#low-cost carriers

[runwayrunway]

No. 48 - Eurowings

We're here today to talk about Eurow

Yes, Eurowings! Did you think those five letters started any other words? Silly. Let's discuss the aerosartorial choices of Eurowings, a member of - oh dear - the Lufthansa Group.

Eurowings! Eurowings is a former regional airline formed from the 1990 merger of Nürnberger Flugdienst, a regional airline that I'd heard of, and Reise- und Industrieflug, one I hadn't. After its acquisition by Lufthansa, it has been restructured into a low-cost subsidiary, making it something of the FlyDubai of Germany. That means I am yet again courting a C&D from the Lufthansa Group, and I am delighted to throw myself on this particular blade.

The process of Eurowings's evolution into its current state is somewhat tortuous, involving the cannibalization of its old subsidiary Germanwings (yes, this was subsidiary-ception, and while it happened after 2015 it seems to have been planned before...well, you know) and the establishment of an Austrian subsidiary which was moved to Malta last year and is named - get this - Eurowings Europe.

Eurowings has been going through it of late. Well, of ever, as far as I can tell. If you've ever been frustrated by a delay, spare a thought for the passengers of 2016's Eurowings flight 131, some of whom had their visas expire while stuck in their hotels in Cuba during their 60-hour delay. Every fourth flight could expect six hours or so of unscheduled quality time at the airport. Or, you know, 20 sometimes. 20 hours. Yikes! That's what happens when you start seven long-haul routes with one (1) A330 and a handful of various and sundry wet leases. A lot of their routes have been taken over by Lufthansa proper, which seems eager to kill the brand as soon as possible, and I can't blame them given it's somehow developed a worse reputation than actual Lufthansa. I've never flown with them. They served Boston for literally three entire months, but I wouldn't have flown Eurowings anyway. For my own taste their 'cheap' prices are still fairly expensive.

The Eurowings livery is unfortunately on more than just one plane for the moment. They have 95 A320 family members and four wet-leased Boeing 737s, giving them a very typical fleet for a low cost carrier. And they look like that!

Okay, first and foremost, I want to talk about their logo. It looks a lot like LATAM's logo.

Indeed, they even both use a variation on something adjacent to blue and something adjacent to pink. I think it's definitely a coincidence - they both were unveiled in 2015 - and even if it weren't I don't respect either one enough to defend its honor from the other.

So, those colors. I think I prefer the shades chosen by Eurowings, and in a competent livery design that palette could be extremely effective. I love LATAM's saturated pink and indigo, which made the mostly-white fuselage a disappointment, and I like Eurowings's desaturated fuchsia and cyan as a combination even more, but the lack of fuselage coverage gets even sadder when it's such light colors that fail to contrast against the white at all.

Unlike LATAM, Eurowings makes use of grey as both shading and background. I like this! I think it can make for a nice base to play with and a potential source of some interesting, dynamic designs.

Oh, and the logo is meant to look like an 'E'. I guess I can sort of see it, but it looks more like me attempting to get a pen that's starting hard going again. (Don't mix inks in pens, though. Especially not fountain pens.) Anyway, I don't really love the logo's shape in isolation but I do think it could easily lend itself to some totally acceptable fuselage layouts.

It's the wordmark that I think is interesting. This is about to be a long section about fonts but I promise that one, I have a point, and two, if you keep scrolling it will stop being about fonts.

The typeface used for the Eurowings wordmark is Soleto in medium weight. It was designed by Dalton Maag, a London-and São-Paulo based foundry. You've definitely seen their work around - they've done custom fonts for the likes of Pitney Bowes, Tesco, Fox Sports, Nokia, AT&T, Airbnb, Wix, USA Today, Google, and the flipping BBC, among others. And, well, a few that I would go as far as to say are pretty iconic:

Lush Handwritten is actually gorgeous in Cyrillic, by the way.

I would say they're not my favorite foundry, with a lot of their work trending towards somewhat boring sans-serifs that are not at all to my taste (you will never replace Gill Sans), but they've had some hits. They're also no stranger to airlines - they did a custom typeface for the TUI wordmark, which appears on their livery!

Blue side up appeal aside, I definitely want to someday talk about the strange beast which is TUI, the World's Most Misogynistic Airline.

So you might think that Dalton Maag was commissioned to make a nice custom font family for Eurowings, given Lufthansa literally used their money to commission a slightly different version of Helvetica, but you would be wrong. As their website makes no mention of a custom typeface for Eurowings, despite discussing modified versions of their existing products for other companies (like Fox Sports Cricket being a variant of Aller), I believe they are indeed using off-the-shelf Soleto, available via Dalton Maag's website as well as Adobe Fonts. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with this, and I, who cannot afford a tablet to redesign the Eurowings livery, am not trying to wealth-shame an airline for not custom-ordering a typeface. They're far from alone. Another Dalton Maag user is Cebu Pacific, which uses Foco in a bold weight to decent effect, and I firmly believe that there's no reason to commission a second Helvetica if you want to use Helvetica. SAS uses Rotis Sans, and that's a massive airline with money to spare.

I just think the contrast here is funny. I could get the right to use the full Soleto font family for the entirety of Runway Runway's branding, title, and body text for one thousand sterling, or around $1350 in USD. This is, to me, a fortune and more money than I've had at any one time in literal years. It's also definitely not what Eurowings paid. I don't know what they paid, because Dalton Maag does custom quotes for unlimited licenses, but I don't want to imagine how much it cost to commission a firm to make a second Helvetica, so this just makes me think that Lufthansa really despises Eurowings. Pointless diversion? Maybe. I just think it's funny.

I think Soleto Medium is on the uglier side. I mean, I really don't like how Eurowings uses it in the same way I don't like Helvetica or the FedEx proprietary font - I really don't like really wide sans serifs used as titling, and I'm not sure why. Is it because it reminds me of elementary school? Is it because I find them sort of illegible? Are they just...ugly? Well, there's no such thing as objective ugliness, but this is my blog and I dislike them. They're certainly not at all memorable, which frequently makes their use something of an epic branding fail.

Soleto looks better than Helvetica, I'll give it that. A lot better. It's not really the typeface, though. It's the usage. While Dalton Maag's website does say:

Soleto is a flexible font family that can adapt itself to a wide variety of uses. [...] [it] is also quite capable of standing on its own.

It opens with:

Soleto is a contemporary sans serif font family with a quietly confident character. It works well for big areas of text, creating an even rhythm and texture, but can also make a statement at larger sizes.

And I think this is totally true, actually. As body text Soleto is fine! (This is via Dalton Maag's TypeTester feature, as are all future samples.)

This is 10pt Soleto medium, and it's a solid if generic sans-serif. Not overly ugly, totally legible. I'm not sure it's meant to be used for a logo, though. When I read 'statement at larger sizes' I think...titling, not airplane livery. A title for a website and an airplane wordmark are just different orders of magnitude.

How about titling? Well, I tried my own name in a couple different weights, and I actually think Soleto looks great in black italic.

This is a bit modern for my own taste, but I think this would look fine as a wordmark. Frankly, I think it would look good as an airline livery! It's not nearly as generic, it's almost a bit stylized even, and it's legible. The italic is always something I think looks nice due to its aerodynamic implications, and with a name as long as mine you don't really notice that this also does that obnoxious thing where the bottoms of certain letters dip beneath the baseline. Let's try some other weights!

Normally I prefer lighter weights in sans serifs, but no, Soleto looks worse the thinner it gets. These are, respectively, Light and Medium. Medium is what Eurowings uses!

Oh, wow, would you look at that! One of their default color combinations is even basically the Eurowings scheme, though in reverse.

Well, this...doesn't look that bad, right? It's boring, but it doesn't actively make me wrinkle my nose.

So why is this such a problem? I mean, let's look at this picture of an airplane, as we do on this blog. I've chosen this picture because you can see a Finnair (post coming soon) plane in the background. Finnair has this neat spiky sci-fi looking wordmark, for which no typeface exists. This wordmark is absolutely huge, and in a very dark blue against white.

Meanwhile, Eurowings's logo is very similarly formatted to Lufthansa's. It's high up and closely spaced, making it feel a little claustrophobic. It's not...as bad as Lufthansa's proprietary Helvetica (Helvetica Neue Neue? Helvetica Ultra-Ultra-Condensed? Hellvetica?) but that's barely a compliment. Lufthansa has theirs well above the window-line all squished together, while Eurowings has the decency to use the windows as the underline you would think they're just perfect to be, but with a typeface that's medium weight, neither thick nor thin and with no italics or serifs, it becomes something of a small blob. To locate something that far up should be a stylistic choice. There should be no default choices in airline liveries. You can design a massive wordmark to cover the fuselage, or something which looks nice when localized to part of it, but you don't just get to do the equivalent of opening your text editor, typing in one word without indenting, and calling that a livery. Lufthansa doesn't get this, and neither, really, does any of the unfortunate airlines in the Lufthansa Group.

The color used doesn't blend into the white, but it also isn't like they're sharply contrasted. It just doesn't particularly draw your eye. It's a wordmark your eyes glide right over and it's not at all memorable. While grey or cyan could have been incorporated somehow to accentuate it, they weren't. For a livery that's mostly white to work, you generally need some sort of really vivid color. Kalitta Air's red and gold or Tibet Airlines' rainbow are examples of good use of a white fuselage. You could use a different background, but they stand on their own, and the white plays an active part in the color palette rather than just being a default canvas for it. Many airlines use black or dark blue for their wordmarks, and while these aren't the most creative choices they're used for a reason. Just look at Finnair. That's some contrast. It's nice and legible and distinct.

Icelandair's two most recent liveries use the same placement for their wordmark as Eurowings and Finnair respectively. Now, I actually like the wordmark on the old livery better. It has those nice trailing serifs and is in small caps, making it memorable and dynamic, and it doesn't feel closely spaced. The name 'Icelandair' teeters on the edge of being too long for this to work, but ultimately pulls it off. The modern livery dispenses with this much nicer font in favor of gigantic letters. While I like this less, it's still serviceable. It is gigantic, legible, and feels as natural as me sprawling out on a couch after work. It's simply expanded to its natural point. Adequately done on both archetypes.

Meanwhile, the lack of color contrast from the white fuselage was perhaps my main criticism of Air Astra's livery, which I otherwise quite like. It's probably the inverse of Eurowings, which is contrasted enough to be acceptable but entirely boring in design - well-designed, but please, please, please let me actually see it.

Eurowings just...well, I'm going to copy and paste exactly what I said earlier. There should be no default choices in airline liveries. You can design a massive wordmark to cover the fuselage, or something which looks nice when localized to part of it, but you don't just get to do the equivalent of opening your text editor, typing in one word without indenting, and calling that a livery.

And, as a final note, something that looks good on a webpage won't always look good on an airplane. The angles you'll see it from are completely different, it has to compete for the rest of the livery for your attention, and you can't necessarily put infinite space around it due to the very physically limited canvas you're working with. The Eurowings wordmark feels vertically cramped more than it does horizontally, because the windows are right below it and immediately above it the fuselage just...ends, from a two-dimensional view. Something looking okay in copy doesn't mean you can transfer it immediately to material.

Lindon Leader talked about this when discussing his design process for the FedEx logo in a very illuminating interview I cited heavily in my FedEx post. He looked at multiple pre-existing fonts but decided to create a custom one, and one of his reasons for this was:

[...] each had its potential limitations downstream in application to thousands of FedEx media, from waybills and embroidered courier caps to FedEx.com and massive signage for aircraft, buildings and vehicles. 

Something can look acceptable or even sleek on a webpage, and that same wordmark can look downright horrible when applied to an airplane. I'll say this for FedEx - while I find their logo ugly it is absolutely good at what it needs to do. It looks no worse in any one medium or context than any other, and that's one of the reasons it's successful. It's not to my taste, but it's definitely well-designed, and I think one of the ways to improve the livery would actually be to somehow give it more real estate on the fuselage.

So the wordmark is, in my opinion, an abject failure. It's not even ugly but I mean that in the same way Wolfgang Pauli describes crackpot physics as not even wrong. Like, it's fine. It's nothing showstopping or even memorable enough to be picked out of an identity parade of default webfonts but I don't despise it. It's a common phenomenon and I'm picking on Eurowings because it's there and I know exactly what font was used and thus can mess around with it, not because it's the worst. Much like Lufthansa, it's an opportunistic victim. You know, the sort of post I'll end up hyperlinking to later, because even in its failure it's nothing exceptional.

I will say I enjoy the tiny outline of black on the letters. That's not on the wordmark proper, as rendered on their website m, but adding it was definitely the right move to help the magenta stand out from the white. Once you know about it you can notice how it makes the wordmark pop ever so slightly, turning an unmitigated catastrophe into a mitigated catastrophe. It's almost infuriating that they did this thoughtful little thing when you zoom out and remember what it's in service of. This honestly is a reoccurring thing with Eurowings.

