BEDFORD COLLEGE

MAGAZINE ARTICLES

Its a cruel irony for the millions of holiday makers who slam Ryanair for charging them for hidden ‘extras’ while flying. Because soon, the budget

airlines passengers will feel grateful for the chance just to spend a penny.

It plans to rip out even more toilets from its planes – whittling them down to just one loo per aircraft. No stranger to controversy, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary argues that the move would ultimately benefit passengers, as it would fundamentally lower airfares by about five percent’ The move which takes ‘no frills travel’ to a whole new level, could see 200 passengers vying to share one facility – forcing them to either wait in very long queues to cress their legs and pray. Courting controversy – Michael O’leary’s plan is the latest scheme from the budget airline. Some have been implemented, while others have not. They include charging passengers £1 to use the toilet on the flights, redesigning their aircraft to allow standing passengers, charging overweight passengers more to fly, asking passengers to carry their own luggage to the plane,charging passengers £5 to check-in online and £20 at the airport desks and charging £5 per passenger to pay by debit or credit card.

Mr. O’leary said he wants to replace the toilets with extra passenger seats in order to offer cheaper air fares. He is pressing Boeing to ‘re-certify Ryanair’s aircraft to enable six extra seats to be installed, particularly for short-haul flight. The airline flies only one type of aircraft, the Boeing 737-800. It has 189 seats on each plane, the maximum allowed under current rules. Fitting six extra seats would mean ripping out two of the three loos - leaving 200 passengers to share just one. But Mr. O’leary insists ‘We very rarely use all three toilets on board our aircraft anyway.’ The move ‘would fundamentally lower airfares by about five percent for all passengers - cutting £2 form a typical £40 ticket’ he added. ‘There is no legal stipulation for an airline to provide toilets on its aircraft.’ Boeing declined to be drawn on the plans saying ‘We don’t discuss those conversations.’

Ryanair will carry 75 million passengers this year. Its longest UK route is from Rhodes to Liverpool, taking four hours and 25 minutes. Initially, though the higher capacity aircraft would be deployed on shorter routes. A spokesman for the Association of British Travel Agents said, ‘we all know how inconvenient it can be if a toilet on a plane is out of order. This move could be a step too far.’

But aviation consultant John Strickland said: ‘High fuel prices are making it difficult for even Ryanair to keep fares low, so anything which helps reduce costs is essential.’ Last summer Ryanair said it planned to introduce flights where passengers stand up rather than sit, from £4 per ticket. The plan would remove the back ten rows of seats from its 250 planes and replace them with 15 rows of vertical seats. The Office of Fair Trading is investigating a ‘super-complaint’ by pThe Consumers’ Association into charges by low-cost airlines. Ryanair – which charges up to £20 per piece of checked luggage per flight – faced outcry in 2009 for plans to charge

passengers a pound to visit the plane toilet. Mr. O’leary said the plans to ‘charge a pound to spend a penny’ have now been dropped

THERE IS NO LEGAL STIPULATION FOR AN AIRLINE TO PROVIDE TOILETS ON ITS AIRCRAFT. ”

DELAYSEXPECTED

54

TRAVEL

“

Its a cruel irony for the millions of holiday makers who slam Ryanair for charging them for hidden ‘extras’ while flying. Because soon, the budget

airlines passengers will feel grateful for the chance just to spend a penny.

It plans to rip out even more toilets from its planes – whittling them down to just one loo per aircraft. No stranger to controversy, Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary argues that the move would ultimately benefit passengers, as it would fundamentally lower airfares by about five percent’ The move which takes ‘no frills travel’ to a whole new level, could see 200 passengers vying to share one facility – forcing them to either wait in very long queues to cress their legs and pray. Courting controversy – Michael O’leary’s plan is the latest scheme from the budget airline. Some have been implemented, while others have not. They include charging passengers £1 to use the toilet on the flights, redesigning their aircraft to allow standing passengers, charging overweight passengers more to fly, asking passengers to carry their own luggage to the plane,charging passengers £5 to check-in online and £20 at the airport desks and charging £5 per passenger to pay by debit or credit card.

