An Interesting Flight

I’m TDY in Germany right now (for those not in the know TDY = business trip in military speak).  I’m only here for a couple days, mainly to do a meet and greet with the headquarters people we’ll be working with while I’m here (one of the other “newbies” from my office came, as well).

As we were planning this trip, the captain printed out a schedule for RyanAir for us.  Since the flights were cheap, we went ahead and booked the flights.  RyanAir is kind of like the Southwest Airlines of Europe…except they take “no frills” to a whole new level.  When they say no frills, they mean just that: No. Frills.

The tickets started out at 69.98 Euro.  We were then charged 10 Euro for booking our tickets online (wouldn’t have saved any money had we booked them over the phone as they charge a larger fee for that.  And then they charge you another fee at the airport to print your boarding passes).  They also charge a baggage fee of 10 Euro (I know, nothing new there!).  BUT they only allow ONE carry on bag…and your purse counts as a carry on.  Your carry on can’t weigh more than 22 pounds…and don’t think about trying to get around it, they weigh and measure all carry ons before they even let you get to security

The flight itself was interesting.  Much like Southwest, there is no assigned seating.  We didn’t hear the original boarding call, so were close to the last people board. We were lucky enough to find aisle seats (thank goodness because the guy next to me didn’t smell the best or maybe it was someone else…there was a peculiar odor throughout the plane).  After settling into my seat, I noticed the advertising.  It was plastered all over the luggage compartments, much like the advertising on the subway or city bus (I’m surprised US airlines haven’t picked up on this particular gem of an income source).

Next came the hour long sales pitch.  We were forwarned that they don’t give out refreshments or snacks on the plane.  Anything you want, you have to purchase (I have no idea how much any of it cost…I didn’t ask for a menu).  What we weren’t expecting was what came next: cheap gifts.  Yep, you could buy some gifts for your loved ones from the comfort of your airline seat!  I briefly glanced at the cart when they walked by and saw mainly perfumes/colognes, but I’m sure there was more.  Then came the “lottery” tickets.  For a mere 2 Euro, you could buy a scratch off ticket for the chance to win a new car!  And finally came the smokeless cigarettes (just in case you can’t survive the flight without your cigarette fix!).  Our flight was only 1 1/2 hours.  I can only imagine the others wares that would have been sold had we been on a longer flight!

When we landed, they played a trumpet sound (dun-da-daaaaaa) to signal we’d landed safely and half the passengers applauded (the rest of us were looking around in disbelief, trying to contain our giggles).

The entire flight I found myself wishing I had a camera!  Maybe I can sneak some pictures on the way back!

Quick side note: we got the house I talked about in this post.  We moved in over the weekend and are slowly getting settled in.  Hopefully, our stuff will arrive very shortly (it’s supposed arrive no later than 5 Oct, I’m hoping it’ll arrive sooner), so we can really get settled.  Unfortunately, we do not have internet at the house yet.  Since it’s a brand new house, the phone comany needs to run a wire up to the house and we have no clue when that will happen.  It could be next week; it could be next month.

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