Mahound’s Weblog

As I placed my foot on Portuguese ground, at Sá-Carneiro Airport, Porto, I felt finally relieved, and thanked my parents for raising me in an average country, with moderate policies and gentle ways.

It all started when I planned my trip home: one week at Portugal, traveling  from Geneva to Porto through London, where I would attend the Dream Theater concert at the Wembley Arena. My sister (coming from Porto) would meet me there, as well as my good friend Pedro (at the time visiting Scotland). It all went very smoothly: my sister had never been in London, and she enjoyed it a lot, and the concert was wonderful in every sense.  But when things happen exactly as planned, the probability of disaster increases substantially… On Sunday, the 14th, we took the London underground in order to go back to our hostel, in Stamford Brook, get our bags, and travel to Stansted Airport, through the coaching service which departs Victoria station.  The subway took longer than we expected, and we didn’t make it to the coach station for the bus we were planning. However, we managed to get to Stansted airport by 17:40, 50 minutes before the flight. We checked in immediately at the Ryanair desk, and noticed that some people even checked in after us. After this, a series on nonsense happened:

• We picked the wrong security queue: it was slooooow… they were almost stripping everyone down to the bone. Ironically, one of the x-ray machines was closed, unused, while hundreds of passengers tried to get to the boarding gates before losing the plane;
• The english paranoia is amazing: besides this nonsense of the liquids, that we have to handle everywhere we go, our english folks love inspecting shoes, checking everybody with metal detectors… I mean… do they really think this will keep them from doing a terrorist attack if they want to? I guess next time they’ll be waiting us with a transparent tube and latex gloves…;
• The airport personnel sucks… “Hey, I’ll miss my flight…” “The queue is the queue… sorry, there’s nothing I can do!”;
• People from International flights are mixed up with domestic flights… why? I had people flying to Newcastle before me in the queue… I mean… I’m thousands of Km from home!  And they were late as well! I couldn’t go before them, because they were desperate as well!
• Pedro got to another queue after me, and was out 20 minutes later… i took 50 minutes! 50 minutes? For security verification?
• I ran as fast as I could towards the boarding gates, but…
• “Sorry sir, shoe verification…” Damn! Why? I won’t blow a plane that I will most certainly miss!
• Finally, got to the gate, 10 min. after the departure, and… the plane was still there, but a cranky and arrogant Ryanair lady warned us that we wouldn’t make it, since we were late 10 min, bla bla… Her colleague, a much nicer lady, decided to go check, and brought the bad news that our luggage had been returned, bla bla…;
• Meanwhile, the cranky arrogant Ryanair employee decided to start yelling with an Italian lady that did not understand English: “Are you deaf? Can’t you hear what I said throght the speaker? It’s gate 43! I hate when people don’t listen to what I say!” I couldn’t stay silent, and I politely told her that she was being an asshole because the lady didn’t understand english, and even if she did, nothing would give her the right to yell at a passenger. I told her to learn how to behave before trying to work with people, and went back to the check-in area;
• Of course Ryanair had to rip us off in the end. They’re the only ones in Stansted flying to Porto, and I had to pay the extremely inflated amount of 340 GBP for the two of us (me and my sister) to get back home;

Lessons learned: Ryanair sucks - their service is expensive when compared to other lowcost companies, they won’t help you in any way if something out of normal happens (there are cases of people who see their flights canceled for no apparent reason), and they will try to rip you off in any way they can. Personnel ranges from friendly to extremely rude, as I had the chance to witness.

So, conclusions:

• Terrorism is used as an excuse to limit our liberties: I don’t want to see my deodorant and toothbrush inside a plastic bag, and I feel revolted for not being able to carry my own water to the flight. And how many terrorists were caught until now, through the use of these paranoid security verification methods?
• I’m an EU citizen, but that seems to make no difference for the UK authorities: they didn’t subscribe Schengen, and they’re happy with it: they’re able to hunt imaginary terrorists this way;
• Ryanair is the typical “purely capitalist” corporation:
  • They fire people for belonging to worker unions;
  •  They have no social concern;
  • They are incapable of assuming guilt or placing themselves in your position;
  • They’ll rip you off as much as they can;
  • They don’t care about  you and your satisfaction, they don’t even have an on-line complaint form! There’s even no e-mail to send complaints to!

Of course, I have no hope about receiving any compensation, since the system is made in a way that the fault always falls on the passenger. However, I’ll at least complain about the service, and demand the identification of the rude employee.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 at 3:41 pm and is filed under News, Society. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.