Mr. O’leary said he wants to replace the toilets with extra passenger seats in order to offer cheaper air fares. He is pressing Boeing to ‘re-certify Ryanair’s aircraft to enable six extra seats to be installed, particularly for short-haul flight. The airline flies only one type of aircraft, the Boeing 737-800. It has 189 seats on each plane, the maximum allowed under current rules. Fitting six extra seats would mean ripping out two of the three loos - leaving 200 passengers to share just one. But Mr. O’leary insists ‘We very rarely use all three toilets on board our aircraft anyway.’ The move ‘would fundamentally lower airfares by about five percent for all passengers - cutting £2 form a typical £40 ticket’ he added. ‘There is no legal stipulation for an airline to provide toilets on its aircraft.’ Boeing declined to be drawn on the plans saying ‘We don’t discuss those conversations.’

Ryanair will carry 75 million passengers this year. Its longest UK route is from Rhodes to Liverpool, taking four hours and 25 minutes. Initially, though the higher capacity aircraft would be deployed on shorter routes. A spokesman for the Association of British Travel Agents said, ‘we all know how inconvenient it can be if a toilet on a plane is out of order. This move could be a step too far.’

But aviation consultant John Strickland said: ‘High fuel prices are making it difficult for even Ryanair to keep fares low, so anything which helps reduce costs is essential.’ Last summer Ryanair said it planned to introduce flights where passengers stand up rather than sit, from £4 per ticket. The plan would remove the back ten rows of seats from its 250 planes and replace them with 15 rows of vertical seats. The Office of Fair Trading is investigating a ‘super-complaint’ by pThe Consumers’ Association into charges by low-cost airlines. Ryanair – which charges up to £20 per piece of checked luggage per flight – faced outcry in 2009 for plans to charge

passengers a pound to visit the plane toilet. Mr. O’leary said the plans to ‘charge a pound to spend a penny’ have now been dropped

THERE IS NO LEGAL STIPULATION FOR AN AIRLINE TO PROVIDE TOILETS ON ITS AIRCRAFT. ”

DELAYSEXPECTED

54

TRAVEL

“

“ We want to be able to swat flies with a

newspaper, dog-ear the pages of a novel and

read magazines on the loo. ”

‘read magazines on the loo’

21

Paper

Paperout of

The children of the digital age will grow up without film in their Cameras, without albums on CD, without a DVD collection and without paper. Hands up if you agreed with the first three, but decided you couldn’t live in a paper-free world. Congratulations! You’re in the majority. We want to be able to swat flies with a newspaper, dog-ear the pages of a novel and read magazines on the loo. More than that, we’ve lived with printed bits of paper for a long time – scriptures and newspapers changed the course of history – so we’re emotionally attached.

“But I just like the feel of holding a paper/book/magazine.”Tough. The Internet has made it harder for the media that needs to be physically printed and distributed to keep up, and that’s a one-way trend. Publishing, on paper, is in decline, even if print is a more resilient format than most. Consider the fall of tape to CD or VHS to DVD. Quick, wasn’t it? Now digital files are just as speedily overtaking all physical formats.

So can the iPad do for digital publishing what the iPod did for music?

The New York Times app at its launch event had some fun tricks like embedding video content in stories, but if that’s the full reach of digital publishing we’re in trouble. Then again, the NYT only had a few weeks to develop their brief demo. And, besides, it’s hardly at the vanguard of publishing design. If publishers can exploit the iPad’s gorgeous screen properly, we could see a sea of change in the way people consume magazines and newspapers. As an e-reader, the iPad’s flickering colour screen is un-likely to win over many serious bookworms, even if it is the best-looking reading device. On the other hand, it has mil-lions of pre registered users for it iBook Store, a tried and tested selling environment and big industry buying power.

Single-handedly transforming an industry with many de-vices is a big task, but apple has done it before. Don’t bet against the iPad scoring Apple’s hat trick.

Ideal tablet for the toilet.

* Ideal tablet to handle the toilet.

technology

22

Ideal tabloid for the toilet

T he children of the digital age will grow up without film in their Cameras, without albums on CD, without a DVD collection

and without paper. Hands up if you agreed with the first three, but decided you couldn’t live in a paper-free world. Congratulations! You’re in the majority. We want to be able to swat flies with a newspaper, dog-ear the pages of a novel and read magazines on the loo. More than that, we’ve lived with printed bits of paper for a long time – scriptures and newspapers changed the course of history – so we’re emotionally attached.

“But I just like the feel of holding a paper/book/magzine.”Tough. The Internet has made it harder for the media that needs to be physically printed and distributed to keep up, and that’s a one-way trend. Publishing, on paper, is in decline, even if print is a more resil-ient format than most. Consider the fall of tape to CD or VHS to DVD. Quick, wasn’t it? Now digital files are just as speedily overtaking all physical formats.

