Blogger has the last laugh as Ryanair policy is panned

AN anonymous prankster exacted revenge for Ryanair’s attack on bloggers yesterday by creating a spurious weblink, which made it appear the airline branded its passengers as idiots and smelling of urine.

Red-faced executives at the airline were yesterday forced to deny responsibility for a Ryanair account set up on the popular social networking site Twitter.

Comments posted under an official-looking user identified as Ryanair Online on Twitter labelled passengers as “mostly stupid,” and “a bit dense”.

Probably prompted by Michael O’Leary’s brainwave of charging travellers e1 to use toilets on planes, the Ryanair imposter also remarked: “I am not sure we care about people pissing themselves in-flight. It is a new revenue stream. Most smell like urine anyway.”

Other Twitter users originally reacted with anger as they believed that Ryanair had adopted a further confrontational approach to its critics.

The airline recently began a war of words with the online community after a member of staff launched a vitriolic diatribe on a blogger who claimed he had found a bug on the company’s website.

Web developer Jason Roe was labelled “an idiot and a liar” by an unnamed Ryanair employee after he highlighted how he had managed to reduce the cost of booking a flight to zero.

Ryanair has declined to say if the employee responsible for the abuse was disciplined or reprimanded.

However, a spokesman said it was Ryanair’s policy not to waste time and energy corresponding with “idiot bloggers”.

Yesterday, the no-frills airline confirmed it had contacted Twitter to have the offending profile removed after it became aware that abusive and derogatory comments had been made about its passengers.

Last night, the Twitter website said the Ryanair Online account had been suspended.

Ryanair said it had closed several official profiles that one of its marketing team had set up on Twitter to promote its flights as a result of the controversy.