The cheap flight - an update

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You may recall a couple of months ago I wrote a post about what I considered to be a misleading airline ticket pricing strategy. The airline - Ryanair - had advertised a 'free flight' which ultimately could have cost me as much as £105 including taxes and the 'additional charges' they levy.

Well this week I actually took the flight and I wanted to post a few thoughts on the experience and, maybe, see if my readers had had a similar experience.


My opinion is that Ryanair are attempting to make the experience of flying with them as uncomfortable as possible for a passenger. It is almost as if they've said "We are the cheapest airline around and as such you will suffer for the fact that you aren't paying a lot for your flight".

The suffering starts when you book.

The web-site itself is poorly designed with a cluttered layout, garish colour schemes and lots of 'offers' and 'adverts'. It has 14 tabs and 11 menu options to negotiate. This is mainly because Ryanair's business model is not to raise money be selling seats, but to raise money by selling everything other than seats (more about that later). As I mentioned previously the pricing is misleading and the addition of an extra charge for paying by credit card on-line is the salt in the wound that would, ordinarily, have put me off buying the ticket.

So the initial impression is not good. Lot's of bad design and a barely concelaled glee at finding different ways to take money off you whilst still offering 'free flights'. On top of that there is anecdotal evidence of the web-site having loopholes and problems which result in lock-outs and double charged credit cards.

Does it differ when you get to the airport? No. I checked in at Bournemouth which - admittedly - was going through some major renovations at the time. However the process was as follows:

• Queue up
• Give details to check-in lady
• Show passport
• Check one bag in
• Take second bag (golf clubs) round to another desk
• Queue up
• Give details to second check-in lady
• Pay for second bag
• Receive confirmation slip/receipt
• Take second bag (golf clubs) back to first desk.
• Queue up
• Give confirmation slip/receipt to first check-in lady
• Receive boarding card
• Take clubs to a third check-in area
• Show boarding card to guard behind glass screen
• Drop clubs on conveyer belt - hope they get treated well and arrive at destination.

16 steps including three queue's to check in one bag, one set of clubs and receive a boarding card. Nice way to start a relaxing holiday.

Ryanair operates a priority boarding sytem which means (for an additional fee) you can board the plane before the majority of the other passengers and choose 'the prime seats' (whichever they may be on a 737 with 180 identical seats). When priority boarding is called, however, there is a general scrum as folks jostle and work their way to the front of the queue to get on board.

Once on board passengers try desperately to find stowage for the 180 bags they have taken on board, each one of which is packed to the gills and just inside the maximum weight and size allowance (thereby not incurring an additional charge from the airline). As a result the plane takes off with packed overhead lockers, suitcases sticking out underneath seats and - most worrying - bags jammed behind peoples legs, a definite safety hazard in case of evacuation. None of the cabin crew seemed to mind this.

The aircraft themselves are designed to be as uncomfortable as possible. The interior decor is deep blue and bright yellow. The deep blue tends to be the leather on the seats you are sitting on and the yellow tends to be the overhead bins, the walls and - particularly - the back of the seat in front at eye level. This colour yellow fits with the airline's theme but it is also not at all conducive to trying to sleep or rest and relax. On top of that the seats do not recline. At all. Plus there are no storage areas in the back of the seats and your vision is dominated by the safety leaflet which has been embedded (surrounded by the garish yellow) into the headrest of the seat in front.

I suppose I could deal with that if that was the extent of it. However the modus operandi of the Ryanair flight is to minimise the opportunities to do anything other than spend money. There are constant interruptions throughout the flight:

• Drinks are served (to buy, of course)
• Food is served (to buy, of course)
• Lottery scratchcards are served (to buy, of course)
• Duty free goods are served (to buy, of course)
• Telephone cards are served (to buy, of course)

Then the cycle starts again. On a flight of a little over 2 hours I was offered two lots of drinks, two lots of food, two lots of scratchcards, a phone card and some duty free. I bought nothing, however. But each interruption consisted of an announcement over the public address system (pre-recorded by a Scottish gentleman with just that right sort of grating Scottish accent that I find annoying), followed by the cabin staff parading up and down the aisle trying to sell you things.

I tried reading the in-flight magazine as a distraction. Except there isn't one. Well, there is one, but it is handed out at the start of the flight to anyone who wants it. The magazine itself consists of a number of (admittedly quite well written) articles coupled with over 30 pages of in-flight advertising for Ryanair itself. Oh, and once you have the magazine you have to keep hold of it because - as mentioned earlier - there are no seat back pockets to store anything in.

