We all know Ryanair are famous for their Irish charm, cheap flights and lets say, ‘cheap stunts’ to get media attention. Well the latest news from camp Ryanair is that they are going to let passengers smoke on their flights.

There’s just one thing that doesn’t add up with this apparent ploy to win passengers over: SMOKING IS BANNED IN PUBLIC PLACES – and that includes workplaces e.g. airports and aeroplanes.

Ryanair want to sell smokeless cigarettes which dispense nicotine without poisoning the air, apparently to calm grumpy smokers down, but smokers surely know when they book flights and holidays that smoking is banned on planes and has been for some years. Therefore they are fully aware how long it is till their next smoke, so why offer something which will surely cause passenger uproar?

Answer: most likely another PR stunt to get Ryanair in the headlines and boost sales – this time appealing to smokers who apparently lack self control.

Researching using Google “ryanair pr stunt” comes up with over 14,000 results – just shows how much publicity they get! This is the first page of results:

I have highlighted the 3 other stunts from this year, the remaining stories are reporting the same stories from different journalists/news publishers…

So why do Ryanair do this? Maybe they are running out of ideas to promote their brand and have to resort to silly media outbursts. What do you think?