Or maybe we will. A few years ago Ruinair flew from Girona in Spain to Stansted with people seated in the aircraft’s toilets. The airline, which was reported to the regulator following the incident, acknowledged that the flight was overcrowded and that it should not have happened. ‘Ruinair does not overbook its flights,’ a spokesman said. ‘We are taking it very seriously and it is the subject of an internal investigation.’ The passengers seated on the toilets for the duration of the flight were Ruinair staff. Other staff not on duty on the particular flight sat in jump-seats in the passenger cabin. Ruinair said the incident occurred because too many off-duty staff were allowed on board. This is what’s known as a Loo Fares Airline.
Today the arriving passengers are still deplaning as we begin to get ready to board. Someday soon we will rush them at the two doors, like on the Tube. In fact this airline reminds me of the London Underground in many respects, but without the sense of personal space I enjoy on the Tube. Boarding is monitored in a simple manner. None of this new-fangled computer or electronic rubbish, as used by other airlines, is required. A staff member sits at a desk with an A4 page of numbers 1 to 189 and uses a highlighter marker to cross off our sequence number as we board. When a few of us have passed him by I expect him to leap up with joy, show us his completed fluorescent grid of work and shout Full House.
Getting onto the plane is by the scrum method. Two packs of burly passengers line up in opposite directions, wait for the signal and charge. ‘Crouch…touch…hold…engage.’ Like the Six Nations. We don’t depart the terminal, rather we escape in a circuitous double-pronged pincer movement. Obstacles such as passing freight traffic, abandoned electrical machinery and lethal rotating jet engines don’t matter because we want to get the best fucking seat. It’s such a race that it seems other passengers genuinely do not believe there will be seats for all. I’m on the inside and past the departure gate, but a girl cuts through the walkway and comes up fast on my rear, so without indicating left or right, I move ahead and speed to the rear steps, until the girl breaks into a fast stride last seen in that ludicrous Olympic walking race and makes towards the same rear steps, so I edge her off at the steps with a shoulder charge and we board the aircraft with myself in pole position to find…there are lots of vacant seats so we’re both gutted. I wonder if we boarded only by the rear steps, could the arriving passengers exit by the front steps simultaneously and save time?
My preference is to use the rear steps to board. There’s no point using the front steps unless you’re the pilot. It’s also proven to be safer to sit at the rear because you never hear of aircraft reversing into mountains. Also the ‘Black Box’ flight recorder is located in the tail and even when jets plunge into the Florida Everglades or the Amazonian rainforest, they always find the ‘Black Box’ intact, so that’s encouraging. It’s great to choose your own seat on board to avoid sitting beside large, loud or drunk people, teary babies or beardy loonies. I rarely sit in the emergency row with the extra leg room. Firstly you will spend the next two hours sitting ten feet away from the noisiest mother of all jet engines. And if that over-wing door blows out, you’re hoovered.
The tray tables of the seats in a few of the back rows of the aircraft are down and have tatty photo-copied multi-lingual notices advising we cannot sit there. I don’t know why. Maybe the crew dine there? I try to sit in one of these blocked seats but the cabin crew are having none of it and propel me along the aisle. This certainly undermines their treasured principle that we can sit anywhere we like when we board. ‘I think we certainly have democratised flight, in that there’s no curtains anymore, there’s no business class anymore, you’re not made to feel, you know, two inches tall, like, “Here you go, down with the poor people at the back.” Everybody is the same on Ruinair,’ says Mick.
I take a row of seats only to find others before me had a food fight here and I’m sitting on their bread and crisps. The new B737-800 aircraft sports a nausea-inducing puce-yellow interior. This is the only airline in the world who employ an interior designer suffering from colour blindness. It’s the same colour they use in McDonalds restaurants. Yellow is inviting and instantly warming but once you’re sitting for ten minutes you want to vacate your seat and leave. This is not so easily done at 500 mph and at 32,000 feet.
A fellow passenger holds her boarding card towards me. ‘Where is the seat number, please?’
‘You can sit anywhere,’ I advise helpfully. She is a veritable virgin. So rare these days.
Getting the optimal seat is a priority and it’s not easy because there is some excellent top-notch competition out there these days, so practice and discipline are essential. It’s important because the average elbow is wider than the seat’s armrest and the middle seats create a war zone on two fronts. I am entitled to the entire armrest, and that means both of them. When selecting an aisle or window seat, do so depending on your strongest arm. I prefer an aisle seat. We all wish to establish our personal comfort zone with no one sitting next to us. Years of research by Boeing’s head of aircraft seating found that one single factor most powerfully affects perceived passenger in-flight comfort: whether or not the seat next to you is empty. Even if the aircraft only has one free seat, then that free seat needs to be right beside me. Today I take an aisle seat where the window seat is already occupied by another solo flyer. We nod in an unspoken agreement and pile everything we own in this world into the empty middle seat: coats, newspapers, books, food, bags, scarves, the kitchen sink and a few dead rabid dogs. It usually works. The seat remains empty.
More extreme strategies are required to keep an entire row of three seats all to yourself. First take the aisle seat to block easy access for others. The Bag technique is where I take a sick bag and hold it over my mouth and as people come past I heave into the bag and make eye contact with my tired teary eyes looking for sympathy. The Zombie technique is where I sit tall in the seat, eyes wide and staring straight ahead and from that position I bounce my head back and forth until I am dizzy. The Busy technique is where I put down all the trays in the row, spread out my papers, lunch, water, mobile telephone, briefcase, pens, books and whatever else I can muster and look too busy and annoyed to move anything for anyone who dares ask me if the seats are free. The One-Liner technique includes saying to any would-be neighbour, ‘It sure feels good to be out of prison.’ Another technique which works only for men is the Love technique where I grab an aisle seat and as passengers walk past, I boldly look them up and down, smile at them and occasionally give them a nice stare. Women think I am trying to pull them and men don’t really want to know what I am thinking. If someone makes a move for the two seats I reach over and pat the seats and wink. This latter technique never fails. Either way, I am sitting on my own in an empty row.
Today there are lucky latecomers. The penultimate passengers are two flustered red-faced Dublin girls. ‘Jaysus, we wus sittin’ at the right gate but lookin’ at the wrong screen. I don’t know wha’. We’re the ones hirin’ a car when we get there. How are we gonna find our way around northern France when we can’t find our way outta the bleedin’ terminal building?’ The very last passengers to board don’t seem bothered at all as they stand around like a bunch of eejits in the aisles. They are all French. Naturellement. The aircraft is about 85 per cent full, which is typical for this airline. I am convinced they would achieve their average load factor of 85 per cent if they commenced a new daily service with one cent fares from Dublin to Timbuktu (South).
I wind my watch forward by one hour because France is one hour ahead of Ireland, plus about ten years. It was the Irish writer and Nobel prize-winner George Bernard Shaw who said that Ireland