Child-Free Flights?!

April Fools or Marketing Genius? That is what the world is wondering after Ryanair annouced on March 30th that they were go to introduce child-free flights starting in October!

 

Ryanair is known for pulling April Fools jokes —  from providing moon flights, offering first class seating and selling porn on board… so how do we know if this is true?

 

Here is the official press release:

 

RYANAIR TO INTRODUCE ‘CHILD FREE’ FLIGHTS

Ryanair, the world’s favourite airlines, today announced that it will introduce ‘Child Free’ flights from October (winter schedule) after a Europe-wide survey of 1,000 passengers showed that half would pay higher fares to avoid other people’s children.  The survey showed that a third of passengers (36%) have had flights ‘ruined’ by other people’s noisy kids with one in five passengers (18%) urging Ryanair to restrict the number of children on flights.

While the survey found that passengers would prefer to avoid other people’s children, it placed ‘blame’ firmly with parents with top gripes being:

1. 50% Parents who expect ‘special treatment’ because they have children.
2. 25% Parents who allow children to annoy those in seats behind.
3. 15% Parents who board late and expect others to accommodate them.
4. 10% Parents who allow children to run in the aisles or kick seats.

Ryanair’s Stephen McNamara said:

“When it comes to children we all love our own but would clearly prefer to avoid other people’s little monsters when travelling.  While half our passengers would like us to divide our cabins up into ‘adult’ and ‘family’ areas it is not operationally possible due to our free seating policy, with optional priority boarding.  However, with clear demand for ‘child free’ flights Ryanair will introduce child free flights on high frequency routes from the start of our winter schedule in October.”

What do you think about this? Would you pay more for a child-free flight?! We pay more for Adult Only Resorts… Ryanair might be onto something! 

 

Kim 😉