Look at that nice tail design! They could have slapped the logo on and left it at that, like so many other airlines, but they didn't. They use the same nice colors and the overlapping greys to create a design that is clearly their logo while also being abstract and dynamic. There's a lot of shapes, a lot of motion, and a lot of nice shades of cyan and magenta, and I love it!

See that airplane landing in the background? Think about what airline you think it flies for, and stick a pin in that for a minute.

Hey, uh...where's the rest of it, though?

So, yes. Eurowings shares the first five letters of its name with Eurowhite. If you're not familiar with the term (I have a glossary, by the way) it just means a livery that is almost completely white save for logos. One could argue that the fact that the pattern on the tail isn't limited to strictly the tail and does form some sort of attempt at a fuselage design means that Eurowings' livery isn't 'true' Eurowhite, but I'm not going to brook that. Eurowhite is a state of mind. There is a nice, abstract design here which could easily be extended further. There is a grey shade which could be utilized (as it is on the engines, which look like they're lost and wandered onto another livery by accident) and there are infinite ideas to be had on the planet, and instead the majority of the plane is just white.

If one thing is thought of as my thesis from this post, let it be this, said for the third time: there is no such thing as default. Things like this wordmark placement, this type of font, and the primarily white fuselage are not default. The fact that they are common and boring does not make them inherent until replaced. They are still an active choice just as much as designing a livery that doesn't utilize these features is. It was proposed, iterated on, signed off on, and implemented. Airlines don't start with a template they then alter. They start with a vast world of infinite possibilities and decide they want to do the same thing as everyone else - that's a choice just how any other act of cowardice is a choice. I think the misconception that boring design is a result of inertia and lack of effort is a harmful one. It is a choice. They choose to do this.

They do not choose it because it is right for their livery, because they like it. They choose it because it is common, it is safe. It is reliable and it doesn't rock the boat. I've said this before discussing Southwest and Flair - low-cost carriers should be willing to rock the boat. If you're going to advertise yourself as the no-frills option you shouldn't try to look all composed and corporate. You have nothing to lose with being bright and pretty and interesting, so why aren't you?

And that cowardice is what makes me hate it so much. Some liveries are ugly, and some are almost ugly but stop halfway to cower in a Eurowhite bunker in an attempt to stem the bleeding, but there's nothing more tragic than a livery so afraid of being ugly that it cuts off and cauterizes something beautiful. The fear of ugliness is the death of beauty. condor is worth one billion Eurowings.

(No, Eurowings does not fail the Star Alliance Test, though.)

Like many of these designs that sort of just decide to stop after the tail, the longer a plane is the worse the Eurowings livery is on it. This is a very nice tail attached to a big white tube. Sure, Eurowings mostly operates somewhat short aircraft, but that wasn't the case when the livery was designed - back then they had A330s. Even now they have A321s.

Frustratingly, given how much I've ragged on this livery, I do still really like the tail. Even more frustratingly, you can see how easy it would have been to not have it be this way. The end of the cyan stripe almost begs to be held onto, weaved onto the rest of the fuselage, but it just isn't. It looks unfinished. It looks sad.

With all these shades of cyan and magenta to play with, the light heavily alters the way the colors on the tail look. They're never not pretty. It's a lovely colorscheme that's dramatically underutilized. The way it weaves together has so much potential, and it's attached to a white body. It looks like the paint job is unfinished. And that's what I hate the most about Eurowhite - good ideas left to languish, where a bit of custom letterhead does a better job of expressing your identity than an airplane livery.

The one feature Eurowings has towards the front of the plane is this little cheek decal of the Eurowings logo. Nice thought, but it almost looks actively worse when it stands out like that among an otherwise blank space. Plus, it's so small it might as well be a dot. It's cute, but in terms of overall effect on the livery it has the effect of making something mostly white look cluttered, which is just downright bizarre.

Obviously I can't endorse this. While not quite at the Lufthansa Line, with the actual bit of design happening on the tail instead of a sterile block, it doesn't cover much more fuselage than a proper exemplar of the phenomenon, and that's just always going to be a bit of a kneecap. Eurowhite is a state of mind, so much so that I almost think an unremarkable sans-serif font is as much of a codifying feature as a white body despite not being specified anywhere in the term. The same decision-making process leads both places, and the little black outline and cheek stamp and nice tail design just cant overpower that.

I'm giving Eurowings a D+.

Eurowings reminds me most of Saudia. They both have gorgeous colorschemes wasted on a design which burrows itself down as far into the substrate of artistic cowardice as physically possible. It's especially tragic and leaves me fighting myself over my final ratings. It feels wrong to grade such a gorgeous tail so harshly, but the good design features just make the bad package even more insulting. And at the end of the day I just have to put my foot down.

Sometimes I'm generous with grading because an airline is new, or because they're iterating on something that could be taken in a good direction. Eurowings isn't in the process of developing towards something nice, it's just Eurowings. It's an airline that stranded people in Cuba for 60 hours and Lufthansa seems to want it dead. I don't think we'll be getting a Eurowings livery overhaul anytime soon and I'm pessimistic about its longevity in general. Low-cost carriers and subsidiaries of large airlines are both easy come, easy go. Tears in the rain. 'Twas ever thus. Try not to get too attached.

Remember that plane from earlier? Yeah, I've got no clue what airline it flies for, but I don't think I can rule out it being Eurowings. 'Twas ever thus.

[presskl]

AirAsia reveals plan to become the world’s first low-cost network carrier

[goldennika]

i remember a while back how “what’s the deal with airplane food?” was a joke(?) being thrown around a lot

i thought i was in the minority who actually enjoyed airplane food until i realized that the people who popularized that joke probably flew a lot of western airlines and i’ve seen how bad their food options are

but as someone based in asia and therefore flies with asian carriers almost exclusively, i’ve always had a very different flying experience than someone on say, a US carrier

[artisticdivasworld]

How to Upgrade Your Truck Without Breaking the Bank: A Guide for the Individual Trucker

The new EPA regulations are probably the last thing you want to hear about right now. It feels like every time we turn around, there’s another rule or restriction. And honestly, it’s frustrating! But before you throw your hands up in anger, let’s talk about how these changes could actually work in your favor and, more importantly, what options are out there to help you upgrade your trucks without…

[navalvessels]

Low-Cost Carrier Airlines Market: Soaring into Affordability Explore the Skies with Low-Cost Carrier Airlines. Uncover Market Trends, Affordable Travel Options, and Future Projections. Your Guide to Budget-Friendly Flying. 🛫

[reasonsforhope]

"Businesses like to talk about the concept of a closed loop or circular economy, but often they’re trying to close small loops. Releaf Paper takes dead leaves from city trees and turns them into paper for bags, office supplies, and more—which is to say they are striving to close one heck of a big loop.

How big? Six billion trees are cut down every year for paper products according to the WWF, producing everything from toilet paper to Amazon boxes to the latest best-selling novels. Meanwhile, the average city produces 8,000 metric tons of leaves every year which clog gutters and sewers, and have to be collected, composted, burned, or dumped in landfills.

In other words, huge supply and huge demand, but Releaf Paper is making cracking progress. They already produce 3 million paper carrier bags per year from 5,000 metric tons of leaves from their headquarters in Paris.

Joining forces with landscapers in sites across Europe, thousands of tonnes of leaves arrive at their facility where a low-water, zero-sulfur/chlorine production process sees the company create paper with much smaller water and carbon footprints...

“In a city, it’s a green waste that should be collected. Really, it’s a good solution because we are keeping the balance—we get fiber for making paper and return lignin as a semi-fertilizer for the cities to fertilize the gardens or the trees. So it’s like a win-win model,” [Valentyn] Frechka, co-founder and CTO of Releaf Paper, told Euronews.

Releaf is already selling products to LVMH, BNP Paribas, Logitech, Samsung, and various other big companies. In the coming years, Frechka and Sobolenka also plan to further increase their production capacity by opening more plants in other countries. If the process is cost-efficient, there’s no reason there shouldn’t be a paper mill of this kind in every city.

“We want to expand this idea all around the world. At the end, our vision is that the technology of making paper from fallen leaves should be accessible on all continents,” Sobolenka notes, according to ZME Science."

-via Good News Network, August 15, 2024

[roosterforme]

Always Ever Only You Part 22 | Rooster x Reader

Summary: Bradley was never one to shy away from a dangerous mission, and this one had a lot at stake for a lot of reasons. As you tried to pass the time without him at home, it was frustrating having no idea when he might return. Then a phone call when you're out shopping almost brings you to tears.

Warnings: Swearing, mission related angst, smut, fluff, mentions of hostages

Length: 5100 words

Pairing: Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw x Female Reader

This was written to accompany my series Is It Working For You? along with a bunch of my one-shots and other series, but it can be read on its own! Check my masterlist for the reading order. Always Ever Only You masterlist. Gorgeous banner by @mak-32

Bradley sat in his unmarked F/A-18, ready to launch from catapult two, and the only lights he could see came from the deck of the USS Nimitz and the radar screen reflecting onto his canopy. As soon as he was launched and his teammates were in the air as well, the aircraft cruiser deck would go black. His radar screen would be dimmed. The moon and stars overhead would become more prominent. He would be flying in the darkest conditions of his career.

This seat felt foreign to him. The whole jet did. He really missed his own aircraft which was sitting on the tarmac in San Diego. You were in San Diego. He couldn't believe he just talked to you over facetime a handful of hours ago. It felt like he hadn't seen you or heard your voice in a year. Every minute felt like a hundred. Every breath he took felt like it made his harness straps just a little bit tighter. 

The headset in his helmet crackled to life. "Rooster, prepare to launch in one minute."

"Standing by," he replied, running his thumb over his silicone ring one more time before pulling on his gloves. He waited and waited, ready for action. His adrenaline was waiting just under the surface. When he launched off the deck followed by Havoc, Dugout and Richmond, he gained a little altitude and led them in a slow loop around the carrier, watching for the lights on deck to go out.

Then they did, and it was just darkness all around. It was more disorienting than he anticipated, and his breath caught in his throat as he thought of you in the dark bedroom at home, alone. He needed to get back there.

Bluebird and Wilbur were already miles ahead, working with the slower comanche which was trying to get crystal clear real time imaging for the Seal team. "Approaching the coastline," Bluebird said, and Bradley heard her through his headset. "Comanche in position. Fly, Rooster."

And that was the code not only for Bradley's team to move toward the airstrip at maximum speed, but also the signal that the only conversation allowed now would be through a specific code. "Juniper whiskey," he spoke, realizing he would sound like an idiot to anyone who wasn't involved with Operation Loophole. But in his side mirrors, he could see the barest outlines of the other jets following him at his current speed of 600 knots. 

When he gave the verbal command to steadily drop altitude, the lights of the cities and towns below grew brighter as they approached the coastline. "Idaho whiskey."

It felt strange to drop altitude so quickly once they neared the airstrip. Bradley's initial reaction was to ready missiles for deployment, but there would be no weapons used today. He wasn't even equipped with a single missile let alone the six he normally was. They were not to fire upon anyone; they were to avoid being hit at all costs. The only thing they had on their side was the surprise attack and the plan that they cobbled together. 

"Lima Lima," Bradley said once he could see the airstrip, and he and Dugout dipped so low, Bradley could tell what color uniforms the officers walking around the well lit tarmac were wearing. So low in fact, he could hear the alarms blaring before he and Dugout hit six G's for a fast altitude gain. Bradley could see Havoc and Richmond outlined by the moon as he climbed. Without a single WSO on the mission, there was nobody to inform him whether or not the enemy jets were taking to the sky. He had to wait until Havor or Richmond saw something of use. And then he finally heard it. 

"Hot sauce."

Bradley smiled at the word he'd chosen to signal that the plan was still on track. Richmond must have eyes on the enemy below, and when Bradley flew a loop, he was surprised to see the moon reflecting off of an enemy fighter a lot closer to him than anticipated. He throttled back up to 600 knots after saying the command word; and now it was time for the rodeo to begin. 

He felt calm in spite of his adrenaline, and Bluebird was the only voice he heard now as he headed for the darkness of the open water with his team. "Bell Bottoms," Bluebird said clearly, and that meant the SEAL team was given the go ahead to breach the building where the hostages were housed. 

Then Bradley saw the streaks of orange directly behind him, and it was a miracle he hadn't been hit by any of the barrage of bullets being fired at him as he saw nothing but the darkness of open water below. "Fuck," he muttered under his breath. He checked his radar and throttled up fast. "Whiskey gold," he called out, inverting to try to see who had shot at him.

He saw a flash of moonlight on a silver wing and knew that's who it must have been. His fingers flexed on the throttle, and he wanted nothing more than to dive back down and ruin their day. But he couldn't. So he kept to the plan. He could see his teammates in tight formation on his radar, but then he saw more orange streaks in the night. "Shit." 

Bradley checked his fuel capacity and nudged the throttle up to 650 knots, letting his teammates know to do the same. They needed to loop back around south toward the USS Nimitz, but they needed to time it just right so the enemy aircrafts were running too low on fuel to go after the Navy SEAL team and the hostages. If the SEALs were even able to get them out. 

