News: Protest launched against Ryanair's Deauville flights
Flights > News > # 951 (02/09/2006)
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Anti-Ryanair snobbery is such an easy card to play these days, but has it occurred to these snobs that many of Ryanair's passengers are actually considerably wealthier than certain people (and Ryanair executives for that matter) would like to make out, and that the kind of passengers who are going to avail themselves to Ryanair's latest French route are going to be very different to the rowdy groups who invade Prague or Barcelona every weekend.
Perhaps we shouldn't really get into a Hyacinth Bucket style comparison between the types of passengers who might use different routes, but the idea that a flight which is only going to operate three times each week is going to disturb the peace of the already heaving “Paris-plage” is somewhat bizarre.
The debate over local government handing out cash to airlines to market new routes is an old one, but considering how much the French domestic tourist market is concentrated into such a short space of time (August), we would have thought that any right minded person in Normandy would be pleased about the opportunity that this route, which is starting in the winter season, is bringing.
Oddly enough, when I went to France back in May, I was amazed at how any stereotypes of French rudeness had thoroughly evaporated, and just how welcoming everybody was. Let's not forget that these flights will also bring plenty of people from Normandy into London, but unfortunately our hospitality now lags a long way behind the French.
