Ryanair's skint, BA's broke and still they want to expand

Gloomy times ahead for troubled airlines: Ryanair announced today that it's going to have to raise prices to cover fuel prices. It's also expecting to ground 10% of its fleet over the winter. If I was prone to anthrompomorphism I'd be talking about the planet heaving a sigh of relief.

Meanwhile BA is considering the budget model - charging for food, check-in and sick bags - again because of rising oil prices. Aviation fuel is skyrocketing, caused partly by a decade or two of unrepressed demand. All those nonsense flights to places you can't spell have sucked up a good deal of oil, and oil producers can't refine it fast enough to satisfy everyone.

Of course any sensible government might take this as a good time to drop their plans to expand Heathrow (and every other airport, just about). After all, with prices rising demand for flights will fall, and that kind of negates the need to turn an ancient village into a runway. So the industry turns to it's figure heads - in this case IATA Director General Giovanni
Bisignani, who slated the UK's airports infrastructure at the annual IATA piss-up. "This year's Worst Regulator Award goes to the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Look at Heathrow. Service levels are a national embarrassment." Oh well, if he say's it's terrible we'd better expand, eh?