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Ruinair Flight FR7043 – Saturday @ 2.10pm – DUB-AGP-DUB

Fare €300 plus taxes, fees and charges €40

The first sign of terminal trouble is the subtle inactivity at the Malaga departure gate. Our scheduled boarding time passes quite uneventfully. Growing mumblings of discontent and half-truths circulate like gossip. A lady with us has a daughter who works for this airline, such an admission to make, think of the public shame and humiliation, but she telephones her daughter. There is an aircraft outside so there’s hope, but she learns it has technical problems. The screens show ‘Retrasado’. This is Spanish for ‘Your Aircraft Is Fucked’. We wait in a void of passenger information and customer service. Every Ruinair flight number has an FR prefix. If the R stands for Ruinair, someone tell me please, what does the F stand for?

One brave passenger walks up to the desk and comes back with his hands outstretched, holding up ten fingers in full view to us. We will board in ten minutes time? He announces: ‘Delayed until ten o’clock tonight.’ Eight hours late. An engineer is flying out on another aircraft to rescue us from our fate. I recall Mick’s statement: ‘If a plane is cancelled will we put you up in a hotel overnight? Absolutely not. If a plane is delayed, will we give you a voucher for a restaurant? Absolutely not.’ I paid an arm and a leg for this trip, not to mention other essential body parts. Three hundred euros plus taxes, twenty euros less than our green national flag carrier Aer Lingus. And if Aer Lingus will now fly me from Dublin to London for one euro, does that make them a low fares airline? Ruinair is not a low fares airline. It’s only a lower fares airline.

My fellow passengers are middle-aged couples returning from their place in the sun with a tan to demonstrate that they’re loaded, glamorous leathery mothers and svelte daughters swapping copies of chick-lit and Hello, and gangs of forty-something businessmen still dressed in their garish checked golfing gear, all owning their little piece of Marbella or Puerto Banus. There is utter incredulity from four Americans who have lost all faith in European air travel. Airline credibility is like virginity. You can only lose it once. There are two Spaniards who can go home, eat, sleep, shop, clean, procreate and still return in time to depart. We sit near the screens showing departure times. In the past I have looked at these screens and gained much amusement from various charter airlines’ delays of, not hours, but days or weeks. Our flight is top of the list with a now nine-hour delay. Others pass by and smile over at us. Today the joke is on us.

I find a girl from Iberia; that’s the airline, not the peninsula. She checks her screens and tells me my flight has now completely disappeared and she doesn’t know what gate it might leave from. She is baffled because she says she used to work with the little Irish airline but she left. Wise woman. Somehow I survive nine hours in the terminal. You can only read the small print on the reverse side of your boarding card so many times. I visit every shop ten times, doze, read all known English language newspapers, down fries and Cokes, but still there are eons to kill until departure. At a time like this I harp back to Mick and his wise words: ‘An airplane is nothing more than a bus with wings on. Are we are trying to blow up the notion that flying is some kind of orgasmic experience rather than a glorified bus service? Yes, we are.’ Success.

We are drawn to the gate like moths to a flame as midnight approaches. A few Irish guys are drunk and enter the Ladies by mistake. Inside naked sunburnt babies are bathed in the hand basins by irate mothers. Passengers lie on the airport floor, their energy levels as depleted as their mobile telephone batteries. We prepare to board but there is mass confusion. Some of us have yellow fluorescent pen ‘P’s hand-written on our boarding cards. We think it means Priority. Others behind in the scrum ask if anyone has a yellow pen they can use. The Americans ask what the ‘P’ means. I tell them it stands for Pissed Off.

On board it’s clear some passengers are well and truly hammered, having spent nine hours in the airport bar knocking back rounds of San Miguel. ‘Same again.’ A guy sitting in the emergency exit aisle is swapped by Gavin the cabin supervisor with another passenger, because he’s too drunk to do anything in the event of an emergency, save a burp, stagger or a Ralph and Huey. He carries a plastic beaker of beer with him as he rises to move seats. The crew say nothing. Apparently you can now bring your own alcohol on board. He takes the proffered seat and asks Gavin for a Heineken. Gavin tells him to wait until we are airborne.

We get a vague explanation from the pilot as to the technical problem. It’s something to do with the ‘data management’ system. So that’s okay. It’s not like it’s important or anything, like a wheel, an engine or a wing. The pilot is female, called Carole somebody. She introduces her colleague on the flight deck, another female. The Americans look at each other and become very non-PC. ‘Two women pilots?’

Our aircraft is one of those pre-historic 23-year-old Boeing 737s, one evidently previously owned by Lufthansa because all the warning signs are in a language I don’t immediately understand. Schwimmweste unter Ihrem Sitz. Nicht Rauchen. Ausgang. I start looking for old pre-WWII signs like Gott im Himmel and Hände Hoch. The aircraft is so old that there’s a receptacle in the WC for the disposal of used lethal razor blades. I sit in one of those tired sunken velour seats where I worry my butt will become permanently wedged and I won’t ever be able to get up, and I might have to spend the rest of my life going back and forth on this aircraft, never getting any help from the crew, what with their fast turnaround times. As Mick says about this unique low fares travel experience: ‘You want luxury? Go somewhere else.’

