Ruinair

There is a bus to Paris but the fare costs more than the flight and the duration of the bus journey is longer than the duration of the flight. I could hire a car today but I have seen too much of Parisian driving skills to risk that option. When you buy a new car in Paris you must go out on the first day with a claw hammer and knock lots of dents and holes in the side of the car, because if you don’t, some other lunatic driver will do it for you in a 2CV the next day. I enquire at the airport information desk about taking a local bus into the town.

One of the girls points outside. ‘Voila, ze bus.’

I almost get on the bus but I check first. ‘To Beauvais?’

She shakes her head. ‘Non. A Paris.’

I stand my ground. ‘I want to go to Beauvais.’

She turns to her colleague. ‘Il veut aller a Beauvais.’ Incredulity. They stare as if I’m on day release.

I persevere. ‘The bus?’

Much shaking of heads. ‘No bus. Rien.’

I’m sure there’s a bus. ‘Not on a Sunday?’ I ask.

‘Jamais, jamais. Taxi.’

Beauvais is the capital of the Oise region of Picardy and has 60,000 inhabitants. The Hotel le Chenal is in the town centre. It’s not a three-star hotel, it’s the three-star hotel. I once stayed in a two-star hotel but I broke out into a rash at the lack of stars, and I once stayed in a hotel where the maid did not fold the toilet roll into a nice point daily so I checked out immediately. This hotel offers typical French hospitality. It takes me ten minutes to convince the duty manager I have a reservation, not that I want to make one. He fumes behind the counter and utters his first words of a genuine French welcome. ‘You pay me eighty euro now.’ It’s fairly quiet here. If ten more guests check in, that’ll make eleven in all.

The manager asks me if I want breakfast. I tell him that it’s the most important meal of the day and of course I do, since I have paid for it, but then I realise he’s only determining if he needs to employ a chef. My room overlooks the train station. There are exotic lights outside which change from red to amber to green and back. The bath is diamond-shaped, too big for one. I saw the same bath in a documentary I was forced to watch on a brothel in the Nevada desert. I accidentally stumble upon filth on the TV. Channel 17 features Priscilla upon a chaise longue, who has a compulsion to slowly undress. I am shocked. This sort of stuff should only be shown on pay TV. After her comes Natalia. Then Eva. Olga. Maria. Claudia. Etc.

The history of Beauvais is as potted as shrimps. In 1357 a peasant revolt began here, the Jacquerie. History shows me that the peasants are always revolting: poor dental hygiene, inappropriate dress sense and a lack of proper table manners are endemic. Beauvais’s main products are blankets, carpets, ceramic tiles, brushes, bricks, chemicals, felt and tractors. Beauvais’s only famous citizen is a lady named Jeanne Hachette. In 1472 the Duke of Burgundy laid siege to the town and all was lost until Jeanne killed an enemy soldier with an axe, tore down his Burgundy flag and rallied the troops. Her statue lies in the main town square and she is good-looking and well-built, in a bronze-casting sort of way. Her achievements are celebrated every October with a procession through the town where the women take precedence over the men. This day must be especially difficult for the French male.

The city centre was destroyed by WWII bombardments so the buildings are new but still ugly. I stroll along the main street, Rue Carnot, where there are estate agents who have perfected the pricing of houses to an amazing science, their windows displaying exact prices such as €183,564 and €242,973. I immediately stick out in the streets because I am the only person not carrying a huge baguette as if I plan to mug someone with it. I use my excellent command of French to buy my own baguette for lunch, and also largely for self-protection. A few people stop me to ask me questions. Do I look like I know about metered car parking and the one-way system?

The Cathedral of Saint-Pierre is a spectacular disaster. It was begun in 1225 and was to be the largest cathedral in Europe but its vaults collapsed in 1272. The French builders had another go soon after and built a 128-metre spire but this collapsed in 1284. Today it’s a stub of a cathedral, having a chapel, a choir and a transept, and there’s another church where the nave should be located. The cathedral’s astronomical clock required the co-ordinated assembly in the 1860s of 90,000 different parts, surely a feat only equalled by the average irate IKEA flat-pack customer. If this clock had been assembled in Ireland, we would have many pieces left, surplus to requirements. These would be discarded on the sly as a workman looks at his trusty Casio watch and announces, ‘Sure, it’s keeping good time, like.’ I stare at the clock for some time and realise it’s completely useless. I cannot tell the time by looking at the face.

