.....and, then, leaves.
UPDATE: So, following a conversation with Stephen McNamara, head of comms at Ryanair, we have the following detail.
Dara Brady, deputy head of sales and marketing who we spoke to this morning, was apparently referring to "other" Ryanair Twitter accounts. [This is despite us asking him to confirm @ryanaironline]
These accounts, which were specific to certain destinations, such as ryanair_dublin, etc, have now been closed.
We also have the following statement:
"Ryanair has become aware of a number of Ryanair related profiles on Twitter which have engaged in abusive or denigratory comments towards Ryanair services and passengers. These profiles have nothing at all to do with Ryanair."
A rather bizarre turn of events, don't you say...
Anyway, given that there is clearly some confusion over who said what, we are removing some elements of the original post.
All attempts to contact @ryanaironline are proving fruitless, as you might imagine, so far.
ORIGINAL POST:
Now most people on Twitter who came across it over the last 24 hours were understandably sceptical about the presence of @ryanaironline - especially given recent events.
The feeling amongst many of those last night who had viewed @ryanaironline with suspicion was based on how outrageous some of the early comments were.
Nothing much more to say on this...[Joe Blogs does]
[As does Matt Parsons]
Are you serious? Can't believe they'd go this far...
Agressive, sexist, offensive to customers... Some recent tweets from @ryanaironline:
"Just reminiscing about the time a guest had terrible, offensive, flatulence. You know that seat right by the loo? Sucks to be you idiots."
"About 2 weeks till the big guy's bday, yeah? It's time to boogie down. Short skirts at the office, ladies."
"Look... it isn't like we aren't meant to have fun here. This is a world we not only don't get, we simply don't care about it."
"that lady actually blackmailed my friend near the end of a flight. She was a tactless bird. Apologies to be sure."
Just another channel? What, the 'abuse everyone channel'.
It's beyond immature, and quite sad really. I've been looking at the Twitter feed and it's insult after insult.
I feel another case of Travel Jerk looming...
At the beginning, I also thought "they wouldn't go that far". I thought it was some clever e-marketer using the "stupid bloggers" story to get some followers on Twitter. But the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.
Either we assume that their developper's outrage at "stupid bloggers" and the announcement of "charging for toilets" was another deliberate decision to provoke controversy - in which case @ryanaironline is part of that strategy - or we assume that once their developpers made an outrageous comment and Ryanair noticed how much we (including Travolution) talked about it, they simply decided that they should adopt this as an official policy and go and insult everyone in every online (and offline) channel possible.
Whatever the case, their PR strategy works. I'm off to post some news about them on our Facebook page.
There's a fine line between being funny and being offensive. Ryanair has fallen both sides of this line in the past and will likely do so again in the future. Some people won't like what they do, but at least they take a few risks and try to be innovative. At the end of the day, this little episode is just another bit of fun from Ryanair, and is getting lots of people like us to give them free publicity.
I thought I saw a tweet (in relation to charging for toilets) that said most of their passengers smelled of urine anyhow, but I can't find it now...
My next suggestion for RyanAir would be for them to commission crew clothing bearing the most trenchant criticism from "lunatic bloggers", inspired by this story:
Pizzeria Employees Wear T-Shirts With Quotes From Nasty Yelp Reviews http://tinyurl.com/caa93m
No, I don't believe it's Ryanair.
Why does every single link on that twitter account point to eupolitics.einnews.com - which then asks for an email address?
Sorry; scam to push einnews.
good point grumpy, but the stunt sure works, even the times give them attention..
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/news/article5851864.ece
So even though me and Kevin both clearly asked if @ryanaironline was Ryanair, and we both received positives, it now turns out it isn't them!!
Who would have though it! Well me and Matt Parsons actually.
posted 3 hours ago on twitter - joeblogsdotnet@samdaams yeah good point, it still wouldn't surprise me or @matt_parsons if this afternoon they deny @ryanaironline is actually them
It works! When I thought Ryan Air were just rude, I hated them. Now I know they're rude & funny, I love them.