The in-flight service is uneventful save for the resentment of the Americans. When it is announced there are drinks and snacks available for purchase, they exclaim to Gavin, ‘You’re kidding. Ten hours on the ground and you don’t even give us a goddamn cup of water?’ They have not heard Mick’s proclamation: ‘No, we shouldn’t give you a bloody cup of coffee. We only charge 19 euros for the ticket.’ One of the Americans is creative and asks the crew, ‘Do you have ice cubes? Can you give me a cup of ice? You don’t charge for ice?’ She denies his request. The American isn’t beaten. ‘Can we drink the water from the taps in the toilets?’ he perseveres. She stares back blankly. ‘That is forbidden.’ Later the crew come past with plastic bags and one girl says to me ‘Rubbish?’ and I wonder if she’s asking for my opinion about this airline.

Flights which depart late often arrive on time because airlines brazenly lie about journey times. Not this time. We land in Dublin at 1am local time on the next day. When I checked in thirteen hours ago I was clean-shaven but after this journey of Palinesque proportions, I now have a beard like Santa’s. We had religious education classes at school where a Holy Ghost priest educated us on the concept of eternity. He told us to think of time as a grain of sand and then add all the grains in the world together to gain a concept of eternity. Now I know I need to additionally include the delay on this flight to fully comprehend eternity.

I am still seething days later but consider myself fortunate to have escaped from Malaga. I mean, I could still be there today. My Ruinair experience demonstrates that sometimes it can be better to arrive than to travel. I crave a feeble revenge of sorts. I don’t hold out much hope but I craft a stroppy letter.

Customer Service

Ruinair Ltd

Dublin Airport

Dear Sirs,

I had the great misfortune to travel on FR7043 from Malaga to Dublin where our departure time was delayed by a record-breaking ten hours. In these circumstances can you firstly advise me of the exact reason for this delay since at the time all we got was the usual vague explanation?

Can you explain why no information was given to us at any time by any of your staff and why do you have zero staff located at Malaga airport? Why was it necessary to fly an engineer all the way out from Dublin when surely you could use local contractors to do maintenance work? Can you confirm the defective aircraft in question, a Boeing 737, is twenty-three years old, and if so, isn’t this three years longer than the useful life of twenty years as recommended by the makers?

Can you explain the utterly chaotic boarding process where some of us had handwritten ‘P’s on our boarding cards, which some thought meant ‘Priority’, and if so why was this not used when boarding as opposed to the ugly scrum we endured?

Can you advise why drunk passengers were allowed to board the flight after ten hours spent in the airport bar; one male passenger being moved by the cabin supervisor from a seat in the emergency exit row since he was too inebriated to do anything in the event of an emergency save barfing, and when moved he had a plastic beaker of beer in his hand; and do you now allow passengers to bring their own alcoholic drinks on board direct from the terminal bar?

Lastly please confirm you will reimburse me for my evening meal in the airport and the extra day’s car parking at the airport when a seven-day holiday became an eight-day human endurance test. If I had paid ten euros for this return flight I wouldn’t bother with this letter, but I paid a whopping €300 which isn’t so wonderfully low fares after all.

Yours etc,

Disgusted of Dublin

I am amazed to receive a reply the very next day by email. It must be all the practice they get.

Dear Mr Kilduff,

Thank you for your letter received today. We regret any inconvenience caused due to the delay to your flight FR7043. Regrettably on the day in question your flight developed a technical fault on arrival at Malaga. Unfortunately the local engineer, after a detailed inspection, advised that a part was required for the aircraft and therefore it was necessary to transport the part from our service centre in Dublin. Despite our rigorous maintenance standards, technical problems occasionally arise and may cause delays.

I do sincerely regret that our sequential boarding policy was not adhered to by the agents at Malaga. We have clearly instructed all airports and handling agents to board all flights by boarding card number sequence and please be assured that this lapse in policy will be taken up with our agents at Malaga.

We have strict guidelines for the carriage of passengers who are under the influence of alcohol. Our in-flight personnel are particularly vigilant and tactful in relation to passengers who, although creating no disturbance, may have being drinking prior to departure and in this regard such passengers are monitored throughout the flight. I do assure you, had it been visible to the crew that any passengers were consuming their own alcohol on board it would have been confiscated by the crew.

As you may appreciate, we are a very efficient low fare airline and whilst we pride ourselves upon not charging extortionate fares that many of our competitors do, equally our low fares do not permit us to meet consequential expenses of passengers who may on rare occasions be inconvenienced. In this regard, I regret that we are not in a position to accede to your request for reimbursement. This should be claimed from your travel insurers.

I do hope that despite your dissatisfaction on this occasion, you will afford us the opportunity of welcoming you on board a flight in the near future and providing you with our normal friendly and efficient service, this time without interruption.

Yours sincerely

For and on Behalf of

RUINAIR LIMITED

Mick knows how best to describe this carefully worded, cut and pasted, utterly useless reply since he has coined a choice expletive to be used by his airline in one-to-one print media interviews to describe any simple procedure which other airlines claim to be complex. Mick’s word is Bolloxology.