There is a Son et Lumiére show but there’s quite a crowd here so I buy a ticket in good time. There are 100 chairs with headsets in front of the clock and I get a great seat in the front. The crowds thin as the show starts. No one else bought a ticket. The lights go up and people walk over to gawk but the area is roped off to stop freeloaders. They see me sitting on my own and maybe they can see a corner of the clock. The narrator in my headset begins an explanation, in much detail, of the first of the fifty-two different clock faces. The onlookers start taking photographs, the oldies with cameras and the young with mobile phones. I don’t know whether they photograph me or the clock but they send the photograph back to their mates. ‘This is the one guy who bought the ticket to watch that crap clock show in that half-built church.’ Towards the end of the show various wooden religious figures repeatedly move around the clock on wooden runners but, like BBC chat show hosts, there are few moving parts. The angels wave their arms about a bit and Jesus gives me a nod and a wink a few times. I’m not that impressed. I bet this happens every time.

I am not a huge fan of museums, especially the Imperial War Museum in London, which contains the three worst words in the English language, but the National Tapestry Museum is a top attraction. The huge carpets should be underfoot rather than on walls. Some of the tapestries took five years to make. My mother used to have a Singer like that. I walk the town in the evening but fail to find anything happening in any bars or restaurants. I slowly realise that by merely being here, I am in grave danger of becoming the nightlife. I return in despair to the hotel at 8.30pm. The manager prematurely wishes me Bon nuit. He knows nothing happens here. I am aghast to find Channel 17 has shut down for the night so I retire for a long soak in my brothel bath.

I always look forward to a large hotel breakfast, avoiding only melon balls on principle, what with the awful suffering caused to the poor melons. Today there’s a buzz of sombre conversation at the front bar where locals perch on bar stools as they down espressos, but they glare back. The manager waves me away as if I’m a beggar on the take. ‘Petit déjeuner. Ze back room.’ I sit at one of only two place settings, have cornflakes from one of two bowls, take OJ in one of the two glasses and eat two of the last four croissants. It would not be unreasonable for me to assume that one remaining guest has yet to dine.

Before I check out, I surf the TV and accidentally stumble upon Channel 17. I get twenty seconds of Olga on the same chaise longue until the broadcast ends precisely at 10am. I wait ten polite minutes to check out but the manager gives me that knowing look. ‘That porno channel just finished, eh?’ Upon my polite enquiry the manager shows me the timetable of the bus from the Gare to the airport. One bus leaves at 8.04am and the next leaves at 11.50am. I have missed the first bus and the second is too late for me. There are four hours between buses. They don’t use a bus timetable around here, they use a calendar.

I arrive by taxi at Beauvais terminal one nano-second after the Paris bus deposits ninety ginger Irish passengers plus bags. I stand in line out the door, drag my bag across bare concrete and check in by the building site hoardings. The overhead screens have twee pictures of little thatched cottages because all Irish houses still look this. Past security I wait inside the tent, which upon close inspection is a marquee in need of a party. One moment the apron is deserted and the next there’s 210 million dollars of Boeing’s finest hardware; all three aircrafts sporting the angelic harp on the tail with the tricolour and the EI aircraft number on the fuselage. The aircraft are bound for Dublin, Shannon and Milan.

Who ever thought a Paddy airline could fly Italians from an airport 80 km from Paris to near Milan for one euro? I enjoy a swirl of national pride. I want to strut my stuff inside the tent and tell everyone that those shiny aircraft are ours. Sure, it’s all we have as a nation: Guinness, Waterford Crystal (now made in Poland), Bono and the lads, Boyzone, Westlife, Saint Bob, the baldy girl who did the Prince cover, Terry Wogan, the ex-James Bond actor, St Paddy’s Day, Riverdance, the shamrock, the craic and this airline. Plus literary chaps like Joyce, Shaw, Yeats, Beckett, Swift and meself, and also the Corrs, particularly Andrea. And not forgetting Sharon of the RTE News, Noodles Carey from the weather and Lisa who does the weather forecast on Sky News.

