Opinions

Ireland - Ryanair...FAIL!

by Anna Levy

When did Michael O’Leary turn into such a sensitive soul?

A website called ‘I hate Ryanair’, which was set up by unhappy passenger, Robert Tyler, in 2007 has lost its dispute with the low cost airline after the company complained in April that the website was "vitriolic and highly disparaging".

This is surprising given the fact that Ryanair has generally been the thick-skinned, loud-mouthed lout of the travel industry, happily bashing away any criticism with its hefty no-frills deals.

I always got the impression it knew there’d be plenty of people slagging it off, but that it didn’t really give a toss because it also knew those very same people would probably be slinking back soon enough with their tails between their legs next time they were looking for a cheap flight.
But now the airline has shown both an inability to take criticism AND a complete lack of understanding about the new media landscape.

When will these big companies learn that, unless you’re Kim Il-Sung (and sadly for O’Leary, he’s not quite there yet) censorship is no longer possible, with any old Joe able to set up a blog, website or Twitter feed to mouth off about your brand.

Fighting it is like playing one of those arcade games where you bat one mole on the head, only for another to immediately pop up from the hole next to it.

Indeed, Tyler’s site has already been moved to a new domain - www.ihateryanair.org, with the airline itself being the only one to suffer from the negative publicity around the dispute.

If O’Leary is to keep his customers, he’s going to have to start engaging with them because they’ll only take his bullying for so long. Next thing he knows, it’ll be Ryanair that gets bashed on the head while another bargain basement airline with even more unbeatable deals pops up in its place.