This flight goes to BERLIN; that’s in GERMANY

Ryan Air, the king of cheap-ass flights, is thinking about charging people less if they’re willing to sit on stools rather than actual seats during flights.

Dudes, Ryan Air is already as cheap and bare-bones as it gets. I flew from Bristol to Dublin for FREE. I had to pay a fee to check a bag, but if I’d flown with only carry-on baggage, the whole thing would have cost me £0.00. No taxes. Nada.

Jenny and I flew Ryan Air from Dublin to Berlin in April. The terminal was in the bowels of the airport: it looked more like a bus station. A man in sweatpants tried to stem the flow of queue-jumpers as he checked passports to let us out onto the tarmac to find our plane. Find is the key word in that sentence. It was 5 a.m., and the crowd of weary travelers was let out onto the foggy tarmac with 20 planes lined up into the distance. We walked past one, two, five planes until we saw a man in a yellow vest pointing at one saying ‘Berlin. Berlin.’ The problem was other groups were coming out of the airport/bus terminal at the same time, into the fog, merging with us and trying to find their planes.

When we got on and found seats (no seat numbers, just sit in the first empty one you find), the air steward got on the intercom.

‘This flight goes to Berlin. That’s in Germany. It does not go to Manchester. It does not go to Tenerife. If you are going anywhere other than BERLIN, GERMANY, please disembark now. Again, this plane is going to Berlin…’

He made the announcement about seven times before we took off. When we got off the plane in Berlin, Germany, Jenny looked around and said ‘Wait a minute…THIS ISN’T SPAIN.’

That said, I will soon be traveling around Europe with very little money. Would I be willing to pay less and sit on a stool? Yes. I’ll also be living on a diet of peanut butter-and-honey sandwiches and 39 cent instant noodles, and washing my clothes in the shower, so it’d pretty much be par for the course.