If you want to go to Brussels for a few days in June, Aer Lingus will fly you there for £607.80 return. You have no choice but to travel what is called premier class, which means that you can read this newspaper, have a couple of tiny bottles of fizz, and eat salmon that looks as if has been made from condoms. Some might think that this is good value. Forgive me. Much as I cherish my salary, and reluctant as I am to feed you with subversive ideas, here is the truth: a single copy of this newspaper is not worth the hundred pounds or so which Aer Lingus/Sabena will be charging you for it.
I say Aer Lingus/Sabena because they are in strategic alliance with one another; which means on shared routes they run a duopoly, i.e. a cartel which is organised against the interests of the consumer and in the interests of their corporate incompetence. If you check on the Sabena website - and yes, I have finally managed to master the vast range of technological and keyboard skills to do that - you will be told that the flights available for Brussels will be Aer Lingus only.
Infamous apogee
Now you know, you just know, that Superquinn or Dunnes stores don't carry advertisements for Tesco; and you know that there is something deeply unhealthy when you see "competitors" on the same route giving each other a leg-up. But this is what Aer Lingus has been doing for much of its existence - seeking co-operation with putative competition so as to agree on a fare structure that is against the interests of the fare-paying passenger. This reached its most infamous apogee with the British Airways alliance on the London run: the two airlines used government influence to prevent anyone else flying to London, and then set fares that would maximise profits for a minimum of effort.
The worst aspect of this deal was that the two airlines then divided those profits equally, regardless of who was carrying the more passengers. No one involved in this sordid conspiracy against the paying public comes out of this very well. Politicians entered it because of some fatuous devotion to the flagcarrying airline, and because Aer Lingus would always bump them up to first class; and most shamefully of all, journalists accepted it without complaint, because all we had to do to avoid paying these abominable fares was to ring Aer Lingus and we would fly free.
Grubby, grubby, grubby.
When Avair tried to compete with Aer Lingus, the latter embarked on a campaign of predatory pricing of a kind which in the US would have been rewarded with the guilty airline board serving a few terms of pillow-biting in SingSing. However, in the intellectually weak, morally com placent world of monopolist statism, we tolerated this conspiracy against the paying public and competition, and Avair was put to the sword. Once again, all was well in Aer Lingers, the airline you pay to keep you waiting.
Vile disease
Things have changed. Admittedly, Aer Sabena has a monopoly to Brussels International Airport, but I can fly Ryanair to Charleroi nearby for one sixth the price the duopoly is charging. So in any real sense, the Sabaer monopoly is over. But monopolism is a truly vile disease, for it spreads through a company and gives everyone who works for it notions which do not depart when the monopoly ends. How else can you explain the utter farce the other day when, alone of all the airlines flying out of Dublin Airport, Aer Lingus's workforce walked out on strike because they smelt tar?
They smelt what? They smelt tar. The shame of it! How monstrous! What does any reasonable workforce do when it smells tar but strike, walking out as it bawls the Internationale, the Red Flag and Look Up, It's Not Aer Lingers.
So thousands of people were inconvenienced, Tar Linger's schedules were torn into even greater tatters, and no doubt many of its passengers missed their onward flights. This would be inexcusable if you were paying Ryanair-type fares, but of course passengers were not: they were paying Muggaer fares. This meant they had the privilege of paying extravagant amounts of money in order to sit around smelling tar while the poor Muggaer employees gathered in small complaining clusters outside the terminal, holding handkerchiefs to their delicate little noses, swooning and feeling sorry for themselves.
There are a few consequences to this. Firstly, I suspect it is unlikely that I will get a winning smile the next time I present myself at the Aer Lingus check-in desk. But more generally, who in their right mind would book a flight on Tir Lingus again? Why pay the the sort of money Aer Ripoff charges for this sort of contemptuous treatment?
Long-term question
But there is another, longer term question: what investor is insane enough to put their money into an organisation that only makes money when it is given a monopoly? Who wants a workforce which three years ago closed down the airline's operations because of a dispute within its competitor Ryanair (which meanwhile kept on flying), and which last week closed down its operations because it could smell tar? The fate of Aer Lingus, and the dysfunctional behaviour of its employees, provide a textbook example of the evils of monopolism. Which is fine for students of economics; but in the meantime, how is Mary O'Rourke going to find anyone foolish enough to take the damned thing off our hands?