Jaunted

Ryanair officials seemingly go out of their way to come off as incandescent assholes, to the point where there's real doubt about whether the airline could compete in countries where people are actually nice. The airline sells tours offering audiences with the Pope, which is more or less a scam at the expense of pilgrims seeking to deepen their faith. They're terrible to struggling musicians, and we'd joke about them charging extra for bringing particularly cute puppies and kittens on board, except that's probably true.

And yet travelers keep buying tickets to fly on Ryanair. The airline just published a smartphone app for booking tickets and charged customers £3 to download it. That means Ryanair expected travelers to pay for the privilege of giving more money to Ryanair. And they were right. The iPhone/iPad app topped the iTunes charts and now there's an Android app running for the same price.

Do you think Ryanair executives actually have bets about how badly they can get away with treating their customers? Or does it just look that way from the outside?

[Photo: simone.brunozzi / Flickr]