Bradley was starting to sweat. He hadn't heard an update from Bluebird in nearly three minutes. That was way too long for the hostage recovery to have been successful. Now he was all too aware of his breathing and the sound of his heart in his ears. One of the hostages was a seventeen year old kid. Another one was pregnant. 

He felt sick to his stomach as he waited, but he knew he only had another few seconds before he had to draw everyone further south. He counted to ten in his head, ready with the command word on his tongue as he checked his fuel gauge. And then he heard Bluebird say, "Bottoms up."

The SEALS were out with the five hostages in the heavily armed transport van. Bradley commanded his group to move south, and sure enough, one by one, the enemy aircrafts headed back toward land. Whether they were going to attempt to go after the hostages or not, Bradley wasn't concerned. They had to be nearly out of fuel just like his team was. The only benefit he had was the fact that the aircraft carrier was nearby, waiting in the quiet darkness below. 

So let them try to go after the SEALs. It didn't matter. They had too much of a head start. As Bradley neared the exact coordinates where the carrier should be, he turned his regular longer distance radio on again and said, "Omega one."

The answer came in the form of the carrier deck being lit up in red lights, signalling that it was safe for them to land one by one. And when a second set of white lights came to life in the tower, Bradley pumped his fist in the air. That meant Bluebird and Wilbur were successfully on their way back with the comanche.

Bradley was the first one to touch down on deck, and he scrambled out of his jet in time to see Havoc's tailhook catch. Then the other two landed. The four of them ended up lining up alongside Warlock and Jackal who remained completely quiet until fifteen minutes later when the comanche touched down followed by the last two unmarked F/A-18s.

When Warlock started walking, Bradley followed him down the spiral of stairs and into the well lit classroom. Bradley realized he was soaked with sweat as he sat down in the back row alone and watched everyone else file in. He counted the beats of his heart, and as Cyclone walked inside, he closed the door but kept his hand on the knob. 

"Operation Loophole was highly successful. The five hostages are in a secure location along with SEAL Team 7. Please keep in mind that the sensitive details of this mission are considered top secret. Now, go get some rest. Eat a good meal when you wake up. We'll meet back here at 1200 hours to debrief and discuss plans to get you back home."

Then Cyclone turned the knob, and he was gone. Bradley took his time walking back to his bunk, and he showered before collapsing into his bed. Selfishly, he let his mission overwrite some of the damage Slayer and Dean had done to his ego. The adrenaline hadn't quite worn off, and he doubted it would until he saw you again, but the sense of relief he felt let him drift off into a comfortable sleep. 

---------------------------

You were at Costco trying to decide how much chicken to buy when you got the phone call. If Bradley was going to come home this weekend, you'd make a double batch of Marry Me Rooster. If he wouldn't be home this weekend, and would subsequently miss spending his birthday with you, then you would only need to make a smaller batch.

When your phone rang in your pocket, you assumed it was your mom and dad finalizing plans to fly to San Diego. If Bradley wasn't back for their visit, then you could cancel their hotel room and have them stay with you. But your phone screen said RESTRICTED CALLER, and you almost dropped the pack of chicken on the floor. 

Your heart was pounding in your ears, and the metallic taste of fear filled your mouth. Someone was calling you about Bradley. It had been a few days since you talked to him in the shower, and now someone else was calling you.

"Hello?" Your voice was hoarse and soft, but you didn't even want to clear your throat and cut off the person on the other end of the call. You had to grip the cart handle as a cheerful voice greeted you.

"I'm calling in regards to your husband, Lieutenant Commander Bradley Bradshaw. Could you please confirm your full name and date of birth?"

You rattled off the information for her and went silent again as she took her time with whatever information she had for you. She didn't sound like she had bad news, but you just weren't sure. It hurt to take a deep breath, and your eyes were starting to burn when she finally said, "Okay.... it looks like he'll be flying back into San Diego International on Saturday night. That's June 27th at 10:45 pm."

"Oh my god," you gasped, leaning against the refrigerator case and forcing air in and out of your lungs.

"Can you pick him up?"

"Yes," you replied. "Of course. I'll be there."

"Have a great day!"

Bradley was coming home on his birthday. You started laughing as happy tears filled your eyes. You decided to get the big pack of chicken. Then you walked around the store and thought about the time you'd called him Daddy while you shopped together last year. Your heart twinged at the thought; you knew he actually wanted to be a daddy, and you wanted that for him, too. But you and he had really enjoyed yourselves that day. 

You ended up buying way more than you probably needed, including everything to make him a lemon cake to go with his birthday dinner. When you brought him home around midnight on Saturday, the two of you could stay up and eat together if he wasn't too tired. Then on Sunday, you'd keep him in bed all day, alternating between snuggling with him and having birthday sex. 

The countdown was on. Just a few days to go. Giddy and excited, you drove home to get the house cleaned up a bit. You gave Tramp a bath and then cleaned the bathroom. You vacuumed everything and got caught up on your laundry so Bradley's dirty clothes could go right into the machines. You had to force yourself to go to sleep around midnight even though you felt like you could run a marathon. 

At lunch on Thursday, you finally ran into Bob. You had called him on Sunday, asking if he was still looking for a new place to rent. When he told you he was, you mentioned your old apartment and Maria. "Oh. Thank you. Let me think about it," was all he told you. 

Now he was just ahead of you in line in the cafeteria, and you cornered him by the condiments. "Hey, did you give any more thought to moving in with Maria?"

Bob looked up at you as he continued to pump the ketchup, flooding his tray of French fries with it. "Yeah," he said, sounding very unsure about himself. "I thought about it. But I don't think it's a very good idea."

Your brow scrunched in confusion. The apartment was great, and Maria was one of your best friends. "Well, why not? Maria is amazing."

Bob's cheeks were pink as he set the saturated fries down on his lunch tray and avoided your eyes. "Yeah, she's great. I think it would actually be me who was the problem," he muttered.

You shook your head. "But Bob, you're great, too."

He smiled softly at you before he picked up his tray and looked around the room. "I think I would end up making it awkward. You've seen me around attractive women. You know how I am."

"Oh," you said as you looked at him. "But you're not awkward at all, Bob. Maybe you're a little quiet around women, but definitely not awkward."

You saw Maria across the cafeteria, and she waved to you. Bob immediately ducked in the other direction toward Phoenix, and you let him go. When you sat down across from Maria, she immediately asked, "Why didn't you bring Bob with you? I was going to mention my place. And besides, he always smells so good."

"I don't think it's going to work out," you said carefully. "Are you interested in him?"

She scoffed. "No. He's not my type. He's quiet and kind of shy and has those rosy cheeks. Nah. Not my thing."

"I didn't think so." But as you watched her watching him, you really weren't so sure. 

On Friday, you stopped out in the tower in the afternoon when you had some free time in your schedule, and as soon as you poked your head into the rec room, everyone was calling your name.

Nat jumped up from the couch when you walked inside. "What are you doing out here?" 

You gave Fanboy a high five and accepted a hug from Payback. "Just saying hi. Is Bob around?" 

Just then, he walked in with his flight suit sleeves tied around his waist. He was all sweaty, his hair was attractively mussed, and he was drinking from a reusable water bottle while his Adam's apple bobbed. 

"Speak of the fucking devil," Nat said collapsing back onto the couch.

Bob was already blushing as you walked over to him and quietly said, "Hey, I'm not trying to pressure you at all. But I can assure you that Maria doesn't think you're awkward in the least bit."

His eyes darted around the room where Fanboy and Payback were in the middle of an argument, and you knew he didn't want them to overhear. "She doesn't?"

"Not at all. She thinks you're kind and courteous and that you smell good."

"She does?" he asked in disbelief.

"Yes. I promise. She's also almost never home, so if you moved in, you'd probably hardly ever see her. She does taekwondo and kickboxing and she volunteers all the time." His eyes lit up, probably at the prospect of having the place to himself most evenings. "And I don't think you're really her type, so any awkwardness at the beginning would probably vanish right away."

He was nodding at you with a very serious expression although now he looked a little sad. "Okay. I'll talk to her."

"Great," you said, giving him a quick hug before you turned to leave. 

"Wait," Nat called out as she ate a twinkie and tried to kick Coyote off the couch where he was napping. "Bradley's coming back tomorrow? Hard Deck night?"

You were hoping for something a little more private with him, but you just smiled and said, "His flight doesn't even land until almost 11 o'clock. Next week? Wednesday night maybe?"

She nodded and gave you a thumbs up. When you left the rec room, you walked right past Jake and Cat making out next to the stairs. They turned to look at you but made no move to separate. 

"Wait, I think I hear Hondo coming," you said loudly as you started to run away with a grin on your face. Jake just flipped you off, and that was fine with you. The only thing you really cared about was getting home and preparing for Bradley. 

After you took Tramp for a long walk, you started on Bradley's lemon cake. You made a second confetti cake as a decoy, just to make him laugh. You could always drop it off for your elderly neighbors on Sunday after you clocked the thinly veiled annoyance on your husband's face. Then you got to work on a massive batch of Marry Me Rooster. He always came home hungry after being away, usually complaining about the food that was served on the carriers. 

You paused while you were working and took a minute to just be thankful that Bradley was coming home to you after only two weeks away. You were in a much better headspace after this short time apart, and you were very thankful for that as well. Tomorrow was Bradley's birthday. Your period was over. You were picking up the calendar in the morning, and you were picking Bradley up tomorrow night. 

"Get ready, Tramp. Daddy's almost home."

------------------------------

Bradley was so antsy on his thirteen hour flight from Seoul to San Diego, he could barely sit still. Even the business class seat did little to help him get comfortable. He felt too aware of every part of his entire body. His arms felt too big. His legs felt too long. His fingers were practically twitching with the anticipation of seeing you and touching you. He should have jerked off on the carrier when he had the chance.

Now he was counting down the hours while he wrote a little bit in his notebook, but even then, the pages read like a dirty movie starring you and him. He had actually written the sentence I like to take my wife hard when I return home from deployments. 

"What the fuck," he whispered to himself, trying not to disturb the person who was sleeping next to him as he closed his notebook and tossed it into his backpack. When he tried to stretch his legs out, all he could think about was how it felt to be in his king sized bed with you where there was plenty of room. Plenty of room, sure, but you always ended up on top of him. You were always touching him, running your fingers along his tattoo and up into his hair. 

Bradley jolted upright in his seat, practically panting as he took his phone out to check the time. Two more hours. Two more fucking hours. He wouldn't make it. Maybe he should jerk it in the lavatory? But no, he already knew his hand wouldn't satisfy him now. He needed your body. There was something about the successful completion of Operation Loophole that made his adrenaline run hot and stay that way. It was like he could feel his blood pumping through his veins and needed to do something about it. 

When Cyclone and Warlock pulled him aside and called him 'a hell of a good pilot', it was like he could hear your voice right next to his ear. Praising him. He went back to his bunk to pack for home, but all he could think about was you with your hands all over him. Just you, whispering something soft and innocent that slowly turned into something filthy.

By the time the commercial jet started its descent into San Diego, Bradley had both fists clenched on the arm rests. He was back to practicing the steady breathing techniques Bob taught him, but his cock was a little hard in his jeans regardless. He was ready to go. When he turned off airplane mode and checked his text messages, yours was right at the top.

Baby Girl Bradshaw: Happy birthday! I can't wait to see you! I'll be in baggage claim, ready to take you home!

Bradley grunted as he slowly deboarded the plane, and once he was free of the crowd of people around the gate, he started walking with longer strides. Home. When he got you back to the craftsman, he was going to fuck you until you couldn't talk. Until you couldn't move. He could practically taste your skin already. He could hear the way you were going to whine for him.

As he approached the baggage claim area, he squeezed the rubber handrail of the escalator like he wanted to kill it. There you were, looking up at the arrivals board with your back to him, wearing one of your little dresses. He could pick you out of a crowd of hundreds. Maybe thousands. He could find your pretty face or the perfect swell of your ass anywhere. He knew the way you shifted from one foot to the other by heart. He knew exactly what it looked like when you anxiously checked your outfit, running your palms down over your hips. 

When Bradley released the handrail, there was nothing that could keep him from you. One, two, three, four, five steps in your direction, and he was calling out your name. His voice sounded tense and a little bit stern, and when you spun to face him, your pretty little dress swirled around your thighs. He'd have that thing up around your waist so fast, you wouldn't know what to do with yourself. 

"Roo," you gasped as you rushed toward him. But you must have known. You always knew. Your lips were parted, and your eyes were wide. There was no doubt in his mind that you knew what he needed as he reached for your body. "Roo," you moaned softly as his lips met yours while he backed you up against a pillar. 

He didn't say a word. He just tasted the inside of your mouth with his tongue as your arms went around his neck. Bradley's hands were on your ass, and through the flimsy material of your dress, he was certain you weren't wearing any underwear. He grunted into your mouth as he used his teeth, and you were already whining softly. 

