Ryanair proposes what will probably be the lowest-priced airline ticket in the world: 4 to 8 pounds. For that, you don't get a comfortable seat, but a so called vertical one, a medieval-looking contraption with straps which would keep the passenger from tumbling round the airplane as it passes to the dreaded “mild turbulence.”
The idea spawned in the brain of Michael O'Leary, the airline's chief executive. According to The Telegraph, this modern day thinker already talked with US plane manufacturer Boeing about designing an aircraft with standing room.
Until then, O'Leary plans to add vertical seats at the back of its fleet of 250 planes. But wait, there's more.
The lucky buyer of a 5 pounds ticket will only have the privilege of using the vertical seat and nothing else. Not even the toilet. For that honor, he/she will have to pay an extra, say, 1 pound. That way, O'Leary says, customers will give up their nasty habit of using airplane toilets and be careful to dump their load (pardon the expression) before boarding.
Luckily, the aeronautical industry is governed by perhaps the harshest rules and regulations in the world. Even if safety testing of the system is scheduled for next year, the idea of standing passengers, strapped to their seats and with the bladder full doesn't quite appeal to regulators.
"It's aviation law that people have to have a seat-belt on from take-off and landing so they would have to be in a seat. I don't know how Mr O'Leary would get around that one. During turbulence passengers also have to have a seat-belt on," a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority told the source.
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