More airline industry scumbaggery

Following hard upon Ryanair's kind offer to bill its customers twice for flights they already had bought and paid for, now it looks like Aer Lingus are getting on on the act of treating their customers like cash cow cattle.

From tomorrow, they intend to charge customers 3 euro just to reserve their seat on flights to the UK and Europe.

Then in May, once the charges have been established, they intend to hike the costs to 10 euro for pre-booking in the first five rows and 15 euro for pre-booking exit row seats.

But the killer in relation to these new stealth taxes is why Aer Fungus are doing it. To extort their customers? Of course not. To maximise unearned profits? Absolutely not.

They are introducing these charges "in response to customer demand." Okay, hands up everyone. Who rang up Aer Lingus and said, "Wouldn't it be great if you charged me a completely unjustifiable fee to book my seat on the plane?"

Anyone?

Didn't think so. It's just your national airline behaving like grasping scumbags, not unlike their 'rivals' Ryanair. And then lying about it by telling us that somehow, we all asked to be charged more for this nonsense.

This is on top of them charging for baggage like Ryanair, and then hiking that charge within a mere two months by 25%.

The National Consumers Agency are bleating about this, of course. But what we really need is an airline regulator with teeth to tell these thieving, scumbag airlines where to shove their never-ending list of bullshit charges that inflate the advertised cost of an airline ticket from, in one instance I bought, 1 cent up to well in excess of 50 euro.

Still cheap at the price? Not when you consider the squalid conditions of checking in or landing at Dublin airport, not when you are continually disturbed throughout your flight with trolley dollies trying to sell you shit like scratchcards that no one wants, and not when the plane lands miles, often even a country away, from the advertised destination.