When he brought one hand up to your neck, he was less than gentle. The softness of your body against his had him growing harder and harder, and there was no doubt in his mind that you could feel him against your belly. You raked your fingers through his hair as he released your lips, and you whispered, "Happy birthday."

He brought his lips to your neck and dragged them up to your ear where he grunted, "I need to fuck you."

When you sighed and pressed your body tighter to his, Bradley could feel your nipples through your dress. His brain was screaming at him to unzip his pants and bend you over right here. Take what he needed. Your hand cupping his length as you smirked at him wasn't helping at all, and then you said, "I think that can be arranged, Daddy."

Fuck. As soon as the baggage carousel started up behind him, he snatched his duffle off of the belt, his other hand still firmly on your ass. You already looked a little dazed as you led him out to the quiet parking garage. There was nobody around as Bradley tucked his hand up inside the hem of your dress, finally feeling that supple skin against his rough palm. 

"Roo," you gasped, trying your best to walk along with your keys in your hand while he let his middle finger drift down closer to your pussy. But you didn't tell him to stop, and he knew how you were. There was nobody around anyway, of that he was certain, but even if there had been, you probably wouldn't have minded.

"Where did you park, Sweetheart?" he asked, his head on a swivel as he looked around the dark corner of the garage for his Bronco. 

"Over there," you gasped, gesturing toward a massive pickup truck. And sure enough, your shittly little car was tucked between it and the wall. Bradley stopped in his tracks with his hand on your ass and pulled you closer so your front was pressed against his. 

You were clinging to his tee shirt as he asked, "How the hell am I supposed to fuck you in that thing? Why didn't you bring the Bronco?"

You whimpered and kissed his chin. "I took the Bronco out earlier, and I forgot to get gas for it."

Bradley kissed your lips hard and squeezed your ass before letting go of you in favor of your hand. He would have to work with what he had, because he was at the point of no return now that he was in your presence. 

You ran along next to him as he walked to your car, and with shaky fingers, you unlocked the trunk for him. Once he dropped his duffle and backpack inside and slammed it closed, he picked you up in his arms. "I love you," he whispered, voice harsh as you whined his name. "But next time, bring the Bronco." 

You nodded as you reached for the door handle, and Bradley eased himself down onto the back seat with you straddling his lap. It was such a tight fit, his head was grazing the ceiling, and his knees were digging into the back of the driver's seat. But your lips were on his, and your fingers were tugging at his hair. He was ready to completely lose control. He needed to. 

Your wide eyes met his as you slammed the door closed. Without hesitating, he reached between his body and yours and worked at the fly of his jeans. His cock was throbbing painfully now that you were on top of him, your pussy rubbing against the back of his hand. "Jesus, Baby Girl. You're soaking wet."

"I know," you whined before sucking on his bottom lip. "I need you."

Bradley bunched the fabric of your dress up around your waist so he could watch as he thrust himself up to meet you. The relief he felt was immediate as you took all of him like a champ, sinking down around his cock until he bottomed out. You were gasping and moaning into his mouth, and he had known all along that you were the only thing that could satisfy him like this. 

When he rolled his hips up, giving you more pressure, you tipped your head back. "Harder, Bradley."

Your voice begging him for more was music to his ears as he wrapped his arm around your back and grabbed your hip. He thrust up again, but you just moaned louder and begged him for more. "Harder," you whispered, your voice breaking beautifully on that single word. 

"Sweetheart, I can only do so much here," he grunted, diggin his left knee into the back of the seat and bracing his right foot against the center console as he pistoned up into you. Your squeals of delight as your tits practically bounced free from your dress brought a smile to his face. How were you always even better than what his imagination and memory could provide?

"Harder, Roo," you gasped, your eyes bright and excited as you braced yourself on his shoulders. "Harder, Daddy."

He'd give you anything you wanted right now. Your pussy was tight and perfect and just for him. You were the only thing that could relieve this constant adrenaline rush. And he wanted to be just as good for you, too.

Lips locked with yours, inhaling every sound you made for him, Bradley braced his foot and fucked you has hard as he could. Sweat broke out on his forehead. The back windows started to steam up. You sounded like you were going to cry. But he didn't stop. He just went harder as you begged him for more and more. 

"Oh! My god!" you cried out, your hands pulling his hair as you ran your lips along his sweaty face, not quite kissing him and not quite licking him as you came. He was close now, his balls rejoicing in the impending release he could feel building up in his spine. 

"Fuck yes, fuck yes," he chanted softly as your voice rang out in the backseat of your piece of shit car. He thrust one more time, and he filled you with his cum as he heard a loud cracking noise.

It took him a few seconds to realize that the center console was no longer pushing back against his right foot, but he was too caught up in you to care much. Your soft giggles were right next to his ear, and the fabric of your dress had fallen back down over his hands which were now softly resting on your hips. 

"I love you." Your breath was soft on his neck as you spoke, and the words were laced with a smile. "And I missed you."

Bradley caressed your soft skin in the dim backseat of your car, but he didn't dare move an inch. You felt too fucking good right now. He just held you and closed his eyes, and he could have fallen asleep still inside you when you started to shift. His eyes fluttered open to look at your pretty face as you sat up straighter on his cock and smiled. 

"My wife is the prettiest thing I've ever seen," he whispered, and you stroked your fingers along his scarred cheek. 

"Let's go home. You can have your birthday presents, and I'll run around and cater to you all day tomorrow."

He couldn't help but laugh as you kissed his forehead. When you eased yourself off of him, his cum dripped out of you and onto his jeans which just made him smile more. He was finally completely sated, and nothing was going to mess with that. 

"What the fuck?" you gasped, turned around to face the front seat and nearly kneeing him in the balls in the process. "Bradley! What did you do?!"

-----------------------------

Mission accomplished, and now Roo is home! All of that adrenaline...oof. And what the fuck did he just do to her car? Thanks @mak-32 and @beyondthesefourwalls

PART 23

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[seat-safety-switch]

"Hey, buddy, you've been hogging the Supercharger® long enough," emits the carrier signal of a Tesla owner. They're right to be upset. Ever since they opened up their fancy DC fast chargers to every Tom, Dick, and Ford owner, what was once a hoity-toity elite parking lot full of American-made economy cars is now full of a bunch of weird shitbags trying to fill up their batteries.

My electric car? Pretty much the same as yours: a 1974 Plymouth Fury III, with the original smog-coughing low-compression 400-cubic-inch V8 engine replaced with nearly a metric ton of golf-cart batteries I borrowed from the local country club. Hey, they weren't using any of them in the middle of November when I cut through the fence. Not to mention it's unethical for anyone to hoard valuable resources that could be used to reduce emissions, such as I am doing (unless you count the fact that this vehicle is still, somehow, leaking 10w40 motor oil from somewhere.)

The system isn't perfect. For instance, the "fast charge" system is not particularly fast. This is because it's an old Canadian Tire 12-volt boat battery maintainer that I've riveted onto the hood, and tricked the Tesla system into talking to. As far as the computer inside it knows, it's just a really stupid SUV. Before you blame me for being a charge hog, you must also know this: it is keeping my decrepit Galaxy Note smartphone alive, which hasn't had a working battery in it since that whole airplane fire snafu. And in turn, that phone is playing an educational podcast, about climate destroyers. This, I believe, is what the Tesla owner is actually angry about, and not the fact that I have been "fast charging" for the last seventeen hours using a stolen credit card.

I ignore him. I have long ago learned that pedestrians talk a lot of shit, but are generally afraid to actually damage my car: an emergency tetanus shot, after all, is unpleasant and can cost upwards of $25. Walking back inside the donut store at which I am "parked," I ask the attendant to refill my bottomless coffee once more. Maybe I'll live here, I think. I don't want to go anywhere more than about five miles away from this charger from now on.

[thewulf]

Fool || Jake "Hangman" Seresin

Summary: Can you write something about hangman x pilot!reader? also make it super fluffy? not a specific request I know, but I've having trouble finding new things to read. thank you!!

A/N: Okay! This was a BLAST to write! TY for the request!! Love my main man. This turned out way more angsty and spicy(ish) than I imagined but I think you'll love it. Let me know your thoughts!

Pairing: Jake "Hangman" Seresin x Y/N

Word Count: 4.2k +

“You can’t be fucking serious Seresin.” You nearly growled as you watched Hangman roll to the right after you expressly told him not to fucking roll to the right. He was supposed to stay straight ahead and head back to the aircraft carrier. But did he listen? No, he did not. His stupid big ass cocky brain would never take any advice. Soon enough it could cost him his life. One of these days it could really hurt him.

You heard him laugh. Laugh! The balls on that man were something else, “Don’t worry Wolfie. I’ll be just fine.”

You shook your head following as closely behind as you could. You heard your WSO, Beamer, curse behind you as you pressed your jet on further, faster. She could do it. You knew her limits. It’s what Maverick trained you for. You were built for this. Ready for this.

“What’s wrong?” You continued looking for Hangman, but he was going just as fast as you were.

“Bogies ahead. Six o’clock. Two of them.” Beamer shouted from behind you spotting something on the radar.

“I don’t think they’re friendly Beamer. Fuck, Hangman, did you copy?” You gunned it trying your hardest to catch up, but the motherfucker had other plans.

“What’s that?” You could practically hear the smirk dripping off his face with that comment alone. It took everything in your not to scream at the idiot of a man. You needed to get the hell over there to help him, but he was moving so god damn fast in the other direction. You’d never be able to catch him. Faster it was.

“Not friendly! Bandits! Six and eight Hangman!” Beamer shouted back in just as much frustration you seemed to be in. He didn’t have a back seater letting him know when objects were incoming. He was flying into what looked to be a trap.

“Shit.” You heard a pause before all hell broke loose on his end, “Wolf, got one on my ass.” He grunted.

“I’m on my way.” Panic rose through your chest, but you couldn’t freak out. Not yet anyway. This is when you needed to relax. Focus on the problem. The bandits. You needed to take the bastard that was following Hangman out. Calm down. Slow your heartbeat. Speed up. You could do this.

“Beamer, where are they?” You asked seemingly losing sight of them once you made it through the cloud bank. Where in the hell was that second bandit?

“20 degrees to your left, now!” He answered quickly forcing you to divert left. You dove seeing the planes up ahead. F-18 vs F-18 Super Hornet, it was up to the best pilot now. You gulped kicking up your speed even faster. Ignoring the grunt of your WSO you knew he was likely being flown into something bad. Hurry Wolf. Hurry. You pressed forward even faster. 690 knots ticketed upwards of 700 knots. You were blazing through the atmosphere. It was a damn good thing he was flying low, or you wouldn’t have been able to catch up.

710 knots. That was officially the fast you’ve ever flown. It didn’t seem like enough though. Like you weren’t going to make it soon enough.

“Hangman! Bank right 45 degrees.” You yelled knowing it’d give you a little more of a chance to catch up.

Thank God he actually fucking listened to you this time. His jet turned forcing the other F-18 to overshoot a bit. You knew the plan and had already been banking giving you the perfect shot on the enemy jet.

“Lock on Beamer!” You were yelling at your wizzo now. Sweat poured down your face as you maneuvered into a better position to help him lock onto the clueless pilot.

"Target locked!" He pressed on the second you heard the lock sound.

“Firing missiles.” As quickly as he spoke your hands were hitting the joy sticks. One second. Two. Three and then four.

“Target hit!” Beamer yelled out in joy seeing one of the missiles land dead on. You let out a sigh of relief seeing the other pilot was able to eject on time. As fucked up as everything was you never wanted to take a life. You’d always prayed they’d make it out in time. You’ve taken three jets down now. Tied with Jake. You saw two eject. You pretended the third did.

The celebration didn’t last for too long when you heard your jet being locked on, “Fuck.” You grumbled immediately heading for a nosedive. There was that second bandit. In hindsight you probably should’ve took your jet straight up, not down. You didn’t have much air space left to utilize at such a low altitude.

“Wolfie! 30 degrees to your right.” Hangman didn’t elaborate any further.

You had to trust him. That was rule number one in the field. Always trust your wingman and vice versa. Listening to him you punched it after leveling out and turning your joystick to the right.

“Shit, missed the shot.” Hangman grumbled, “Keep flying, I’ll come back around.”

“Hang on.” You spoke to Beamer after hearing his miss. Pressing the throttle all the way forward you nearly stalled the engines that were starving for the oxygen rich air.

“What are you doing?” Your WSO nearly gasped hearing almost every alarm on the jet ring simultaneously. You were going to starve the fucking engines if you didn’t move soon.

You smiled knowing this move was saved for very special occasions, “A move Maverick taught me.”

“Oh Christ.” He closed his eyes knowing whatever was about to happen wouldn’t be good for him. You were probably going to bend the damn air frame or something crazy like that. Mav tried to teach everybody. You were just one of the few who actually tried his bat shit insane moves.

“Relax B.” You grinned punching it once you saw the enemy jet fly by you.

“I’m going to throw up.” You could hear the sarcasm on his voice. He grunted as his butt hit the seat after floating for far too long.

