No such thing as bad publicity..

The last thing I want to do is spend all my time talking about airlines but...

Most people will have heard the news about the case Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni have taken against Ryanair. The airline used a picture of the couple in a newspaper ad in France without their permission and they took separate actions seeking €500,000 for her (apparently that's the going rate if you want to use her image for advertising) and €1 for him. Sarkozy was only seeking €1 as some kind of symbolic act. It's hard to imagine that he doesn't think he's worth much more. In the end the courts found in their favour and awarded Bruni a more realistic €60,000 while Sarkozy got his €1..

Ryanair were typically bullish afterwards and claimed that it would have cost a lot more than €60,000 to get the attention and coverage that the case brought them. I'm sure they're right.

Another case involving Ryanair that didn't get nearly as much attention was also settled this week. 5 members of a calypso band were marched off a flight from Sardinia to London at gunpoint because a fellow passenger (a psychology professor) thought they were terrorists. The captain of the flight decided to remove them when some other passengers and members of staff refused to travel if the 'terrorists' stayed on the flight. The men's offences appear to involve sitting separately on the plane and generally looking a bit dodgy. One of them appeared to be blind but had a newspaper on his lap (actually he was blind but you know how easy it is to play blind). The scoundrel! Does it need to be pointed out that none of the men were white?

In the end they were given the all-clear and travelled on the next available flight which got them to Liverpool. They had to spend the night in the bus station there because by the time they got there they were too late to catch a coach to London.

Anyway, the case was heard yesterday and Ryanair, who have so far failed to apologise for the inconvenience (and inconvenience is putting it mildly), were ordered to pay each of them £1,116.

So in summary, the black musicians get just over a grand for (according to a professor) looking like terrorists, getting marched off a plan at gunpoint, spending a night sleeping in a bus station and missing out on New Year's celebrations with their families. And the glamourous politician and his supermodel wife get €60,001 for an irreverent ad in the newspaper..

Oh, and this bit you couldn't make up, Ryanair are appealing the decision.

Doesn't seem quite right, does it?