Ghastly Ryanair? They could teach us a thing or two

SNOBS knock ryanair, sneering at their urgent desire to sell you panini and perfume and seats just within sight of your children.

But they sent air fares tumbling and opened swathes of europe that tourism had ignored.

Ceo Michael o’leary (pictured), breeder of top racehorses and rare cattle, is as razorsharp as he is foul-mouthed.

rather than talking independence with the impotent Seanad, upper house of the irish parliament, nicola Sturgeon would have been better asking the irishman how to turn Prestwick airport into the aviation powerhouse it deserves to be.

and the chaos at Ba this week was a reality check for those with tales of how great air travel was when you paid sky-high prices to avoid the hoi polloi.

When it goes wrong, the legacy carriers – with flags on their tail fins – treat you as shabbily as anyone else.

i once took off for Glasgow only for snow no thicker than the icing on a cake to close its runway when we were at 27,000ft.

We landed in edinburgh instead and the grand old airline i was with didn’t want to know. to stop us milling around baggage reclaim, they said an airline rep would meet us outside. there was no rep. it was a ruse to get us off the premises. Charming.

and if you analyse most people’s stories about how beastly ryanair are, it usually boils down to them trying to get away with something – an oversized bag is the classic.

this summer, give me safe, on time and cheap. you can keep elitist high fares, ‘free’ inflight meals and ‘Grand old airlines regrets to announce a delay…’