You laughed pushing your jet once again. 620 knots. 630. 640. Come on baby. Let’s get moving.

“You’re about as well trained as Hangman up here. Puking over a little g-force?” You snickered to yourself knowing you could gut punch the both of them. Two birds one stone or whatever they say.

“Hey!” You heard both of them shout in unison. Men. They were just too fucking easy.

690 knots. 700. You heard Beamer groan from the back seat. You were really putting him through it on this mission weren’t you? A little bit more and you’d be able to shoot that jet down too. 710.

The smile adorning your face probably looked maniacal. But you didn’t care. You entered into another zone when you were in the air. It was kill or be killed in the air. Notably when you were in a dogfight. The odds were even higher.

“Target locked!”

You barely heard your wizzo before you fired for the jet ahead.

“Target hit!” He yelled in triumph. You slowed down before making a turn looking for a parachute. For anything. Kill number four. Ahead of Jake. One behind Mav. Two kills in one run. That was pretty damn remarkable. You heard muffled cheers in your ears but didn’t see a parachute. Four kills. Two chutes. Two nothings. Did that make you a killer?

“What the fuck was that?” You tossed your helmet to the side walking towards him. Charging towards him really. He just got you so damn worked up. The fucking idiot he was. A dumb arrogant idiot asshole. Now, you just needed to say it to his face.

He cocked his head to the side, “Thought I had him.” A slow smile spreading over his face seeing you so worked up.

You would’ve loved to punch him square in the nose, but you were on the carrier. In the middle of the ocean. That was the dumbest thing you could probably do. You weren’t even looking for a fucking thanks. Just an apology would be nice, “You’re such a…” You scrunched your nose up once you got to him. He was taller than you, by a lot. Still didn’t intimidate you. But you had to look up to him, quite literally.

His smirk grew, “Yes, doll? I’m a what?”

Shaking your head your pointed your finger right as his chest, “Fool. Jake Seresin. You’re such a damn fool.” You nearly hissed before spun around walking back for your helmet. You’d probably need to get that checked out. You threw it down pretty hard in your fit of rage.

In all your time working with him had you been so angry with the man. Hell, you’d even respected him a tad before this mission. The two of you were never close but you seemed to work well together, train well together. You knew his type and you were able to deal with it.

“Hey there! Slow down.” He grabbed your arm gently before your yanked it right back from him, “Have you been watching those sappy love drama movies? What’s it called? Pride and something? Fool. Who says that?” You felt the blood inside you boiling now. He really knew how to push it.

Giving him an almost bewildered look, you answered him, “Can you take anything seriously?” It was evident you were more than angry now. He knew he needed to tone down the jokes.

He put his hands up in surrender, “I’m sorry then.” He didn’t look sorry. Words meant nothing to you. Words were useless without action. Pointless. Words got people killed. Actions did too but words always stung worse.

You shook your head not accepting his apology, “For what Hangman? What are you actually sorry for?” It wasn’t the anger that got to him it was the sheer look of disappointment that crossed your eyes that made him reevaluate everything.

“I’m sorry you got chased.” He sounded unsure of his reply. Like he didn’t really know what he was apologizing for. Did he? Did he know why you were so upset? He didn’t. He didn’t have a clue.

You rolled your eyes before walking away again. You had to give him a bit of credit though, he sure kept tying, “You just don’t get it.” You sighed walking towards the locker rooms. At least there you’d get a reprieve from the arrogant man.

He panicked and followed you, “Get what?”

You stopped dead in your tracks. You weren’t like the other guys in your squadron. You loved flying but you hated killing. Hated the thought of taking somebody away from their families. It hurt you. Destroyed you. You thought about leaving for just that reason. And today? You’d probably killed a man or woman. Maybe even two. You never actually knew. And it was for nothing. It shouldn’t have happened. If he would’ve just listened to you the bandits wouldn’t have even spotted you. All that for naught.

“You think I like taking jets down? Killing people? Do you seriously think that I find enjoyment out of that? It makes me sick when I have to do things like that. That could’ve been somebodies dad. Somebodies daughter. Who the fuck knows Jake? I don’t. I never will. And now they’re just gone?” You were whisper shouting now. You’d never admitted anything like this to anybody. Not even your family. No therapist, military or civilian knew either. They didn’t need to know. So, you didn’t tell them. Not a soul, “If you just would have fucking listened to me I wouldn’t have had to do that!” Your voice was shaky now as you took off for the locker rooms. Tears on the edge of spilling over. You peered around thankful nobody was in ear shot. It was never a good thing to cry at work. You had like fifteen minutes before you had to report back for debrief. Fifteen minutes to get it the fuck together.

Jake just stood there as you dashed away. He could’ve followed but he knew you needed your space. You looked so hurt. So betrayed. He walked over to the locker room waiting for you to come out. You had to come out at some point.

He grabbed you when you walked out of the locker room. Your allowed yourself to cry for a few moments before you snapped it back together. You just hoped it didn’t show in your eyes.

It did. Jake saw it through your tear stained cheeks and your red rimmed eyes. He frowned feeling awful, “I’m sorry, Y/N. I… I wasn’t thinking.”

“Clearly.” You refused to look at him. You were still upset. You’d be upset for a little bit before you’d shake it off. It’s not like you had a choice. You’d have to fly with him again. You would have to figure this out at some point.

He looked down hearing the icy snap coming from you. You weren’t usually so forward with your emotions. Usually, you were cool calm and collected one. The one that fell in line. The one who knew her place was limited as a woman, and she needed to be strategic about it.

“Either say something or let me go. We’ve got a debriefing to get to.”

He snapped out of it, “They’ll wait on us, come on.” He took your hand without a second thought guiding you to the side of the carrier. He was smart, not many people came over here. There was a very low chance of getting caught back here. You let him guide you without much thought. You were afraid to admit how much his touch had an effect on you. It felt like there was a fire ignited in your fingertips creeping up your arm.

You didn’t want to admit that’s also why you were so worked up. You didn’t know how to tell the man that you had a rather large crush on him. How you wanted to be the one he flirted with at the bars. How you wanted to be the one he was so dead set on kissing at the end of the night. Who he got to take home. You wanted it. You and only you.

Only problem is you were you. You were one of the dudes. Wolfie. You’d gotten your call sign because you were all bark and all bite. You followed through. Tough as a wolf backed against a wall. You were flattered, truly. But it made you a guy. Not a girl. Not somebody he would think of. You’d probably be better off if you just cut it off altogether with Navy men and went for a civ guy. It’d be easier. Less games.

His expression softened seeing you in the anxious state you were in. You really didn’t like conflict. You didn’t enjoy being mad at people. You were a simple girl who liked resolution. It wasn’t like you get so angry, “Look, Y/N…” He sighed. He wasn’t good at this either. Sure, Hangman was a persona but owning up to mistakes that could’ve cost you your life? That was tough.

“I fucked up Y/N. I shouldn’t have done that. I overestimated my abilities. I could’ve gotten you hurt. I could’ve gotten shot down. It was dumb. And I put you in an awful spot. I’m so sorry. Truly.” He rambled off quickly.

Your eyes narrowed as your searched for any sort of sarcasm, “You mean it?”

He nodded his head looking away from you, “Yeah. I messed up.”

Unfolding your arms from your chest you gave him a curt nod, “Okay.”

“Okay?” He looked at you with a newfound hope in his eyes.

“Yeah, sure. It’s fine. Don’t do it again you dumb arrogant asshole.” A small smile crept over your lips letting him know you were just teasing. There was some hint of truth there though. He was a dumb arrogant asshole in that moment.

He pulled you into a hug. One that was different than the normal ones he gave you. This one was more meaningful. More thoughtful. He squeezed you a little bit tighter than he ever had before. Pulled you into his chest just a touch harder. He held you a little bit longer than usual.

“Thank you for saving my ass.” He whispered once he let you go from his embrace.

“I got your back. Any day. Any night. You know that Seresin.”

He nodding pulling you back in. How had he not seen it before? How had he not seen the treasure that you were right in front of his face. God, you were striking. You were everything he needed in a life partner. You were incredibly smart, so self-assured, beautiful beyond words, wittier than he could ever imagine, made him smile when he needed it, knew the right words too say… he was a dumb arrogant asshole. He liked you. Hell, he might’ve already fallen in love with you without even realizing it.

“Seeing that bandit chase you down was awful. And then when I missed… I’m so sorry. I failed you in every way.” You’d never heard Jake so sincere. Never heard him admit to so many fuck ups. It made you feel things you hadn’t ever before for him. Like he wasn’t just that fucking dickhead persona. There might’ve been a decent human being under the character you were sure he was playing.

You shrugged. Trying to play it off. You were never scared. You were determined to be the best in that moment. You had to be the best in that moment, or it could be you at the bottom of the ocean. A shiver ripped down your spine at the thought. It hit you sometimes just how damn dangerous your job was.

“It’s fine. Just listen next time? Okay?” It felt like for once you were actually getting through to the man. It’d been so surface level in the half a year you’d been stationed with him. This was a surprise, a pleasant one though.

“You got it Wolfie.” He smiled letting his hand drop from your shoulder. You really liked how it felt there. Not that you’d admit it.

“Let’s go. We gotta go get our asses chewed out by Cyclone.” You sighed not looking forward to it. It was supposed to be a simple bombing. Get it and get out. Clearly, that didn’t happen and now he probably had to do a lot more paperwork than he was expecting. Shooting down two enemy fighter jets was more serious than you would think. You were surely going to get interviewed over it.

“Don’t worry doll. I’ll take the heat.” He pushed you forward by placing his fingertips to the small of your back. You thanked your lucky stars you were in your flight suit, and he couldn’t see sheer amount of goosebumps that exploded across your body from his touch. God, how embarrassing. He didn’t even have to try, and you were already weak.

“You better. It was your fault after all.” You countered feeling more and more like yourself as you talked it out with Jake. This was the guy you had a mad crush on. Jake. Not Hangman. Jake Seresin, the cowboy from Texas.

He shook his head with a growing smile on his face, “You’re lucky you’re cute.” It slipped out so quickly Jake wasn’t sure if he actually said it. But there it was. It was out there now. You had to have known how adorable he really found you.

Your head whipped around quickly giving him your own version of a smirk, “You think?”

He had a choice. Play it off or go all in. He had hardly thought this was how his day was going to go. He didn’t even know he really liked you like that earlier this morning. Now here he was ready to admit to it? What in the hell was even happening? But who was he kidding? He’d be flat out lying to deny it. He wasn’t a liar.

“Know so.” He shot you a wink before grabbing a loop on your flight suit to keep you on pace with him. Fuck it. He’d decided he was going all in on you now. Might as well step his flirting game up with you while he was at it.

You were so shocked by his admission you hadn’t even realized the smooth ass move he pulled by literally pulling you along with him. The move was so confident you were practically on your knees already. He looked over seeing your dazed expression.

His deep chuckle brought you back to the present, “What’s the matter darlin’? Cat got your tongue?” He dropped his hand from the loop so close your chest.

You didn’t drop your eyes from his hand that had pulled you along with him, “No. Just thinking.”

“What about?” He raised his eyebrows challenging you. He was clearly feeling a whole lot better. He was laying it on thick.

“Work.” It wasn’t a lie. He was work. He was all you were able to think about.

He smirked as he knowingly brushed his hand along yours. God he was a pro. He knew exactly what he was doing to you, “Sure doll. I think you’re lying though. You were thinking about me.”

You shook your head quickly not daring to draw your hand away, “In your dreams Seresin.”

He ran his index finger along your pinky, taking any touch he could get, “What if I told you I dreamed about you last night?”

“Shut up.” You didn’t believe him as you pressed on.

“Got me thinking about you doll.” His long strides kept pace with your quicker shorter ones. He wasn’t letting you walk away from this one. Lucky for him it was at least a ten-minute walk to the captains office where you’d debrief. Plenty of time to get you admitting some feelings he knew you had. Not with those emotions he’d seen earlier.

“I said shut up Jake.” Rolling your eyes, you willed yourself to get to the captains office faster. He was so much taller it didn’t matter. You could be sprinting, and he’d still be right by your side.

He ignored you, “Thinking about how smart you are. How often you kick my ass. How often you save my ass.” His eyes lingered in your at that last statement.

“What are you doing?” You stopped looking at him desperately. What was he doing? Was he going to blow this whole nonexistent relationship up? It’s not like you were the best of friends to begin with. Casual acquaintances. Training enemies. Mission buddies who were far more successful than not. The two of you were dancing on something that was hardly even there.

He shrugged, “Telling you the truth.”

“Why?” You took a step back boxing yourself against the wall.

“Why not?” He took a step closer pinning you against the wall placing either hand next to your face. It was so silent you could’ve sworn he could hear the gulp you took trying to regain some composure. What in the hell was even happening right now? Sure, you’d been crushing on him for what feels like just as long as you’ve known him there’d been no sort of indication he’d had any inkling of interest.

