Thanks for all your thoughts on this one guys.
Re Rhodes13 question about what would i have done if I had been captain facing the situation outlined - well I think I really would have to agree with A319-100 and tell the truth. Now, that might be tricky because it probably would be hard to explain the complex range of factors in a suitable way. But I would certainly have tried to explain why it was best to keep everyone on the aircraft (after an hour say). I'd have pre-empted the possibility of delay due snow and made sure at least some refreshments were ready to calm any hint of passenger rebellion (Is that provision outside the power of the cpatain on Ryanair?)
But what happened was that the flight deck crew made 'promises' (viz. that "we would be underway in 15 mins") which were repeatedly 'broken' for 5 hours! So all crew credibility appears to have been lost in the eyes of the passengers - I guess any reason or casual apologies that may have been offered would justly sound very hollow after that.
Now I can see that a small number of passengers would lose it and scream with a delay regardless of anything you say to them - maybe alcohol induced, maybe a difficult ride to the airport or an unfortunate check-in or security experience contributed - whatever. On this flight no one had to be carted off. Don't most people simply mutter and seethe in a restrained sort of way when faced with this kind of adversity? Surely, not being honest is far more likely to turn the majority of reasonable people against you bigtime and increase the chance that some of them will lash out or that they will organise as a group - as started to happen on this flight?
I shall relay to my friend daz211's view that "he was lucky to have departed at all"! Love it! I suspect though he feels he would have been luckier not to have travelled that day at all.
Thanks also for your clarification that "Ryanair is a point to point airline which means they have to get you from A to B and that's it!" That's not entirely true is it as particularly 'lucky' passengers have been known to fly via point C, an airport near to B with a deceptively similar runway configuration!
But more importantly where does that equation leave safety and duty of care - both of which are presumably compromised to a degree if passengers are stretched to fluid-deprived emotional breaking point?