But in real terms, standing on flights will never happen. Although people like to say that we should take planes like we do buses, we don’t. You can wait for 10 minutes for a bus, you have to arrive at the airport at least an hour before for a plane. It’s inconceivable that anyone should stand for a journey of more than an hour, let alone two or three.
Let’s have a look at the practical side of why this won’t happen:
- Laws: There is no approval for a standing seat at present, and Ryanair aircraft are already at maximum capacity. There is little reason to think why this would change; would it benefit the consumer? No. Promo flights have always been around this price. There are several medical factors which may not allow fat people, very tall people or disabled people onto the seats; potential discrimination laws may apply here.
- Manufacturers: Ultimately the makers would comply – after all, they’re being paid by the airlines, but you would have to say they would be against this type of thing. Fitting more passengers may mean less aircraft are required, which equates to lower future orders.
- Airports: Some of the airports just are not going to be big enough to handle an extra 20% of passengers. Some gates cannot even take 100 people in comfort, let alone 200. Baggage queues may well stay the same, but passport queues would be longer.
- Turnaround: It would be impossible to turnaround an aircraft in 15 minutes with an extra 20% of passengers; more bags, more seating, more heads for cabin crew to count, more admin work. If turnaround increased to 25 minutes, over the course of a day that adds up to 1 hour 20m (assuming 8 sectors). That is almost one whole lost flight. Passenger numbers overall may not actually increase in proportion due to this lost capacity.
- Economics: The big one. The sums simply don’t stack up. Ryanair is all about reducing it’s costs. But a measure such as this, may actually be increasing them. Not only does the company have to retrofit it’s aircraft (not a large expense relatively), but costs will go up. On cheap airfares, most of the costs are in airport duties and fees. Therefore, carrying more passengers means extra fees. For a flight departing the UK, the fees are already £12+ and that’s before considering the fees whereever it lands. It would be impossible to sell even standing seats at £5 without incurring massive losses.
Yes, you may argue that flights were free in the past, but the reality of the situation is that other fees and other higher fare paying passengers more than balanced this out. Therefore to offer the standing seats at a cheap price, either one of two things must happen: there must be some way of levying a hell of a lot of extra charges out of these passengers or the fares in the rest of the plane must go up to subsidise this. The first option is unlikely – anyone purchasing this type of seat is likely to be extremely cost sensitive (cost being the sole reason to choose a seat like this) and the second is just as unlikely, as raising prices would mean the airline would be open to competition offering lowest prices.
I’m pretty sure that there is probably a market for standing only flights, but it won’t be with Ryanair. It would more likely suit a domestic flight: short duration commuting style with little admin on the end; but in the days of heightened security at airports this seems unlikely.
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