“Anyway,” He only grinned seeing your face. You looked starstruck. Like you couldn’t believe what he was doing. Hell, he couldn’t believe what he was doing. He hadn’t even really properly thought it through. But he good feeling about it. A really fucking good feeling about it, “As I was saying. I was thinking about how fucking pretty you really are. Especially when you wear that yellow sundress. You’re a vision, Y/N.” He was so close. So, so close.

Your head spun with his scent and that admission. He smelled so fucking good. A mix of wood and cinnamon. It mixed with his natural musk oh so well. If you weren’t in the middle of the open you’d probably jump right on him intending to rip that suit right off of him. But you couldn’t those thoughts right now. Not when you were about to get your head chewed off. You were ten minutes late already. That was already a hole you had begun to dig yourself.

You looked from one of his eyes to the next. The overwhelming feeling to lean up and kiss his him was starting to take hold. What in the hell was the matter with you?

“Didn’t your momma teach you that lying’s bad?” You whispered. It was a way to ask for confirmation without straight up asking for it. A way for him to deny it for the lie it was.

He shook his head quickly, “I never lie. ‘Specially not to you doll face.”

Your mouth dried slightly. Your lips parted to respond before they closed. Cat really did get your tongue now, “Thank you, Jake.” You could hardly hear your whisper. But he sure did.

“Anytime darlin’. Now let’s go. Get this shit over with.” He took your hand in his once more. He wasn’t planning on dropping it until he got to that door.

He watched as you walked in. Fool. That’s exactly what he was. He was a damned fool not to see you right there in front of him. But he knew one thing. He wouldn’t let you slip away now that he knew what he had. You. He planned to make you the fool’s girlfriend soon. Very, very soon.

Permanent Taglist (Message me or comment below if you want to be added!): @loving-and-dreaming @kmc1989 @memeorydotcom @matisse556 @dempy

[ltleflrt]

This whole backlash against printing fics irks the fuck out of me, and I got some shit to say about it. Mostly "Fuck You" but here's some nuance:

On the surface, I understand where the naysayers are coming from. It's a legitimate fear that making a profit from fanworks will bring down the C&D Hammer on fandom. I get that. Do not put on the One Ring, or you'll risk the Eye of Sauron.

But here's the thing. Fuck capitalism. Fuck digital only. We're living in the digital dark ages, and 100 years from now huge swathes of our history, fact and fiction, will be lost to our descendants because there will be no physical copies of our lives for them to find in old libraries and boxes in the attic, etc.

Creators deserve physical copies of their creations, and so do the other people in the world who love them.

I don't want to profit from letting people print my fics. That's why I use Lulu, since they have an option to set zero profit and make the links hidden so only fans in the know can get a copy. Other printing sites I've looked at in the past don't have those options. In fact, the first time I ever even thought about printing one of my stories was when I won NaNo for the first time and one of the prizes was a coupon for 3 free printings of your story. HELL YEAH, that's a copy for me, a copy for my beta, and a copy for the artist who made the cover for me. Perfect! But I ended up not using that coupon, because the site required I set a profit margin, and did not have an option to make it private. Ummm, no thanks. Not worth the risk. And even though the profit margin could be set as low as ten cents, I did not want to make ANY money from my fic, because I know that would be breaking Fair Use rules. I found Lulu instead, and decided to let other people get copies too, because I'm nice. And if I don't, it's not like I can stop them from doing it themselves, no matter how much I'd rather they not do that.

But that's not good enough for the Reporting Trolls. Their argument is that it's not possible for it to be completely profit free, since Lulu makes a profit on the printing costs and the shipping carriers make a profit off the shipping costs. Someone is making a profit, and that's unacceptable, even if that someone is not Me, The Person Who Made The Printing and Shipping Worth Paying For.

I would like anyone who thinks that to delete your accounts where you read fanfiction. AO3, Wattpad, FFNet, LJ, Dreamwidth, hell even Tumblr for the short ficlet stuff that only gets posted here. Because even if the website it self isn't profiting, (AO3 for example), the companies that sold them their server hardware made a profit. Since utilities are privatized, the electric company that runs those servers are making a profit. IF YOU PRINT IT ON YOUR PRINTER AND PUT IT IN A 3 RING BINDER, the paper, printer, and ink manufacturers made a profit from your dinky little print out. The companies that build all the parts for your computer or your smartphone made a profit on your portal to the internet, who profits from your monthly subscription, just like your electric company profits from the power it takes to run your pc or charge your phone battery. IT'S A SLIPPERY FUCKING SLOPE, AND YOU NEED TO LEARN WHEN TO BACK AWAY FROM THE LEDGE.

We live in a Capitalist Hellscape, and if a company could figure out how to charge you to breathe and for every single beat of your heart, they'd fucking do it. So get off your goddamn high horses with this "wELL SoMEonE iS makINg PrOFit" bullshit. Or if you truly believe that, shut off every account you own, turn off your utilities, and go live in the woods and make up your own goddamn stories, which you can only share orally to the local wildlife. They give kudos by biting you and giving you rabies.

(not to mention; these assholes don't go after fanartists who are ABSOLUTELY making a profit off their work. but noooo, Flirty can't format a fic for print and allow other people to pay for the printing service and shipping, while never seeing a penny of that herself, despite all of the GODDAMN WORK I HAVE PUT INTO IT, WRITING IT IN THE FIRST PLACE INCLUDED FUCK YOU VERY MUCH. fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufucky--)

[runwayrunway]

No. 54 - Ryanair

You are watching a video on a popular video sharing service. It is a full episode of a popular and long-running show, generously uploaded for free. It is narrated by a calm man with a BBC accent of the sort which belongs exclusively in documentaries.

The narrator names a date between 1903 and the current year. It is accompanied by a location - an airport. An airplane is on approach. It has a certain number of people on board, and it flies for some airline. There are pilots, most likely two of them. They make some sort of mistake, and maybe there's an issue with the weather, or the ILS is down, or the instruments are giving misleading information, or some other thing has gone tailcone over teakettle in an alarmingly short timespan and now their approach is tremendously unstable. They aren't on the glideslope. They're too fast or too slow. They really need to declare a missed approach, but for whatever reason they don't.

The plane lands, or 'lands' - finds itself on the ground, regardless - either on or short of the runway. It bounces, or flips over, or just pancakes into the ground. The fuselage cracks, or splits, or peels open, or horribly catches fire. There is an evacuation. It's all very stressful at minimum, and an unmitigated tragedy at worst.

You scroll down to the comments for some reason. "Average Ryanair landing," says one near the top.

Ryanair (not to be confused with Ryan Air, a real but unrelated airline) is Europe's largest air carrier. It has over 550 airplanes and serves over 200 destinations. It is difficult to imagine an airline with a worse reputation - their CEO is a literal troll, their customer service is legendarily poor, and their ultra-low-cost model is one in which you inevitably get what you pay for. They are memetically despised, and their rough landings are the stuff of legend.

And yet their livery is understated, with a certain head-held-high gravitas. It is difficult to describe the legitimate cognitive dissonance which arises from Ryanair's aerosartorial choices, an effect that seems to touch more people than just me. On another airline, I wouldn't find this livery particularly thought-provoking. Enough substance to write a post about, but not something which lurks in my mind and draws my attention. But on Ryanair, it's downright fascinating.

I've said what I've said, but I'm actually a defender of Ryanair. Look, it's like getting a ticket on a bus or the metro. It's cheap (at least in theory - they seem to be getting pricier lately) and it gets you where you need to go and it's probably not going to be that long of a flight anyway so, I mean, whatever. I've flown some pretty long flights before in-flight entertainment was standard, Ryanair is fine. I never even noticed the hard landings until I saw people talking about them, and to be perfectly honest I didn't notice them afterward either. Maybe I'm just not bothered by hard landings, the same way I'm not bothered by turbulence. Who really knows? My point is that I'm something of a Ryanair apologist. I live in the US, where you just don't get dirt cheap flights like that and getting anywhere outside of your home metropolitan area by train (and even sometimes bus) costs even more than flying. Ryanair could make me board the plane by abseiling up it myself to save money on airstairs and I'd be fine with it if the price was right. I'm not a millionaire. I haven't got the money to go jetsetting around Europe on a real airline. So I mean this when I say it: thank goodness for Ryanair.

I mean, I'm not saying this because Ryanair is good, don't get me wrong. They are the Big Bill Hell's of airlines. They are the closest thing we have to John Mulaney's version of Delta. Ryanair is not just no-frills, it's hot-glued fabric scraps in the vague shape of a garment. They are legitimately comical in their commitment to service so Kafkaesquely bad that you almost wish you'd travelled by trebuchet instead! And all this for the low, low price of...well, I mean, they do get pretty low.

When I released my first questionnaire I added a question about Ryanair specifically because of its reputation and my own feelings about the airline. Multiple people did agree with me - well, it's definitely not comfortable at all, you won't enjoy yourself, but it's so obscenely cheap that this isn't really objectionable. You are getting exactly what you pay for. And, well, if you do want some semblance of the full-service experience you can pay an extra fee. Or a lot of extra fees. That's how they get you. The ULCC model relies on stripping out everything possible and then charging you extra for it. That does mean that if you need things like printed boarding passes or the ability to pay by credit card that come standard with literally any other airline you could end up paying a decent amount for your miserable cramped flight, but if you truly want the bare minimum they will charge you appropriately, and that is so important to me, because I have too little money to insist on being comfortable.

I do feel...particularly sorry for one respondent.

It isn't bad press they are legitimately a nightmare. A attendant once lied to me and told me that type of plane just didn't have toilets (it did. There was a working toilet on board) then proceeded to lecture me about 'not planning ahead and going in the airport'

This is kind of hilarious in a sad way and I'm very sorry that this happened to you. Ryanair is infamous for its bad customer service but it's rare you'll hear about cabin crew behaving this poorly at any airline. While this particular incident was a one-off, you probably will have a pretty miserable time if you need to call the airline about literally anything.

One person just answered 'bitches'.

Well, that answers the question "what is Ryanair", but why is Ryanair?

The world is full of low-cost carriers. Wizz Air, EasyJet, airasia, Allegiant, Jetstar, FlySafair, Volaris, T'Way, Azul, Nok Air, Frontier, Lion Air, jetBlue, and SpiceJet are just some of the dozens which fill the skies. They are often colourful, frequently grumbled about, and essential.

Low-cost carriers, and especially ULCCs, are a relatively recent phenomenon. They only sprung into being after aviation stopped being by necessity a luxury product. It's generally agreed that PSA (Pacific Southwest Airlines), an intrastate carrier from California colloquially known as the Poor Sailor's Airline, was the first low-cost carrier. While the large interstate carriers of the time had a sort of detached gravitas to both their services and their prices, and were often prevented from lowering said prices anyway due to federal taxes that didn't apply to intrastate carriers like PSA, a ticket on "The World's Friendliest Airline" was cheap and the service was casual and personable. The low-cost model is built on being an option for a normal person. If you don't have the money to fly TWA, you can fly on an airline which is made for normal people and charges you accordingly.

The model didn't really catch on immediately, though. I couldn't exactly say why - it might have to do with the lack of demand for air travel that wasn't either commuter flights or long-haul. There was some activity in the market, with Loftleiðir (a precursor to Icelandair) offering cheap-as-dirt transatlantic flights in the 60s and Laker Airways having a three-year tenure in the late 70s serving a similar market from a Western European base. Even today the long-haul low-cost market they served is notoriously difficult to make anything work in.

What is generally thought to be the next major player in low-cost airlines, Southwest, emerged in 1971. David Neeleman further refined the model, first with innovations in cost-cutting at Morris Air and later by raising the bar for customer experience at jetBlue. David Neeleman, though, was active right at the turn of the millennium. Low-cost carriers only really began to emerge in real numbers in the 80s and 90s, with examples that are long-gone, like the infamous ValuJet, existing alongside ones US residents have probably seen at their local airport, like Spirit.

Spirit is different from jetBlue and Southwest. Spirit Airlines is not just a low-cost carrier but an ultra low-cost carrier. As the name suggests, the difference is one of scale. A low-cost carrier provides less comprehensive and less ritzy service than a full-service airline, but they do so in the tradition of PSA, trying to provide a comfortable experience that makes people want to choose their airline. The ULCC model, on the other hand, guts out literally every possible feature and then dangles it in front of you on a string, telling you to pay extra if you want it. These airlines do not provide a good experience. There will be no baggage allowances, no extra legroom, and no priority boarding. The base fare, however, is almost absurdly low relative to even low-cost carriers, and as air travel becomes a fact of life more and more the humble ULCC becomes a necessary part of the ecosystem as the only way many people can afford to travel.

Ryanair is technically 38 years old, but it's only been a low-cost carrier since 1990. This pivot is the brainchild of then-CFO, now CEO (and ouster of the eponymous Ryan) Michael O'Leary, one of the wealthiest and most unpleasant men in Ireland.

image: Associated Press Yes, this is actually a real image of the CEO of Ryanair. I imagine this may clear up a thing or two.

