchwork of manicured fields and dense forests but, as widely rumoured, Beauvais airport terminal is a tent. The Departures end has white metal walls and a canvas top which flutters nicely in the soft breeze. This may be the only airport in the world at risk of being closed in the event of high winds, not because aircraft are unable to land, but because the airport blew away. The runway is so basic that the pilot has to execute a u-turn and come back the same way, only to stop as a tiny two-seater Piper aircraft comes across in front. We disembark as the ground staff place a sign saying Dublin on the tarmac for those taking the return trip. It’s unnecessary because there are only two aircraft in the entire airport and all 189 passengers are not going to fit into that Piper. Twenty paces later and we are inside the terminal. Ten more paces and through passport control. Ten more paces to the WC or the baggage carousel, whichever is deemed more urgent. Ten paces to outside. Paris Beauvais airport is closer to the city of Amiens than it is to the French capital, but who would fly to Amiens?

Paris is the world’s top destination for tourists but it ranks as only the world’s 53rd friendliest city. I admit I have never warmed to the Parisians. They are so annoyingly arrogant about everything. Most locals in any European capital will take the chance to speak a few words of English but Parisians wouldn’t lower themselves. If you have dinner in Paris, the locals excel. They instantly recognise the best dishes on the menu and ask the sommelier if he knows which side of the hill the Pinot Noir grapes were grown on. As you dine on the finest food, they will find something to criticise. And all this from a nation who gladly dine on horses, snails and frogs. And every two years we dare to visit them at Stade de France when their brutal rugby team administers a regular thrashing to our brave boys in green (we have won once in 35 years). The only redeeming feature about the French in general is that they cannot manufacture a decent motor car for love or money. P.G. Wodehouse conceded that the French invented the only known cure for dandruff, called the Guillotine.

There is a bus to Paris but the fare costs more than the flight and the duration of the bus journey is longer than the duration of the flight. I could hire a car today but I have seen too much of Parisian driving skills to risk that option. When you buy a new car in Paris you must go out on the first day with a claw hammer and knock lots of dents and holes in the side of the car, because if you don’t, some other lunatic driver will do it for you in a 2CV the next day. I enquire at the airport information desk about taking a local bus into the town.

One of the girls points outside. ‘Voila, ze bus.’

I almost get on the bus but I check first. ‘To Beauvais?’

She shakes her head. ‘Non. A Paris.’

I stand my ground. ‘I want to go to Beauvais.’

She turns to her colleague. ‘Il veut aller a Beauvais.’ Incredulity. They stare as if I’m on day release.

I persevere. ‘The bus?’

Much shaking of heads. ‘No bus. Rien.’

I’m sure there’s a bus. ‘Not on a Sunday?’ I ask.

‘Jamais, jamais. Taxi.’

Beauvais is the capital of the Oise region of Picardy and has 60,000 inhabitants. The Hotel le Chenal is in the town centre. It’s not a three-star hotel, it’s the three-star hotel. I once stayed in a two-star hotel but I broke out into a rash at the lack of stars, and I once stayed in a hotel where the maid did not fold the toilet roll into a nice point daily so I checked out immediately. This hotel offers typical French hospitality. It takes me ten minutes to convince the duty manager I have a reservation, not that I want to make one. He fumes behind the counter and utters his first words of a genuine French welcome. ‘You pay me eighty euro now.’ It’s fairly quiet here. If ten more guests check in, that’ll make eleven in all.

The manager asks me if I want breakfast. I tell him that it’s the most important meal of the day and of course I do, since I have paid for it, but then I realise he’s only determining if he needs to employ a chef. My room overlooks the train station. There are exotic lights outside which change from red to amber to green and back. The bath is diamond-shaped, too big for one. I saw the same bath in a documentary I was forced to watch on a brothel in the Nevada desert. I accidentally stumble upon filth on the TV. Channel 17 features Priscilla upon a chaise longue, who has a compulsion to slowly undress. I am shocked. This sort of stuff should only be shown on pay TV. After her comes Natalia. Then Eva. Olga. Maria. Claudia. Etc.

The history of Beauvais is as potted as shrimps. In 1357 a peasant revolt began here, the Jacquerie. History shows me that the peasants are always revolting: poor dental hygiene, inappropriate dress sense and a lack of proper table manners are endemic. Beauvais’s main products are blankets, carpets, ceramic tiles, brushes, bricks, chemicals, felt and tractors. Beauvais’s only famous citizen is a lady named Jeanne Hachette. In 1472 the Duke of Burgundy laid siege to the town and all was lost until Jeanne killed an enemy soldier with an axe, tore down his Burgundy flag and rallied the troops. Her statue lies in the main town square and she is good-looking and well-built, in a bronze-casting sort of way. Her achievements are celebrated every October with a procession through the town where the women take precedence over the men. This day must be especially difficult for the French male.

The city centre was destroyed by WWII bombardments so the buildings are new but still ugly. I stroll along the main street, Rue Carnot, where there are estate agents who have perfected the pricing of houses to an amazing science, their windows displaying exact prices such as €183,564 and €242,973. I immediately stick out in the streets because I am the only person not carrying a huge baguette as if I plan to mug someone with it. I use my excellent command of French to buy my own baguette for lunch, and also largely for self-protection. A few people stop me to ask me questions. Do I look like I know about metered car parking and the one-way system?

The Cathedral of Saint-Pierre is a spectacular disaster. It was begun in 1225 and was to be the largest cathedral in Europe but its vaults collapsed in 1272. The French builders had another go soon after and built a 128-metre spire but this collapsed in 1284. Today it’s a stub of a cathedral, having a chapel, a choir and a transept, and there’s another church where the nave should be located. The cathedral’s astronomical clock required the co-ordinated assembly in the 1860s of 90,000 different parts, surely a feat only equalled by the average irate IKEA flat-pack customer. If this clock had been assembled in Ireland, we would have many pieces left, surplus to requirements. These would be discarded on the sly as a workman looks at his trusty Casio watch and announces, ‘Sure, it’s keeping good time, like.’ I stare at the clock for some time and realise it’s completely useless. I cannot tell the time by looking at the face.