tl;dr – Got a problem? Simply wash it away with some money.
I recently visited Dublin, Ireland, and had the chance to enjoy a great meal at Chapter One and crash at the Anantara The Marker Dublin (reviews of both experiences are forthcoming). When departing Dublin, I flew RyanAir – my first RyanAir flight in almost two decades.
RyanAir is run by CEO Michael O’Leary, who, among other things, is credited with bringing in and expanding the airline’s low-cost model, modeling it after Southwest Airlines. O’Leary is also a stickler for time management. It’s baked into the RyanAir model: the airline chases punctuality by operating at smaller airports, minimizing ground time with simple interiors, and flying in and out on high-frequency, short routes. O’Leary is so serious about timeliness (or maybe just highly impatient) that he simply doesn’t do traffic.
As the story goes, O’Leary purchased a taxi license and founded O’Leary Cabs, a car-for-hire operator with one single vehicle – his Mercedes-Benz S-Class. This enabled his car to be recognized as a taxi, allowing for legal use of the bus lanes around Dublin, thereby expediting his transit.
The judges just dropped their vote, and this is a solid 9.98 on the BIAB (‘Because I’m A Billionaire) scale.
At times when I’ve been stuck in traffic, I’ve often daydreamed about having one of those Inspector Gadget helicopter hats to get me out of the jam.
But seeing this the truth is hard to ignore. All this time, I just needed to be a billionaire.
Damn – who knew?
Ironically, my departing RyanAir flight to Bratislava was delayed by an hour.
