George S. May Business Blog

Ryanair selling “vertical seating”

Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair, and founder of the “pound for a pee” program has just announced his next shamefully frugal way of taking advantage of passengers abord his airline: take out the seats.

Yes, the European poor-man’s air carrier has plans to cut costs and cram passengers by removing the seats and replacing them with seat belted-stools. Excuse me, the preferred term, by the company, is “vertical seating”.

No, this is not a joke.

In fact, according to the Daily Mail, he’s even spoken with Boeing about making this happen.

Now, before this happens, the Irish Aviation Authority needs to give them the go-ahead. If that happens, or not, we’ll have to wait and see, but I can’t believe that this won’t raise safety concerns. The airline estimates that it could increase passengers per flight by 30 percent with the standing room approach and at the same time cut costs by 20 percent. That’s a pretty big gap between revenue and expenses – the sort of financial upside that most airlines have been unable to figure out.

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