Tighslot appealed for more intelligent postings, so let's try to provide one:
After taking into consideration (all in average) price and profit of/on (not in a particular order): fuel/landing fees/catering/ parking fees/ ticket price/ pax charge (is it 10 euros in DUB these days?)/ crew salary/ number of pax ( he mentioned a lot of figures and fees - really clever guy, miss flying with him), turns out that a pax's contribution towards my wages was, at the time, exactly 17pence.
17p x 72 million pax per year = £12,240,000 margin. (Mind you, I think the captain missed a few important costs and salary was double counted), if you look at the bigger picture.
Then there is the matter of payments from airports to Ryanair, for that passenger to arrive at their destination (shouldn't we all descend down a red carpet, if we are sooo valuable?)
Plus inflght sales, car hire, hotels, that the airline gets a slice of.
So customers are revenue streams and employees are overheads, in the final analysis.
Abusing the Sky does make one true point, though, that we are all interdependent for paying each others wages.
It's just that most businesses do not
bully elderly passengers with threats of denying them boarding because they have the temerity to ask why they are being kept waiting and when they will allowed to actually board the plane they have been waiting for.
As a regular user of Terminal 5, I have to agree with Baggersup and CCC about the local knowledge required to navigate it
In particular, the apparent inability to announce gates ahead of time, so that one does not encounter the A/B lounge dliemma, as well as the Magical Mystery Tour that is A10, so remembering
Their command of the English language and British Airways' arcane boarding procedures may not be as good as yours.
is a core competence, IMHO.