Mick shares my patriotic enthusiasm. ‘They don’t call us the fighting Irish for nothing. We have been the travel innovators of Europe. We built the roads and laid the rails. Now it’s the airlines. I’m Irish and we don’t have to prove anything. We are God’s own children. We bow down to nobody. The airline industry is full of bullshitters, liars and drunks and we excel at all three in Ireland. We will be the world’s biggest airline. There is no shortage of ambition here. We’ll stuff every one of them in Europe, we won’t be second or third and saying, “Didn’t we do well?” We are a small Irish company, out there stuffing it to the biggest airlines all over Europe, and of course that feels good.’

Customer Service

Ruinair Ltd

Dublin Airport

Dear Sirs,

I wish to complain about my recent flight from Dublin to Beauvais.

I boarded early to get a good seat at the rear of the aircraft. I remind you that your website states the following: ‘We operate a free seating policy, so seats cannot be pre-booked. However, we operate a priority boarding system which allows you to choose your own seat on board.’ There were seats vacant in rows at the rear but when I went to sit there a cabin crew girl told me I could not sit in these rows. When I asked her why not, she replied, ‘Balance.’ I said I was fine and I hadn’t touched a drop of hard liquor all day. When I asked her what she meant, she did not know, but kept saying ‘For balance.’ Clearly she was repeating something she had been told without fully understanding it. I have travelled on many other airlines and have seen passengers sit in these rows and we all lived to tell the tale to our loved ones. Now I am worried that if I sit ever again in these rows on any aircraft I may single-handedly cause the aircraft to topple over and plunge to mother earth, and all because of very little old me. I might add there were some rather large Americans on board who sat randomly all over the aircraft and they were a far greater danger to the ‘balance’ of the aircraft, since I am only a mere 12 stone and they were humungous.

My complaint is that although you state passengers can choose their own seat on board, clearly this is not the case. I look forward to your detailed and ‘balanced’ reply.

Yours etc,

Disgusted of Dublin

Four days later…

Dear Mr Kilduff,

I acknowledge receipt of your letter.

I apologise for any inconvenience caused by not being able to sit in certain rows on your flight with us.

Whilst we do operate a free seating policy, on recommendation from the manufacturers Boeing, we are advised when an aircraft is not filled to a certain capacity it is necessary to cordon off three rows of seats. This is for weight and balance purposes.

Once again I apologise for any inconvenience caused and hope that the above is sufficient information.

Yours sincerely

For and on Behalf of RUINAIR LIMITED

More bolloxology. And here’s why. A few months later I read in the newspaper of a former Ruinair cabin crew member sacked for allegedly falling asleep on the job who was ‘delighted’ that a tribunal has found she was unfairly dismissed. One Ms Vanessa Redmond was fired after a passenger complained she had blocked off rows of seats and fallen asleep while reading a novel on a Dublin to Durham flight. The passenger, who was married to a Ruinair manager, said he believed he saw Ms Redmond fall asleep. Ms Redmond denied all the charges apart from blocking off a row of seats, which her Ruinair colleagues testified was common practice because they didn’t want passengers ‘in their faces’. Balance, me arse.

How to Build Your Own Five Billion Euro Airline

1985

Incorporate your new airline in the Republic of Ireland on 28 November with £1 of share capital ‘to carry on the business of general carriers and forwarding agents and to use machines of all kinds capable of being flown in the air,’ as if there’s much choice other than using aircraft. Seriously consider calling your airline Trans Tipperary Air but then decide to name it after yourself. You know that one in ten new airlines succeed.

