Ryanightmare

Flying is rarely the most fun experience in the world. After fighting through the massive security queue, where I inevitably get stuck behind a family with plane-load of luggage full of suspiciously-shaped objects, there's the sheer misery of the shopping area. Alongside the over-priced designer clothes shops and the fancy luggage retailers (who, seriously, is going to buy a suitcase at this point?) there's the overwhelming horribleness of the restaurants.

These are very much like restaurants in the real world, only all of the fun, customer service and general enjoyment have been magically sucked out of them, leaving a giant happiness void behind. Then there are the staff: grey-faced zombies, as if these restaurants are the place that good waiters go when they die.

Once that's all over, there's the 10-mile run to the departure gate, which is made all the more urgent by constant reminders that your plane is about to start boarding. Of course, when you get there, it's just another queue. This time, it's a queue to get herded into a glass holding pen where you're kept for an indefinite amount of time. Although, as time moves more slowly in airports, it's probably about six real hours. Then, it's time to board.

Depending on your flight this will either be through allocated seating, where by a big throng of people ignore the instructions and fight like chavs desperate to get into a Primark sale; or there's no allocated seating, whereby a big throng of people ignore any instructions and fight like chavs desperate to get into a Primark sale.

But then, all is good. You take your seat, put on your headphones (remembering not to turn anything electrical on until the flight has taken off), and calmly do your best to ignore your fellow passengers for the rest of the flight.

That was, however, until recently when Ryanair decided that it would make flying even more tiresome by letting people make mobile phone calls while in the air. Credit where credit's due, it's an impressive feat for Ryanair to make using its service even more unpleasant that usual.

Everything about flying with the company seems to have been specifically designed to irritate, annoy and generally upset you. From the early stages of booking where charge after charge gets laid on for crazy things, such as wanting to be able to store your baggage in the plane, to fighting your way onto the plane, it feels like hell's designers were employed – and they did a great job. Then there are the planes, themselves. For some reason the insides are decorated entirely in the most offensive shade of yellow that has ever existed. The very site of it makes you want to scratch your eyes out and pray for blindness. If that wasn't enough, the entire time the plane's stationary a horrible electronic version of Chopsticks is piped over the intercom endlessly. It's like Damien from the Omen is sitting in the cockpit with a Bontempi keyboard.

At least until recently you had a fairly good chance of closing your eyes to the point where only a manageable level of yellow bled through to your retina. With mobile phones, you might as well wave goodbye to that last refuge, as the you'll now undoubtedly be surround by a flight-load of 'innits' boring you through the entire flight with their pointless conversations.

Ryanair's chief executive, Michael O'Leary, has addressed the problem to the satisfaction of, well, himself.

"I have no patience with the approach that says people don't want to use their mobile phones in-flight," he told The Guardian. "You don't take a flight to contemplate your life in silence. Our services are not cathedral-like sanctuaries. Anyone who looks like sleeping, we wake them up to sell them things."

Surprisingly, this statement shows a surprising amount of tact from Ryanair; that is compared to the comments of one staff member who posted a comment on Jason Roe's blog entry, which described how he found some free Ryanair flights (even at this price, it seems expensive to me). The Ryanair staff member called Jason an "idot and a liar", "stupid", and implied that he's got nothing better to do than receive prank phone calls on a "lonely sat evening".

Rather than deny these claims when the press picked up on the story, Ryanair actually wrote to the Times to confirm that its staff posted the comments and stated that, "Lunatic bloggers can have the blog sphere all to themselves as our people are far too busy driving down the cost of air travel."

The company might be driving down the cost of air travel, but it's constantly looking for ways to drive up the price of everything else and make flying the most unsatisfactory experience since The Phantom Menace. So, as well as trying to rake the cash in with mobile phone calls, the company is also looking at charging £1 a visit to the onboard toilets. Nice. I for one will be leaving the Ryanair staff a 'little present' in the seatback pouch, which they can also take as my accurate review of their service.