Airline Considers Charging For Toilet

Sounds like a headline from The Onion, right?

But it’s true… Ryanair, Ireland’s budget airline, is considering charging passengers one euro (about $AU1.70) to use the toilet on board.

Really?

I understand charging for chips and drinks and even aisle seats and baggage check — those are truly optional things; you can safely fly without a beverage or cramped into a middle seat.

But going to the bathroom is a necessity. How do you tell a 4-year-old to “hold it in” until you land? Who is going to want to sit next to you when your baby has an explosive poo and you don’t have any change to go rinse her off and change her in the lavatory?

Chief executive Michael O’Leary says he’s looking into specially designed doors that require a euro coin to open. A company spokesman, however, insists, “Michael makes a lot of this stuff up as he
goes along and while this has been discussed internally there are no immediate plans to introduce it,” he said.

There is one inevitable end to this debate. Someone, objecting on principle to the charge, is going to relieve him or herself right in the aisle in protest.

I just hope I’m not on board when it happens.