Business: The irony of reading a book about Ryanair while on an Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to London wasn't lost on me - especially when a cabin crew announcement was made to inform passengers that food and newspapers were both available for purchase on board.
Before the advent of Ryanair, food and newspapers were included in the cost of the ticket.
But the cost of that ticket was prohibitively expensive for most people - and the majority of trips from Ireland to the UK were by boat.
Siobhán Creaton's pacy and engaging book takes an informed look at the phenomenon that is Ryanair; the airline which allowed a generation of people to add places like Beauvais, Nykoping and Ancona to their lists of European "capital" cities. Less than 10 years since its foundation, it is instructive to revisit the purposeful vision of Tony Ryan who continued to fund the company even when all around him - including Michael O'Leary - were telling him to cut his losses and let it fold.
Reading through the details of the fledgling airline's skirmishes, battles and all-out wars with its competitors as it struggled to carve out a niche for itself, you can't help but admire the people concerned while being astonished at how quickly our attitude to air travel has been changed by them.
The author skilfully sketches set-piece confrontations and their backgrounds so that the reader feels an immediate connection with the strategies under discussion. And, from the perspective of hindsight, it is easy to marvel at the obstinacy of those who were scathing and dismissive, not to mention downright obstructive, when it came to the Ryanair dream.
Although the book is about Ryanair, it's also about Michael O'Leary and his dominating presence.
From someone who wasn't particularly interested in the airline at the start (being originally simply employed as Tony Ryan's PA), by midway through the narrative his presence is overwhelming.
While it's clear that O'Leary moulds the Ryanair formula on the Southwest Airlines model (particularly in building up a cash pile), his customer and employee care regimes are a million miles away from Southwest's "love-bomb" approach. It's a pity that Creaton never really discovers why O'Leary takes such a fundamentally different attitude in this area when he adopts almost every other part of the Southwest formula.
An entire chapter is devoted to the "no frills" concept, regaling us with a litany of customer complaints against the airline, which threatens to veer off into a rant against O'Leary's "stuff 'em" approach; but subsequent chapters examine his maverick marketing campaigns, his cost-cutting methods (take free pens from hotel rooms whenever they're available!) and his continued battles with officialdom and workers alike.
Despite the fact that by now the airline is worth more than British Airways, it is clear from Creaton's portrayal that Michael O'Leary still sees himself as fighting the corner for the little guy. An acquaintance is quoted as saying that O'Leary "can't abide not being the people's champion" even though another talks about his ability to "corner prey". Although he might like to appear to be constantly on the receiving end of flak from the authorities and from "rip-off airlines" Creaton leaves us in no doubt that the Ryanair management and model is now open to attack itself, not because anyone feels that they can run it out of business, but because they hope to chip away a piece of the action for themselves - that includes Lufthansa, whose chief executive told O'Leary that low-cost flights would "not catch on in Germany"! She recounts the stories of the low-cost airlines that have taken on Ryanair and lost - Ryanair itself undercutting prices in exactly the same way as Aer Lingus did when the new carrier took off on its first flight in 1986.
From the early days of trying to get their planes off the ground, to today when the brand name is instantly recognisable and the company is the market leader in low cost travel, Siobhán Creaton's account of the rise and rise of Ryanair and Michael O'Leary keeps you turning the pages - no mean feat when everyone already has a Ryanair story of their own to tell!
• Sheila O'Flanagan is a novelist and contributor to The Irish Times. Her current novel, Too Good To Be True, set in the world of air traffic control, was published by Headline in April