Overall I found the experience to be very unsettling. The casual lack of respect with which customers are treated did concern me. The apparent safety violations of allowing bags to be stowed behind passengers legs was also worrying. I had concerns about whether Ryanair skimp on their aircraft maintenance to save money, but have been unable to uncover anything reliable that can confirm whether this happens or not. With a relatively new fleet I have to believe that this is not an issue at present.

My question to those who know is "Does this follow the Southwest Airlines lo-cost business model or is o'Leary at Ryanair blazing his own trail and wanting to run an aerial bus service?"

I suppose in the big scheme of things (and this is the argument a lot of people will - legitimately - throw back at me) for a 'free' flight what, really, can you expect? My counterargument to that is "How much abuse and bad service will you support before 'free' becomes 'too much'?". After all there has to be a dividing line between what you would expect if you were paying regular fares to a regular airline, and the level of service you expect when paying lo-cost airline fares. When does this tip the balance from being 'free and rough' to being 'abusive'?

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• Pay Toilets On Airplanes? (cbsnews.com)
• Southwest Airline! A different kind of Airline... (imperfectaction.com)
• Online check-in desks the future of low cost air travel (travel-rants.com)

Aviation industry looks to go green

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Aviation leaders have taken a proactive role in looking at ways of mitigating their environmental impact according to a recent report from wired magazine

The 11-point plan laid out in "Aviation and Climate Change: The Views of Aviation Industry Stakeholders" (.pdf) was developed by some of the industry's leading trade groups and addresses everything from general aviation and commercial carriers to aircraft manufacturers. It outlines a broad principles for the industry and policymakers to adhere to as they grapple with climate change, and makes it clear the industry wants to be more involved in the discussion -- and solution.

This is an interesting development because it places the aviation industry in a pro-active postion when it comes to climate change and the impact this industry has on the environment.

Although the devil is in the details:

A lot of the text is pretty straightforward (or 'boilerplate') and they talk about items such as a "comprehensive energy policy" - which provides either little information and even less confidence. Additionally there are attempts within the document to position ecological regulation in direct opposition to jobs by stating that "potential benefits of regulation should be weighed against the cost to the economy, jobs, communities, and the transportation system"

There are, however a number of rays of light emanating from this document in the form of proposals to overhaul ATC systems to reduce aircraft holding times, or adopting operation efficiencies such as continuous decent approaches which reduce fuel consumption.

Overall the document is welcome change of direction for the aviation industry which has -up until now - tried to distance itself from it's environmental impact with claims that aviation emmissions account for 'just 2%' of the global CO2 fallout globally.

Although I suspect the upcoming United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen in December has served it's purpose of focusing the minds of aviation bigwigs.

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Farnborough Air Show 2008 - ZERO Infringements!

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One of the facts released at a 'wrap up' meeting for the bienniel Farnborough Air Show was that despite two weeks of formal restrictions of flying across popular areas of Class 'G' in mid July 2008, there were NO infringements (and that's for the second Farnborough Air Show in succession).

Well done to everyone concerned, and that means UK pilots as well as the clubs, air traffickers, magazine editors, forum moderators, AIS staff, aviation organisations and the 2008 Farnborough Air Show planners, all of whom helped spread a consistent message running up to, and during, the two weeks of restrictions.

(This post first appeared on the FLY ON TRACK web site run by my radio axaminer and general good guy Irv Lee. Please take time out to visit the site. It has great information on avoiding airspace infringements)

The new ATC procedures outside controlled airspace.

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The UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) recently announced a wave of changes to the provision of Air Traffic Control services outside controlled airspace.

Up until now the provision of ATSOCA waas provided by a variety of air traffic units and used by all airspace users - from General Aviation to commercial and military aircraft. On 12th March 2009 these services will change when a complete revision comes into effect. It is therefore vital that all controllers and pilots have a detailed knowledge of the change.

All the information about these changes is available at the airspace safety web site, but I wanted to give you a summary of the changes here.

Previously when contacting a LARS service (such as Farnborough) you could receive services such as FIS (Flight Information Service), RIS (radar information service) or RAS (Radar Advisory Service). Each of these was a different level of service providing different information and coverage. As a general aviation pilot flying in VMC you generally needed nothing more than a flight information service.

