RYANAIR, as the airline has not tired of shouting for the past 18 months, is now trying to be nice. Sometimes even to its own passengers. In a radical change of strategy it recently decided the future no longer lay in moving flyers to tears at check-in desks by extracting exorbitant fees for indiscretions as minor as forgetting to print out a boarding pass. Its new, customer-friendly approach seems to be paying off. Last week it announced that its profits were up two-thirds in the year to the end of March.
But, according to a report from the Cambridge News, old habits die hard. A student flying to Ibiza for his holiday found that his girlfriend’s stepfather had mistakenly booked him on a flight under the name Adam West, rather than his actual name, Adam Armstrong. Ryanair told him it would cost £220 ($337) to change the name on the booking—double the price of the ticket. However, the carrier hadn’t reckoned with such a bloody-minded and enterprising student. Splendidly, the 19-year-old avoided the cost by changing his surname by deed poll to the incorrect name on the ticket, and then paying for a new passport. The scheme cost him less than half the Ryanair charge, reckons the paper.
