Turning the tables on Ryanair

Typical! You wait ages for a Rynair story and then two come at once.

Picture the scene; a jet-full of Ryanair passengers from Milan are being invited to empty their pockets of cash. O'Leary's finest may not yet have resorted to holding their clientele upside-down and shaking them, but they're doing their level best.

And along with the assortment of snacks and beverages, they bring round the scratchcards at 2 euros a pop - it's all grist to the Ryanair mill. Only this time something unusual happens.

'Mamma mia!' exclaims a passenger, 'I have won a car!' Sure enough, the ticket is a winning one and the prize a car worth £11,500. The other passengers are craning their necks to see the lucky winner when another shout goes up.

'Me too!' shouts a second passenger, brandishing another winning scratchcard, and then, unbelievably, a third joins in. He too has won a car, meaning Ryanair will supply prizes worth £34,500.

I imagine the other passengers immediately demanded scratchcards in their turn. After all, the average win should be one car every month across the whole of Europe until what Ryanair calls a 'printing error' intervened.

Well, it's about time the biter was bitten: around a quarter of the airline’s annual earnings are generated by 'ancillary revenues' - including the notorious check-in fees, booking fees and luggage charges. It's good to see someone getting something out of them for a change.