Under the new rules and regulations the services which can be provided are as follows:

Basic Service: A Basic Service is intended to offer the pilot maximum autonomy and the avoidance of other traffic solely relies on using the 'see and avoid' principle, to avoid other traffic.
Traffic Service: A Traffic Service provides the pilot with traffic information on conflicting aircraft. No deconfliction advice is passed and the pilot is responsible for collision avoidance.
Deconfliction service: A Deconfliction Service provides the pilot with traffic information and deconfliction advice on conflicting aircraft.
Priority Service: A Procedural Service is a non-radar service, where instructions are provided aimed at achieving deconfliction minima from other aircraft to which the controller is also providing a Procedural Service.

Each of these differs quite substantially from the current service provided by controllers.

The Civil Aviation Authority has produced multimedia CD's which explain and illustrate the different services. All registered UK pilots will receive this CD over the next couple of days. If you haven't received this CD (or if you are not a registered UK pilot) you can access the contents online at the Airspace Safety Website.

Learn about the new servies, take the Selftest and stay safe!

Airplanes Don't Stall, Pilots Stall Them

Image by I am Mike's photos via Flickr

By Doug Daniel

When smooth airflow separates from your wings they stall, losing most of their lift. If you are lucky the airplane drops like a brick, pitches down, accelerates and starts to fly normally again. If you are not so lucky, one wing stalls, rolling your airplane toward the stalled wing as it progresses to a spin before you can recover. It is probably a good idea to keep the airflow attached to the wing and the tail and every other surface needed for controlled flight.


An aerodynamicist would tell you that stalls can only occur when an airfoil reaches or exceeds its critical angle of attack. I would say that a stall occurs only when you try to make the wind turn too sharp a corner.

You see, air is sticky. Not very sticky but it is a little sticky. An aerodynamicist would clear his throat; raise his eyebrows and say, "Viscous." So let's ignore the aerodynamicist. It's sticky. When air blows past a gently curved surface, like a wing, it tends to stick to the surface even though the surface curves away from the wind.

If the wing is symmetric top and bottom and the wind is coming straight on, the wind impacts the front of the wing and builds a high pressure area there. Then as it starts to follow the contour of the wing, like anything following a curved path, it gets pulled out. But its stickiness holds it next to the surface. The result is low pressure over most of the surface, top and bottom.

Now if you pitch the wing up a bit by pulling back on the stick a bit, the air on top must change direction a bit more than the air on the bottom. The result is more low pressure on the top and less on the bottom. Perhaps the high pressure area on the bottom of the wing is bigger than before. The wing is sucked up by the top and pushed up by the bottom. We call this lift.

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Suppose you pitch the wing up a lot by pulling the stick a long way back. The air on the top has to change direction a lot and the pressure on the top drops a lot. If you pull the stick far enough, the low pressure area on the top of the wing sucks air from the back of the wing forward, separating the airflow from the top of the wing. This is bad. The low pressure area on the top of the wing disappears as it is filled by the forward flowing air. The wing loses lift. This is a stall.

The airflow separates from the wing of a properly designed airplane before it separates from the tail. If the tail has lift and the wing doesn't the airplane's wing drops and the tail doesn't. This is a good thing because the wing comes down and faces a lower pitch attitude. The results are that the wind re-attaches to the upper surface, lift is restored and the airplane returns to normal.

Now suppose the pilot continues pulling back on the stick. As soon as the wing develops lift, it goes up too far again and stalls again. We call this bobbing action 'buffeting.'

Buffeting is good because it warns the pilot that he or she is pulling too hard on the stick and the wing is ready to enter a serious stall - one that could lead to a potentially fatal spin.

So now we know that the real warning of an impending serious stall is buffeting. We also know that buffeting is caused by pulling the stick too far. So we know that the way to avoid a stall is to pull less when we feel buffeting. We also know that if we pull less on the elevator, that the airplane will go down. That could be a really bad thing. Increasing the engine's power simultaneously with easing up on the elevator can mitigate that sinking feeling.

Notice that no where in this discussion of what causes stalls and what to do about them was the concept of airspeed needed. Stalls are only caused by pitching the wings up too far - nothing else. Even though stalling speed is a useful term, there really is no unique stalling speed for an airplane. You have to read the fine print. What 'stall speed' usually means is the speed at which an airplane's wing exceeds its maximum pitch attitude if the airplane is loaded to maximum landing weight, is in the landing configuration and flying straight ahead.


Doug Daniel is a long time pilot, flight instructor, software engineering manager and author. His department developed the software for the out-the-window-displays for the space shuttle, F-117, RS-71 and numerous other exotic aircraft simulators. His writing focuses on flying techniques designed to make flying easier and safer. If this was interesting, visit his website at http://www.FlyingSecretsRevealed.com/flying_questions/

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