Why is Ryanair? Because Michael O'Leary, is the simple answer. Michael O'Leary is - and there is genuinely no better way to describe the man - a troll. If you take David Neeleman's image during his tenure at jetBlue, a sweet everyman trying to improve the experience by sitting in on flights and giving up his salary to employee medical funds, Michael O'Leary is the literal exact opposite of him on every point. A self-described "gobshite" and "obnoxious little bollocks" who has admitted to "not liking" aeroplanes, Michael O'Leary is a cruel, selfish, belligerent, publicity-seeking freakazoid on a mission to piss off everyone in Europe which has so far been largely successful.

I don't want anything I say about the man to come off as positive. Michael O'Leary is a wealthy ghoul (and, yes, he was born wealthy, no rags in his tale) who publicly berates, mistreats, and underpays his staff. He has expressed prejudice against racial and religious minorities, fat and disabled passengers, women, and just about anyone who expects to be treated with some measure of dignity. He has committed legitimate crimes, like impersonating journalists. He denies climate change and has accumulated his massive wealth by abusing the pilots and cabin crew who keep Ryanair adequate. In 2010 Ryanair was named one of the least ethical companies in the world. The fact that he is so absurd as to be hilarious isn't an endorsement or a defense of him.

That said, here is a short, curated list of Michael O'Leary's, and Ryanair's broadly (as their public image is really an extension of his and vice versa) most Ryanair shenanigans:

O'Leary installed a taxicab license plate on his luxury car and driving it in the bus lane to avoid traffic.

Advertisements have taken open and somewhat sneering shots at other major European airlines, like Lufthansa ('bye by Late-hansa'), British Airways ('expensive BAstards'), and the now-defunct Sabena (using a reference to the famous Manneken Pis statue). These have not been simple comparisons but outright name-calling.

One time they advertised sales to 'sunny' vacation destinations, like Norway.

Generally, their advertisements push so many boundaries that they were once found to have committed seven violations of advertising law in just two years, and I'm shocked they didn't begin an ad campaign centring around this dubious achievement.

They frequently misbrand airports way outside of major cities as being in that major city, with the most insane example being "Vienna Bratislava" - yes, Bratislava, the one in Slovakia.

Pilots are forced to pay for simulator checks while cabin crew are forced to pay for uniforms and training. Employees are even forbidden from charging their phones from office sockets, apparently.

Sometimes passengers are forced to carry their own luggage to the planes! Not carryons, luggage.

O'Leary, in a bold move, outright denied that the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull had created a massive cloud of volcanic ash hazardous to airplanes (it very obviously had).

He also said he would like for there to be a recession, since it would let Ryanair keep costs low. He said this in 2008.

One time he said travel agents ("fuckers") should be shot .

O'Leary claimed that Ryanair would begin offering business class, featuring "beds and blowjobs". I'm personally not sure I would want a Ryanair blowjob. That sounds really horrible.

Also, bold coming from an airline with no seatback pockets.

Apparently they tried to get planes delivered with no window shades (though they weren't able to because of regulations).

They've floated the idea of standing seats. I don't believe this will or indeed could ever happen but it definitely is truly dystopian.

Ryanair keeps trying to buy Aer Lingus. They keep failing, and they keep trying. Obviously, everyone in Ireland has a vested interest in making sure this does not happen.

Fundamentally, Ryanair doesn't care. They can and will essentially throw tantrums to get airports to charge them lower operating fees and if they can't get an airport to do this they just won't operate there. It's like negotiating with a seven-year-old. Except that seven-year-old is Europe's largest airline.

They wanted to buy the C919. This isn't, like, a bad thing, it's just really strange for a hardcore Boeing loyalist airline and I can't imagine how it would save them money.

image: Robot8A This is the interior of a Ryanair plane. Note the safety cards attached to the seatbacks due to the lack of pockets, plus additional adverts on the seatbacks and overhead bins like this is a sports match in a massive stadium. It's also just quite ugly.

Fundamentally, Ryanair is just perpetually doing Ryanair things. Why is Ryanair? Because Ryanair is one giant publicity stunt. A couple of people answered my question by referencing the CEO saying he'd like to charge people to use the toilet, and that's sort of true in the sense that he's said he'd like to do this, but he's always been pretty clear that it's a publicity stunt:

Short of committing murder, negative publicity sells more seats than positive publicity.

Like, it's a bit. He's doing a bit. He's 100% in on the joke. For every one of the more particularly insane claims, like charging to use the toilets, he's outright denied it. Even some claims that are pretty borderline are ones he's contradicted at other points. He's a legitimate bigot who's created one of the most nightmarish work environments out there and just wants to suck money out of people by any means necessary, and he's indefensible, but that's not really what people talk about when they talk about Ryanair. They talk about charging for toilets.

Charging for toilets continues to be the number one story that resurfaces in the press and it’s the gift that keeps on giving. We’ve never done it, but it keeps coming up on social networks every three or four months, the media picks up on it and then someone writes a story on it.

Which I think is misplaced effort when he's also, for instance, a climate change denier who forces disabled passengers to pay for wheelchairs. And I don't believe for a second his climate change denial is based on legitimate convictions - he just doesn't want to have to spend more money. He would absolutely knowingly feed the world into an incinerator if it lowered costs.

Anyway, here is a picture of him having his face violently introduced to a pie.

image: Olivier Hoslet

All of this said, there's no such thing as an ethical airline - he's just playing it up to the extreme for essentially business clickbait.

I feel like the best example of Ryanair's general...Ryanairness is their Twitter account, which I have a sneaking suspicion Michael O'Leary runs himself to save money. It's mostly composed of firing back at complaining customers, Formula 1 opinions, and jabs at everyone from Boris Johnson to the British Museum. (Heartbreaking: the worst person you know just made a great point.) Their description, 'we sell seats, not windows', references the frequent complaints about seat 11A, which does not have a window. (To be fair, their website does warn you about this.) Their weird window situation actually generated my all-time favourite Ryanair tweet.

Here are some other winners.

No, seriously, I think Michael O'Leary might be writing these. I also really don't know how to feel about the fact that it appears someone at the airline - potentially O'Leary himself - has made an edit of a yassified Ryanair plane.

But at the end of the day, it's Ryanair. O'Leary himself has described aeroplanes as "a bus with wings on". As one individual tweeted,

THANK YOU to [Ryanair], for letting me see Europe for Feck All

and that's why I do think I genuinely have primarily positive feelings about Ryanair as a product rather than a company - you truly do see Europe for Feck All. (O'Leary has claimed both that he would introduce $10 transatlantic tickets to the US, and that he would make tickets literally free and make all profits from ancillary fees - while neither has yet happened, it takes one hell of an airline to claim that it's on the table.)

Ryanair isn't affordable, it's dime store. It's an airline you bought from Wish.com. It's the free pen you stole from a cup of identical pens at the bank which stops working within days. You're not just in steerage, you're on a tramp steamer. You get exactly the misery you pay for, and you go from one place to a different place.

And it's worth noting that Ryanair has at least one positive feature - safety.

When I ran my first questionnaire I asked respondents what type of airline they thought was most dangerous. Other than what's shown there was also an option for mainline full service carriers; unsurprisingly, nobody chose this. There were 50 respondents but 5 declined to answer this particular question, so the sample size isn't really significant enough to draw any conclusions from, but it's what I have. (I kind of wish I could stop to re-run this with my current follower count, but this post is actually a request. No, not for my wonderful beloved followers - for my dentist. Not joking. Thank you for making my teeth not have holes in them.)

20% of respondents indicated that low-cost or ultra-low-cost airlines probably had the worst safety records and practices. It's completely understandable why someone would think this, but without going into the actual statistics of plane crashes this simply isn't true, and in fact they're the safest category on here. While it obviously depends on the specific airline, low-cost carriers as a category are no less safe than mainline carriers. This is despite the fact that they tend to fly shorter flights and thus they operate more takeoffs and landings, which are the points in a flight where the majority of crashes occur.

How does that make sense? Well, part of it is that the airline industry has gotten very close to eliminating accidental crashes via innovations in technology and an incredible safety culture built on years of hard lessons. The world has paid in blood for crew resource management and GPWS, but it has paid, and now the sorts of crashes that would have been unremarkable just 20 years ago are completely unthinkable. Actually, in the 2010s it's quite possible more people were killed by planes brought down deliberately than accidents. But beyond that, the costs low-cost airlines cut tend to be ones that aren't safety-critical. They tend to operate shiny new fleets (better fuel efficiency, purchased in bulk) with large maintenance teams (shorter turnaround and less planes grounded for long periods of time) at less congested airports (lower operating fees) and indeed when I think about famous accidents that involve massive cutting of corners it's nearly always full-service airlines, save for egregious examples of low-cost industry pariahs out of business within a few years. Focusing on eliminating operating costs by making the passenger experience cramped and miserable allows for pouring all your budget into running a smooth and well-oiled operation.

The axiom "if you think safety is expensive, try a crash" is often attributed to EasyJet founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou. And it's true. Beyond the cost of writing off a plane, of financial compensation to survivors and families, of lawyers and PR, of having to update your operation to make sure it never happens again...as O'Leary himself said, all press is good press...short of murder. A heinous, clearly negligent crash, on the other hand, can kill an airline as easily as it can kill people. It has done in the past and that threat will never stop being there. Airlines go out of business all the time for any number of mundane financial reasons. In many cases margins simply do not allow for something like a crash. Crashes have even ended the lives of deeply historic, beloved, well-established nationalized flag carriers, so this particular sword of Damocles could cut Ryanair's control cables just as easily. And they've managed to avoid this fate, with zero passenger fatalities and only one written-off airplane - the 2008 crash of flight 4102, caused by a birdstrike during landing.

And I'll be honest, "miserable and safe but a tenth the price of a train ticket from Boston to New York" (I am unfortunately not exaggerating) is a pretty appealing package to my non-millionaire self.

...so why do their planes look like this? I'm dead serious, it vexes me. I don't know what to make of this. Hey, did you remember I'm an airline livery review blog? Look, I can't help myself. Low-cost carriers as a topic, and how they're viewed, is probably the most interesting facet of the aviation industry to me. I feel like if I had infinite time and resources I might genuinely sit down, hit the databases and archives, run a few studies, and write a book about it - it's fascinating, and low-cost carriers are something that only economists and businesspeople seem to want to talk about. I think it's about time someone approached them through a lens of history and social psychology. There's not really academic value to what I do here, on Runway Runway, my tumblr blog where I call Lufthansa planes ugly, but if something doesn't exist I will create it even if my sample size is 50.

So how about how they're literally viewed - like, what their planes look like? Well, here are some low cost carriers I've reviewed. Notice something? They're bright and eye-catching. They don't take themselves too seriously. They're fun. The original low-cost carrier literally painted big smiles on their bright pink and orange planes.

Okay, yes, they don't all look like this. WestJet and IndiGo, for example, are fairly normal-looking. And there are full-service carriers like TAP Air Portugal (and condor. Absolutely condor.) that I would say have a pretty low-costy look to them. There is nothing wrong with that. Low-cost liveries are frequently colourful and exciting, with much more thought put into distinctiveness and charm instead of a passionless appeal to dignity. Indeed a lot of my most highly esteemed liveries, including all the ones pictured above, are low-cost airlines. GOL, for example, is a snappy, eye-catchy design in bright colours that's clearly not meant to look expensive. The same goes for Breeze Airways. There's even more examples out there I've yet to touch on, like EasyJet; ValuJet; Scoot; Spirit Airlines; Frontier Airlines; PLAY (and the late WOW air); Volotea; airasia, so on - to be dignified or clean is not the goal here. Even the names of low-cost carriers frequently are very hastily stapled together and generic, like EasyJet or Super Air Jet or Wings Air; JetSmart; SkyUp; Smartwings; FastJet; Sky Airline (just one!); MYAirlines; the classic ValuJet; flyadeal; and the legendary jet2.com, making no attempt at all to seem as if they have a legacy to fall back on. And there's even more out-there specimens, like Mango or even Nok Air. Many of them have specific themes, like Batik Air, Tigerair, or Buzz, which isn't something you see on full-service carriers, which brand themselves on national identity and the promise of luxury and good service - which is boring. Low-cost airlines, if they want to succeed, have to do something to make people remember they exist.

This is the fundamental shape taken by the low-cost product, which operates with few laurels to rest on and a mission of getting people to remember their website at any cost. Much like a can of Arizona iced "tea" guaranteed to cost ninety-nine cents, literally cheaper than a bottle of water, the package it comes in makes no attempt to look classy. And I am a heavy tea drinker who considers myself fairly discerning, whose favourite type of tea is gyokuro yamashiro (which is absurdly expensive), but you literally can't beat Arizona! It's potable and it's ninety-nine cents and it sort of resembles tea if you don't think too much about it and Massachusetts summers are surprisingly hot and the can is pretty and colourful. Sure, I'd rather have Ito En, but that costs normal money and Arizona costs 99 cents, and sometimes that's all I really have, and it gets the job done even if my teeth aren't enjoying the experience. A Wizz Air plane is a can of Arizona iced tea. It is ninety-nine cents and potable.

