Ryanair versus BBC

Some things never cease to amaze me. The BBC's Panorama programme about Ryanair this week was one of the worst pieces of journalism I've ever seen.

No doubt Ryanair aren't perfect but the criticisms aimed at them by Vivian White were quite unbelievable.

Criticism of Ryanair included offering deals to airports that the airports didn't like (and so the deals weren't done) and buying Boeing instead of Airbus because they got a better deal.

If Ryanair adopted the BBC's business model they would run expensive frilly (free caviar for the people that actually like it) flights to limited destinations with a large flat fee (enough to cover plenty of eye-wateringly salaries of between £90k and £1M) to anyone set to fly that year, charge people even if they use a competitor, send threatening letters to people that don't want to go on any aeroplane at all, and physically enforce all these rules militantly.

You'll get some reasonable arguments involving justifying the BBC as a public service e.g. news, weather, and documentaries and I'm happy to let these arguments roll but it doesn't cost £4,000,000,000 per year to do this. The fact the BBC exists today is bad enough nevermind the brashness of making programmes criticising other companies' legitimate business models.