It was inevitable that I eventually tried RyanairI wrote this post a few days ago, but have been unable to secure unfettered internet access since arriving in Ireland. Consumer broadband in Ireland is very new; cable broadband was introduced to Dublin a few days ago. I’m ready to bribe or kill someone to feed my 1-megabit habit. . They’ve been proclaiming the second coming of aviation all over Christendom, and although their fares seemed too good to be true, I have always been for quantity over quality when it comes to flying. As I am summering in Ireland this year, the perfect opportunity presented itself; how fitting it would be to fly to Dublin on Ireland’s latest contribution to the cause of European civilization, I thoughtThis post is an homage to Felix’s penchant for blogging his suffering on airline flights. It also gives me something to do while waiting for my connecting flight..
How do they do it? I got an early hint as I boarded a Ryanair bus from central Stockholm to Skavsta airport, a hangar in a field 80 minutes to the south. Inside the terminal, a queue of third world proportions awaited me as two employees proceded to check in an entire 737. At the end of that queue I was told, first, that no, I could not check in my luggage here and expect to pick it up in Dublin, I would have to pick it up off a carousel in Prestwick, Scotland, and then check myself in again for my connecting flight to Dublin. Second, I was 13 kg over my luggage limit of 15kg. Never mind that I had dragged the same accoutrements all over Europe over the past year without hassle on BA. Never mind that a laptop, sturdy walking boots and the odd book are enough to put you halfway to their limit. I had to pay an extra $100 if I wanted to take my luggage with me.
Oof. That pretty much erased any price advantage they had over the competition, and suddenly, my eye had become a lot more critical. At that price, let’s see how they stack up. Terminal: crap. Miles? Are you kidding? Window or aisle? No, it’s the Afro-Russian boarding method, where your ticket gets you a mandate to storm the plane for the best seats. In the event, the dash was over tarmac through a good 150m of steady rain.
This free-for-all has one advantage that I thought of too late; it’s an evident incentive to chat up pretty women early, whom, it is hoped, you will invite to share your row of seats during the flight. In that sense it is a refreshing change from all that Lutheran predestination about whom one sits next to on traditional airlines. For once, it is not left up to the gods, who always conspire to have you sit next to bloated businessmen from Basingstoke rather than models from Milan.
Except that the models from Milan do not as a rule fly to Prestwick.
On Ryanair, you pay for your inflight food. This is fine by me; it minimizes waste, etc… But I did not expect, upon a request for a coke and a tuna sandwich, to be handed a can the size of a thimble and a triangle of bread that contained tuna safe for vegetarians (“It contains mayonnaise,” the air hostess stewardess flight attendant cabin crew member warned me.). For $10.
At Prestwick, I waited for my luggage in a sputnik-green terminal straight out of those books of boring postcards you see in museum shoppesAgain, no internet access so no handy link to Amazon. How did I survive before 1995?, then dragged it to the Ryanair check-in counter. Same luggage. Same weight. No problem this time.
“Have these bags been in your possession at all times since you packed them?”
“No.”
“No?!”
“No, I gave them to Ryanair. I just got them back.”
By the time I got onto my second Ryanair flight, however, I was mellowing. Obviously I was not their target customer. Around me sat pensioners visiting grandchildren and students upgrading from bus travel. Ryanair is a bus with wings, not a budget airline. From this perspective, it’s a perfectly reasonable proposition. Just don’t carry too many books to Ireland.
“Lutheran predestination”
Eh? Pehaps you meant Calvinist?
Well, from what I gather (hastily, after the fact, now that you mention it), Calvinists preach double predestination (God saves some and damns others) while Lutherans preach single predestination (God saves some and leaves others to their own devices.)
In terms of the question at hand, does God merely select those whom shall sit next to models on flights (Lutheran view) or does God also choose those whom shall sit next to duct salesmen (Calvinist view)?
You’re right, I should have said Calvinist predestination.
One major theological point about the Catholic-Lutheran-Calvinist axis of selection for salvation is that it marked the final transition away from salvation (also called “justification” in the theological tracts I constantly refer to) by works alone — the previous catholic doctrine that it’s what you do that counts, so you can be a really bad man in your heart so long as you build a few cathedrals — to one where justification is on the sole basis of faith, and it’s no good pretending you’ve got faith when you haven’t really because god knows when you are pretending because he gave you the faith (or not)in the first place when he selected you for his elect before you were even born.
Clearly, the Lutherans represent a mid-point along the transition, where a combination of both faith and works is the key to success, unless of course god has presented you straight off with an “advance directly to “go” card”. There were some Zwinglians too, but I forget what they had to say about it. The problem is of course that it’s a bit illogical: god qua god knows everything, in which case he knows whether you’re going to be saved or not, which means it is totally predestined and there’s nothing you can do about it, or he’s given you free will, and hasn’t made up his mind yet. BUT if he is omniscient, presumably he knows what he’s going to decide already, so we’re back to square one. It’s all a bit wishy-washy, which is why the Calvinists came along after and took things to their logical extent. However, as your link says, this has the problem of making god out to be not so very nice in the first place, which creates the problem of why he bothered to create quite so many people to doom to everlasting hellfire in the first place, unless he is a nasty god, in which case Manicheanism is the best option. On balance I’m either there, or with the Lutherans, with the emphasis more on faith. Predestination lite.
On this reading the point here is that you had a bad trip on ryanair because of the sin in your heart, the sin of being a cheap bastard (your “faith” if you like), which led to your making the false economy of opting for the stupid cheap airline (your “work”). Had you paid for a BA or SAS flight via London you would have both happiness in this world (paying less, getting there more comfortably, being able to stop over and hang out with me) and in the next, having demonstrated goodness, showing you have faith. On this reading, you are cruising for an eternal bruising, and should start to be much nicer to your friends (more good works) to make up for the fact that you’ve not much chance of getting in on personality alone.
John –I believe the third lot Zwung back and forth between Lutehrans and Calvinists. Doesn’t it all just make you ache for the days of Dr. Noll. or not.
Terminator 3 took a deeply Puritan turn (early 17th c. English variety). T1 and T2 assumed you could change your future by your acts (building cathedrals, blowing up the remnants of robot chips hidden in a suburban Virginia corporate campus). Of course, both were deeeply flawed. Remember in T1 how the terminator hunter came from the future to impregnant Linda Hamilton to create the future that would send him back? This time, it’s all about double-predestination. I guess someone decided to try and answer some of the circularity issues in 1 and 2. Arnie even says: “It is your destiny,” to which half the theater added, “Luke.” Which all reminds me why Puritans were so ineffably dull. What’s the point of action? If it was all going to happen anyway, why didn’t John Conner just sit in a lonely corner of the planet and rock gently back and forth until he’s called?
because then everyone would have known that he wasn’t going to get called.
that’s right, and god, KNOWING that he, john connor, would be called, would have made him get up and blow up the chips or whatever (i haven’t seen the movie).
similarly your calvinist, extremely worried that he won’t one of the extreme minority not to writhe forever in the unextinguishable fires of hell, but unable to do anything about it, tends to do a lot of “good works” (whip his children, dress in black, be extremely dour) just to prove to himself and others that god made him want to do these things because he is of the elect and that what they err do.
See:
http:dont-fly-ryanair.efekt.katowice.pl