Everywhere the intertubes and the traditional meeja has been agog all week about Michael O’Leary saying that his airline might charge for spending a penny in the future. I have never seen a story take off so fast, and get reported on pretty much every RSS feed I look at with the possible exception of the New Scientist.

And that to be frank is just what he wanted. Whatever his airline, or personal faults, O’Leary is a master publicist. It doesn’t matter that he will probably never introduce this idea (I would be pretty sure the flight regulation people would shoot it down), he has managed to make his company one of the most talked about things in the last week. And as they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity. Don’t play the man’s game. He thrives on, and craves this free advertising.

I am not going to give it to him myself. I haven’t mentioned the name of his airline anywhere in this post.