O Leary brands seatbelts useless as he tries to push through standing room on
Seatbelts on planes are “useless” and would not save passengers in a crash, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has claimed, as he tries to push through plans to created standing room sections on flights.
“Seatbelts don’t matter. You don’t need a seatbelt on the London Underground. You don’t need a seatbelt on trains which are travelling at 120 mph and if they crash you’re all dead,” the Ryanair chief executive told the Telegraph.
He wants to push through standing-only cabins, which would be sold for £1 to European destinations.
O’Leary has suggested removing the back ten rows of seats in aircrafts, and said when it came to landing, passengers could “hang on to the handle” and would “be fine”.
“If you say to passengers it’s £25 for the seat and £1 for the standing cabin, I guarantee we will sell the standing cabin first,” he said. “No question.
“You should be able to choose from a safety perspective.
“We’re not talking about areas of huge turbulence around Europe.
“We don’t have heavy landings anymore “If you say to someone,’ look, hang onto the handle there, you’re coming in to land’, they’ll be fine,” he told the newspaper.
“We operate 1500 flights a day. They don’t come skidding in. This is a very routine, safe form of travel.”
European safety regulations currently rule out the idea of the standing cabins, stating that passengers must be belted in for take-off and landing.
But O’Leary branded the authorities as “plonkers”.
“We’re always looking for new ways of doing things; it’s the authorities who won’t allow us to do them,” he said. “They are all a bunch of plonkers.”
He added that flight should not be considered a luxurious experience any more, and that passengers were more focused now on simply getting to their destination.
“The problem with aviation is that for 50 years it’s been populated by people who think it’s this wondrous sexual experience; that it’s like James Bond and wonderful and we’ll all be flying first class when really it’s just a bus with wings.
“Most people just want to get from A to B. You don’t want to pay £500 for a flight.”
“You want to spend that money on a nice hotel, apartment or restaurant… “You don’t want to p—- it all away at the airport or on the airline,” O’Leary said.