Michael O’Leary, Cief Executive of Ryanair budget airlines is thinking out the box right now. He told The Telegraph that seatbelts on planes won’t save anyone, and wants to make low-cost “standing room only” cabins a reality.

He says he is being obstructed by aviation authorities, who he calls “plonkers”. The Telegraph quoted him as saying:

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 120mph and if they crash you’re all dead.

The man has a point. Have you ever thought one of those seatbelts would save you? The argument that they are there for turbulence he rejects with the argument that Europe doesn’t have areas of excessive turbulence.

From the Telegraph:

He is currently seeking to create “standing room only” cabins for students and budget travellers, selling £1 tickets to European destinations.

He has suggested removing the back ten rows of seats in aircrafts, allowing groups of less discerning travellers to commute to their destination on their feet.

When it came to landing, he suggested, 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.

O’Leary is quite the character: he’s already suggested charging passengers to use Ryanair toilets, and suggested environmentalists should be shot, and also proclaimed an “astonishing” number of his customers want to tax and torture fat people.

His final line: “The problem with aviation is that for 50 years it’s been populated by people who think it’s a wondrous sexual experience… when it’s really just a bus with wings.”

[Source: The Telegraph]