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Warning: This post is heavy in sarcasm, and may be considered PG-13

The kooky concepts behind the Irish airline Ryanair are well documented and discussed.

For example, as a cost cutting measure, the CEO has proposed to add standing room only seats, or rather specialized ‘seat boards’ that force passengers to remain standing, yet buckled in. This allows the capacity of the plane to be stacked almost completely. If only there was a way to flatten the passengers and stack them on one another, they could get even more travelers into those Ryanair planes.

Aside from the standing room concept, which was reported to cost around about $10-$15 USD per ticket, the CEO also proposed charging people to use the bathrooms. The paid bathrooms concept would offer aviation a boost in humanity not previously known to airline travelers. Sarcasm aside, paid bathrooms would be the direct antithesis of the golden age of air travel. Though ironically these Ryanair concepts are approaching the style of travel enjoyed in the golden age of ocean liners when the Irish were commonly in steerage. I’m thinking of something resembling depictions in the movie Titanic here.

Standing room only isn't that bad

Today the Ryanair CEO announced the next in a long line of kooky recommendations. Flying people around with only 1 pilot. Obviously he isn’t very familiar with the concepts behind cockpit resource management. The CEO, Michael O’Leary said, “Let’s take out the second pilot. Let the bloody computer fly it.” Ooook. Besides being scared shitless, here are some things to consider about this:

Why have pilots at all, why not just operate all planes via computer?
Why not have air traffic controllers just fly all of the planes from the ground like a big video game?
I’m so relieved that bloody computers never have hard drives fail, never have software bugs or viruses or anything of that nature.
Besides having only 1 pilot, he proposed training flight attendants to help with the landing. This actually happened in Dallas, but the Flight Attendant was also a commercial pilot.

At least one European Aviation official called this latest announcement a publicity stunt. Ya don’t say? Considering that none of the other crazy concepts announced by O’Leary have been put into practice, I think that the publicity stunt is a foregone conclusion.

Much the same way myself and others of Irish descent can count down the days until St. Patrick’s Day, we can now also count down the days until Ryanair’s CEO’s next attention whoring announcement.