So can the iPad do for digital publishing what the iPod did for music?

The New York Times app at its launch event had some fun tricks like embedding video content in stories, but if that’s the full reach of digital publishing we’re in trouble. Then again, the NYT only had a few weeks to develop their brief demo. And, besides, it’s hardly at the vanguard of publishing design. If publishers can exploit the iPad’s gorgeous screen properly, we could see a sea of change in the way people consume magazines and newspapers. As an e-reader, the iPad’s flickering colour screen is unlikely to win over many serious bookworms, even if it is the best-looking reading device. On the other hand, it has millions of pre registered users for it iBook Store, a tried and tested selling environment and big industry buying power.

Single-handedly transforming an industry with many devices is a big task, but apple has done it before. Don’t bet against the iPad scoring Apple’s hat trick.

“ We want to be able to swat flies with a

newspaper, dog-ear the pages of a novel and

read magazines on the loo. ”

‘read magazines on the loo’

21

Paper

Paperout of

The children of the digital age will grow up without film in their Cameras, without albums on CD, without a DVD collection and without paper. Hands up if you agreed with the first three, but decided you couldn’t live in a paper-free world. Congratulations! You’re in the majority. We want to be able to swat flies with a newspaper, dog-ear the pages of a novel and read magazines on the loo. More than that, we’ve lived with printed bits of paper for a long time – scriptures and newspapers changed the course of history – so we’re emotionally attached.

“But I just like the feel of holding a paper/book/magazine.”Tough. The Internet has made it harder for the media that needs to be physically printed and distributed to keep up, and that’s a one-way trend. Publishing, on paper, is in decline, even if print is a more resilient format than most. Consider the fall of tape to CD or VHS to DVD. Quick, wasn’t it? Now digital files are just as speedily overtaking all physical formats.

So can the iPad do for digital publishing what the iPod did for music?

The New York Times app at its launch event had some fun tricks like embedding video content in stories, but if that’s the full reach of digital publishing we’re in trouble. Then again, the NYT only had a few weeks to develop their brief demo. And, besides, it’s hardly at the vanguard of publishing design. If publishers can exploit the iPad’s gorgeous screen properly, we could see a sea of change in the way people consume magazines and newspapers. As an e-reader, the iPad’s flickering colour screen is un-likely to win over many serious bookworms, even if it is the best-looking reading device. On the other hand, it has mil-lions of pre registered users for it iBook Store, a tried and tested selling environment and big industry buying power.

Single-handedly transforming an industry with many de-vices is a big task, but apple has done it before. Don’t bet against the iPad scoring Apple’s hat trick.

Ideal tablet for the toilet.

* Ideal tablet to handle the toilet.

technology

22

Ideal tabloid for the toilet

T he children of the digital age will grow up without film in their Cameras, without albums on CD, without a DVD collection

and without paper. Hands up if you agreed with the first three, but decided you couldn’t live in a paper-free world. Congratulations! You’re in the majority. We want to be able to swat flies with a newspaper, dog-ear the pages of a novel and read magazines on the loo. More than that, we’ve lived with printed bits of paper for a long time – scriptures and newspapers changed the course of history – so we’re emotionally attached.

“But I just like the feel of holding a paper/book/magzine.”Tough. The Internet has made it harder for the media that needs to be physically printed and distributed to keep up, and that’s a one-way trend. Publishing, on paper, is in decline, even if print is a more resil-ient format than most. Consider the fall of tape to CD or VHS to DVD. Quick, wasn’t it? Now digital files are just as speedily overtaking all physical formats.

So can the iPad do for digital publishing what the iPod did for music?

The New York Times app at its launch event had some fun tricks like embedding video content in stories, but if that’s the full reach of digital publishing we’re in trouble. Then again, the NYT only had a few weeks to develop their brief demo. And, besides, it’s hardly at the vanguard of publishing design. If publishers can exploit the iPad’s gorgeous screen properly, we could see a sea of change in the way people consume magazines and newspapers. As an e-reader, the iPad’s flickering colour screen is unlikely to win over many serious bookworms, even if it is the best-looking reading device. On the other hand, it has millions of pre registered users for it iBook Store, a tried and tested selling environment and big industry buying power.

Single-handedly transforming an industry with many devices is a big task, but apple has done it before. Don’t bet against the iPad scoring Apple’s hat trick.