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Ask HN: Why is Ryanair monetizing airplane lavatories?

2 points by michael_dorfman ↗ HN
As I imagine most HN readers have already seen, Ryanair as announced a plan to charge passengers 1 Euro to use the bathroom on their planes, which has been met with near-universal derision. (See http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iZziXJPnwEjtWkoF4sD8vI8q2Wag for a typical article.)

My question is: why do you think they are going ahead with this?

Possible reasons:

a) an untapped source of income (seems doubtful)

b) to discourage bathroom use (the stated reason)

c) the free publicity from the news reports (i.e., there's no such thing as bad press)

d) an attempt to reinforce their positioning as the cut-rate/no-frills carrier

Anyone have any thoughts? Is this the collossally bad idea it appears to be, or is it actually a clever move?

5 comments

[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 34.2 ms ] thread
shard
Switching from free to pay will never garner good will, and when I run across it in stores (Borders Bookstore I am looking at you) I always find it a cheap tactic and makes the place feel low class. Ryanair should try other ways to monetize. Have they put advertising in the bathrooms yet? I've been seeing that more and more, and I find it much less objectionable than pay-for-pee.
gills
Perhaps there is a correlation between Ryanair's cheapskate customers and people who clog airplane toilets, and they are being crushed under the repair costs.

Hey, you asked for open-ended speculation, that's what you'll get :)

Fenn
It's a publicity stunt. You'll often see press releases from the low cost carriers with stories such as this (or "Fat people to be charged extra") - RyanAir are particularly famous for it.

They've got so much mileage out of this particular one, I'd be surprised if they don't roll it back out again in 18 months.

sharpn
I agree with Fenn, it's definitely c. They have form for leaking such headline-grabbing 'information', including one about introducing business class with rude 'extras'.
arran
After airing the idea of paying to use the toilet they've apparently received loads of suggestions for other charges, so they've started a competition for people to suggest the next discrepancy charges, the winner gets €1000.

http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/news.php?yr=09&month=mar&...

Check out the cartoon at the bottom. Definitely c)