The late Tony Ruin was born in Thurles in 1936, worked as a clerk with Aer Lingus in Shannon, ran the Aer Lingus operation in New York’s JFK, dabbled in aircraft leasing and set up Guinness Peat Aviation with Aer Lingus and a City of London bank, hanging on to a 10 per cent personal stake in a fledgling enterprise ultimately worth millions years later. Tony once told a senior manager, ‘The world is made up of fuckers and fuckees and in our relationship, you are my fuckee.’ On an Aer Lingus flight from London to Dublin Tony once encountered a senior Aer Lingus executive who publicly ridiculed him for flying on his arch rival, to which Tony replied: ‘I had to fly on your airline—all our Ruinair flights are full today.’ Tony once admitted to being happiest when stepping either on or off an airplane, much like myself.

Start your airline by flying from Waterford to London Gatwick, Waterford being ninety miles from Dublin and shortly to be renamed Dublin South International. Use a single turbo-prop fifteen-seater Bandeirante aircraft which today would not hold all your management team. Hire only cabin crew smaller than 5 foot 2 inches to operate in the tiny cabin. Employ 51 people and fly 5,000 passengers between Britain and Ireland.

1986

Launch a second route: Dublin to London Lootin’. Charge £99 for a flight (which seems steep now but was half the price charged by the two flag carriers). Run press advertising campaigns which ask ‘Do you want to pay £100 for breakfast?’ Use two 46-seater BAE-748 aircraft. Launch a Knock to Lootin’ route, Knock being a village in the west of Ireland where the Virgin Mary allegedly appeared and granted favours, much like the Holy Stone of Clonrickett as seen in Father Ted. Employ 151 people and fly 82,000 passengers.

1987

Lease three bac1-11 aircraft from Tarom, the Romanian state airline. The planes come with Romanian pilots and crew, making for challenging cabin announcements. Increase the number of routes to fifteen, all between Ireland and the uk. Lose £3 million. Employ 212 people and fly 322,000 passengers.

1988

Lease three more aircraft from Tarom, making six in all. Launch the first routes to Europe: Dublin to Brussels (not Charleroi) and Munich (not Friedrichshafen). Launch a business class service and a frequent flyer club, neither of which endure. Incur more losses. All is gloom and doom. Employ 379 people and fly 592,000 passengers. Appoint an assistant to Mr Ruin called Mick O’Leery: born 20 March 1961, son of Timothy and Gerarda originally from Co. Cork, the eldest boy of six children, educated at St Mary’s national school and the Christian Bothers in Mullingar, and Clongowes Wood College in Co. Kildare, a graduate of Economics & Social Studies from Trinity College Dublin and formerly a trainee tax accountant for eighteen months with KPMG Stokes Kennedy Crowley Dublin (where he assisted Mr Ruin with his tax affairs) and a successful former owner of three corner newsagent shops in Walkinstown, Terenure and Crumlin.

1989

Lose more money hand over fist. Employ 477 people and fly 644,000 passengers. The new guy called Mick tells you to shut down the airline due to the huge and accumulating losses, his first and only mistake.

1990

Realise you have lost £20 million due to intense competition from BA and Aer Lingus. Tell the government you are going to shut down and will lay off the workforce unless you get rights to fly to London’s newest out of town airport, Stansted. Invest £20 million additional cash when no one believes your airline can fly. Send the chap called Mick to Southwest Airlines in Texas, USA: a low fares airline flying only one type of plane to out of the way airports with quick turnaround times and high flight frequency and where passengers find their own seats on board and pay for drinks and food. Allow Mick to nick all Southwest’s best ideas as he returns to Dublin to implement a new and identical business model. Employ 493 staff and fly 745,000 passengers.

1991

Commence Dublin to Stansted flights. The Gulf War causes traffic to plummet as passengers prefer to stay at home and watch tanks guarding Heathrow on their TV. Move your main UK base from Lootin’ to Stansted. Watch Dan Air go bust. Agree with Mick privately that he will be paid 25 per cent of the annual profits of the airline in excess of £2 million. Employ 477 staff and fly 651,000 passengers, the only year of such a decrease, but for the first time ever make an annual profit of a mere £293,000.

1992

Reduce routes from nineteen to six between Ireland and the UK. Employ 507 staff and fly 945,000 passengers.

1993

Buy six second-hand Boeing 737s from Britannia. Employ 503 staff and fly 1,120,000 passengers.

1994

Appoint Mick as Chief Executive Officer. Chuck out the old BAC planes and use only Boeing 737s. Employ 523 staff and fly 1,666,000 passengers.

1995

Overtake BA and Aer Lingus to become the biggest passenger carrier on the Dublin to London route, the busiest international air route in Europe, largely due to the water, making train travel difficult and driving even more hazardous. Open your first UK domestic route, flying from Stansted to Glasgow Prestwick. Celebrate your tenth anniversary in business. Buy four Boeings from Dutch airline Transavia bringing the fleet size to eleven 737s. Employ 523 staff and fly 2,260,000 passengers.

1996

Open new routes to Leeds, Bradford, Cardiff and the Bournemouth Riviera. Buy eight more ‘slightly used with one careful owner’ Boeings from Lufthansa. The EU completes the Open Skies deregulation of airlines in Europe allowing free competition on all internal routes. Cancel Mick’s lucrative profit-sharing deal and give him 22 per cent of the airline instead. Employ 605 staff and fly 2,950,000 passengers.

1997

Jet off to the continent and start four new routes to Stockholm, Oslo, Paris and Brussels, or at least within sixty miles of these cities. Buy two more 737s bringing the fleet to 21 aircraft. Float your company on the Dublin and New York NASDAQ Stock Exchanges and watch the airline’s share price double on the first day of trading, valuing the company at €300 million. Employ 659 staff and fly 3,730,000 passengers.

1998

Open new routes to Malmo, St Etienne, Carcassonne (where?), Venice (or close), Pisa and Rimini. Order 45 new Boeings for two billion US dollars, being 25 firm orders and 20 options, an option being a sort of Irish aircraft order—sure we might buy the planes or we might not, but sure they’re only seventy million bucks a shot so sure well let you know either way later on…like. Employ 892 staff and fly 4,629,000 passengers.

1999

Go mad and open new routes to Frankfurt (close), Biarritz, Ostend (where now?), Ancona, Genoa, Turin, Derry and Aarhus. Employ 1,094 staff and fly 5,358,000 passengers.

2000

Launch an online flight booking facility which garners 50,000 bookings per week. Live with the eternal shame of one of your cabin crew named Brian Dowling winning Big Brother. Sponsor the Sky News weather forecast to raise your profile. Employ 1,262 staff and fly 7,002,000 passengers using 26 aircraft.

2001

Fly Tony Blair and family to their holidays in Carcassonne in France and milk the resultant publicity for all it is worth. Post 9/11 watch other airlines panic and oil prices soar but immediately order 100 new Boeings plus options on 50 more, the biggest aircraft order of the year. Open your first continental base at Brussels Charleroi and drive Belgium’s Sabena Airlines livid (an airline that only made a profit in one of the prior forty years and thus soon to be bankrupt and whose name stands for Such A Bad Experience, Never Again). Employ 1,467 staff and fly 9,355,000 passengers using 36 aircraft.

2002

Open your second continental base in the small peasant village of Hahn, seventy miles from Frankfurt. Start flying on 26 new routes in all. Become Europe’s number one airline in terms of punctuality, fewest cancellations and least lost luggage. Employ 1,547 staff and fly 13,419,000 passengers using 41 aircraft.

2003

Buy out a competitor, Buzz, from KLM for 24 million euros and relaunch their routes for half the fares. Become the largest airline operating at London Stansted. Open new continental bases in Milan (or Bergamo) and Stockholm (or Skavsta). Another Gulf War. Mount a mock invasion of Lootin’ airport in a tank for the publicity. Launch 73 new routes. Overtake British Airways for the first time by carrying more passengers in a month in Europe. Employ 1,746 staff and fly 19,490,000 passengers using 54 aircraft.

2004

Become the most searched airline on the web as ranked by the teenage billionaire gurus at Google. Open bases near Rome and Barcelona. Warn of a ‘bloodbath’ on fares in the winter months and consequently watch your own share price nosedive in a freefall. Watch the European Union expand eastwards and salivate at the prospect of all those potential passengers. Employ 2,288 staff and fly 24,635,000 passengers using 72 aircraft.

2005