This isn't Arizona, this is a box of Darjeeling from Harrods. Ryanair outfits their fleet in handsome navy blue and gold. Their logo, an outline of a woman with harp-like wings taking flight, is simple yet elegant, and that feels so very wrong. I actually asked in my questionnaire what the colours of the Ryanair livery were, because I had seen people expressing casually that they weren't sure they could recognize so much as a Ryanair logo, and the results aren't worth showing in a chart because they're basically as good as random. I do want to specifically appreciate the person who answered "I don't remember but it must be whatever the cheapest colour of airplane paint is", though.

But the truth is that they have such a rich palette, and I do mean that in the sense of 'wealthy'. A deep royal blue paired with a saturated gold used as a sparing trim, these are the colours of an overstuffed plush armchair, not a budget airline. Aside from the name on the winglets and the giant billboard wordmark there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that is typical for a low-cost airline. This is not garish advertising, this is stately.

The layout itself is what I call "Deltalike". Delta certainly did not invent this style of livery but they are the carrier I associate most with it, likely due to the fact that I live right by one of their hubs. The Deltalike is a white plane with a painted tail unconnected to the main fuselage body, painted winglets, painted engines, and a painted underbelly large enough still be visible when viewed directly from the side. While a 'true' Deltalike uses a consistent palette for the engines, tail, and underbelly, there is significant variation. The detached tail is, in my opinion, the harbinger of the Deltalike, and I call liveries with an incomplete presentation of Deltalike features Deltalites.

This scheme is not as common as the Lufthansa Line variants but it is still very common, with its popularity probably peaking in the 2010s. Some examples of the true Deltalike include Air Canada, 2006 Icelandair, Azul, the old GOL livery, and jetBlue. Some colour-varied Deltalikes are the old Flair livery, the SAS red engine livery, and British Airways. An example Deltalite is the old Croatia Airlines scheme, which has a painted tail and belly and engines that are sort of painted. Sure, the engines are just grey and a bit of the tail extends onto the body, but it's got the colour concentrated in the right place and it has the painted belly, it's a Deltalite. A lot of liveries have painted engines and detached tails but no painted bellies, and I do consider these to be on the far end of the Deltalike spectrum, but they aren't what I mean when I refer to a Deltalike. They're what brown dwarves are to actual stars - related but not really the same.

Ryanair is a true Deltalike, but I would even call it an elevated Deltalike. The gold trim, like the cord adorning the hems a of a thick brocade smoking jacket, has an effortlessly shallow curve as it trims the rich blue underbelly, larger than that of a typical Deltalike and with a very deliberate shape to it which at the rearmost point covers half the fuselage by height but fades away to a sort of goatee at the front. This is not a plane which sat in a puddle of blue but an intentional cloak impeccably positioned, visible not just from the side but from the front. The engines, instead of being plain or just one colour with a website printed on, large and garish, are the same white and blue with yellow trim, the last traces of the setting sun melting into a glassy deep blue ocean below a stark white sky with which it inexplicably coexists. Sure, the detached tail still looks bad, it always does, but you can ignore it at most angles.

From below the dark blue creates that distinct cetacean effect, a certain brightness-inverted countershading effect, similar to what you see on airlines like KLM and other blue-side-up liveries. The underside doesn't have a huge, legible logo, visible even from the ground on final approach. One of the defining features of the low-cost livery, in my mind, is a large, prominent website. It's tacky and a little pointless (I mean, surely they can Google your airline's name if your wordmark is large enough) but it is downright ubiquitous. Even full-service carriers frequently heavily feature their website, but it's nowhere on a Ryanair plane. That's so, so incredibly weird.

Just...think about it. Their entire identity is outrage marketing. They are the xQc of airlines - bigoted, constantly in the news, and obnoxious. And nobody remembers what their livery looks like because it doesn't look obnoxious. This is like if MrBeast's thumbnails were lovingly curated aesthetically pleasing shots of scenery that could pass for screenshots from an actual film. It's not tacky and cheap and it's not generic and cheap, it's elegant and cheap. And of all airlines to look like this...Ryanair? Seriously? Ryanair?

image: Associated Press

The CEO.

The airplanes.

Do you see what I mean? Do you see why I find this deeply strange? This is not a clickbait plane. This plane is downright unclickable. It has never been clicked. I bet if I covered the name up and showed it to people (again, I wish I'd had the time to do this) I could fool people into thinking this is like United. Hell, I've learned from my other survey that the average person clearly knows less about liveries than I, the Joker of liveries, do, and can't identify basically any from memory. I could probably fool at least one or two people into thinking this is Singapore Airlines. I may try this on a few co-workers and then get back to you.

How did we get here? I have no clue. While Ryanair did start out as a charter carrier rather than a low-cost airline, and they always had blue and yellow as their colours, their very early liveries were just white planes with wordmarks.

This livery seems to have appeared very early in the history of low-cost Ryanair. Unfortunately, I can't date it precisely - the only thing I can say is that the earliest photograph I could find in this livery was from 1994. Based on the fact that their planes were photographed in different liveries right up to then, including this very brief TAM-like BAC 1-11 livery, I think 1994 is most likely the point they committed to it.

Oh, Adam Rowden, what a different world you lived in.

Even for 1994 this is a pretty conservative livery. Sure, this was before the real boom of bright and venomous flying billboards, but it's still strange. And Ryanair is no stranger to literal flying billboards in the form of logojets for such companies as Vodafone and Hertz, often sort of hideous ones, though I imagine these days nobody would ever want to associate with them like that.

And they never changed it, except that they did - to the modern, softer curve. This I can pinpoint with much more accuracy. It was changed in mid-2003 as new aircraft were delivered, while the older livery was phased out together with the secondhand airframes which wore it. I do not understand this at all. If any airline were to just make the decision to go full circus tent and be as garish as possible it should be Ryanair, right? Ryanair is a brand incapable of cowardly behavior. But they look far more sober than even the average modern flag carrier livery. I guess they don't think they need an eye-catching livery, but I just don't buy that as a full explanation. Imagine the news they'd make for introducing something truly heinous. I think their genuine best move would just be to put a huge picture of Michael O'Leary's face, blown up massively and poorly aligned with visible JPEG artefacts, all over their fuselages. All of Europe would be furious. So why? Why is this the situation?

So what's the verdict? This may be the hardest decision I've made so far. The options here range widely. I'll lay them out.

If I were rating this based on pure visual appeal, I would give it a B-. I am dead serious - this is a visually pleasing, well-balanced livery, simple yet elegant. The detached tail is my only major complaint. But I think Saudia's planes are quite pretty and I graded them low because I think they fail at representing their airline or having a distinct identity, so this cannot be my sole criterion.

I almost want to give them an F because of just how un-Ryanair they are, like how Copa's livery is literally not the Copa livery, but that feels wrong because that's still the Ryanair livery, it's not just a refusal to design a livery at all.

Do I marry these two into a tepid union destined for either divorce or a dramatic act of arson after a seeming eternity of languishing in mutual dysfunction in Tallahassee? I really don't want to do that, because attempting to balance these factors betrays the fact of their contradiction, the mental strain I've been afflicted with over this simple, pointless choice with zero consequences except maybe one of my followers disagreeing with me, which is fine. Unlike certain individuals I will not call you swear words and say you're an idiot.

The final option is maybe my least favourite of them all, because it's capitulation. It's admitting Ryanair is special, just the most annoying golf-ball-sized hailstone in the blizzard of absurd and comical frustrations which is the airline industry. But I just don't know what to make of this miserable little pest, this plague on the patience and knees of the traveling public.

Z. FUCK YOU IT'S RYANAIR.

It defies categories by being good, but being Ryanair. I hate that. I hate it, I hate their beastly little CEO, and I dislike that their planes are sleek, elegant, and could easily pass for an airline that doesn't instruct stewardesses to kick their passengers' shins as they walk down the aisles. If I am buying a ten-euro plane ticket I do not think the plane should look like this, teleologically speaking. At the end of the day I just have no better way to quantify my feelings.

Prick.

[tejennnn]

Fly with HWS SEA girls (updated) ✈️

Compiled my 2023 low-cost carrier crew uniform doodle series with HWS SEA girls + added my fanon ver of HWS Cambodia and Laos this time!

Some of the uniform looks so modern and fresh, even I would wear them on daily basis 😭

Based on:

Vi 🇻🇳 : VietJet Air Indo 🇮🇩 : Super Air Jet Mal 🇲🇾 : Air Asia Piri 🇵🇭 : Cebu Pacific Thai 🇹🇭 : Nok Air Singa 🇸🇬 : Scoot Airlines Cam 🇰🇭 : Cambodia Airways Lao 🇱🇦 : Laos Skyway

Also look at my inconsistent eye drawing (I drew them based on which kind suites their personality/emotion the most) 🤡

[artisticdivasworld]

How FRC's Automated Collections Application Speeds Up Cash Recognition

NEW BLOG ALERT!! Don't forget to subscribe and comment. Thanks!

RENEE WILLIAMS, PRESIDENTFreightRevCon, a Freight Revenue Consultants, LLC. company How FRC’s Automated Collections Application Speeds Up Cash Recognition FRC’s automated collections application is designed to streamline the payment collection process, ensuring truck owners receive their payments more quickly and accurately. Here’s how it works: 1. Integration with Broker AP Databases The…

[navalvessels]

Low-Cost Carrier Airlines Market: Redefining Air Travel

Low-cost carrier airlines, often known as budget airlines, have transformed the aviation industry by making air travel more affordable and accessible to a broader range of passengers. In this article, we will delve into the current landscape of the low-cost carrier airlines market, the factors contributing to its growth, and the promising future that lies ahead.

Low Cost Carrier Airlines Market Introduction

Low-cost carrier airlines have disrupted the traditional aviation model, offering passengers affordable fares while maintaining efficiency and profitability. These airlines have redefined air travel, making it a popular choice for both leisure and business travelers.

The Current State of the Low-Cost Carrier Airlines Market

1. Affordability

Low-cost carriers are known for their competitive pricing. They offer no-frills, point-to-point service, allowing passengers to pay only for the services and amenities they need, avoiding unnecessary fees.

2. Network Expansion

While initially focused on short-haul routes, many low-cost carriers have expanded their networks to include long-haul destinations. This expansion has broadened their customer base, attracting travelers looking for budget-friendly international flights.

3. Operational Efficiency

Low-cost carriers have streamlined their operations to reduce costs. Their operational efficiency includes quick turnarounds between flights, utilizing secondary airports, and operating a single aircraft type, which simplifies maintenance and training.

4. Passenger Experience

While low-cost carriers offer basic services, passengers can often choose to add amenities for an additional fee. This a-la-carte approach allows travelers to personalize their flying experience.

5. Market Share

Low-cost carriers have gained a significant market share in regions like Europe, the United States, and Southeast Asia. They are increasingly competing with legacy carriers and dominating certain markets.

Low Cost Carrier Airlines Market Analysis

The low-cost carrier market is experiencing substantial growth, with key insights into its current status:

1. Market Size

The global low-cost carrier market is estimated to be valued at over $130 billion in 2023 and is projected to continue expanding. This growth is driven by increasing consumer demand for budget-friendly travel options.

2. Regional Trends

Low-cost carriers are popular in various regions, with different brands dominating specific markets. For example, Europe has Ryanair and easyJet, while the United States has Southwest Airlines and Spirit Airlines.

3. Key Players

Major players in the low-cost carrier sector include Southwest Airlines, Ryanair, AirAsia, and JetBlue. These airlines have played a crucial role in shaping the industry's development.

Low Cost Carrier Airlines Future Prospects

The future of the low-cost carrier airlines market is marked by several exciting developments:

1. Continued Expansion

Low-cost carriers will continue to expand their networks, offering more routes and services. This expansion may include more long-haul flights to various international destinations.

2. Technological Advancements

Airlines will invest in technology to improve customer service and enhance operational efficiency. This includes mobile apps, self-service kiosks, and improved in-flight connectivity.

3. Sustainability

The industry is increasingly focusing on sustainability by investing in fuel-efficient aircraft and exploring alternative fuels to reduce their environmental impact.

4. Market Competition

Competition in the low-cost carrier market is expected to intensify, as both new and established airlines vie for market share. This will lead to innovative pricing and service strategies.

[sprinklethecat]

I'm making this post as I've started a Go fund me for veterinarian assistance for all of the cats we have.

We're working to get the kittens adopted, but we would really appreciate being able to get them spayed and neutered before then. Our first focus is neutering the boys as to avoid any unwanted pregnancies, but after we're going to try to get the girls spayed.

Our main focus with the money is as follows:

Spaying and Neutering

Vaccinations

General appointment fees

Carriers as if we take multiple cats at once they will need separate ones

Rides to and from (if the closest one is unable to take them soon)

Any money left after that will go towards follow up vaccinations and food.

I've looked around and I can get some help with the cost for the spaying and neutering, but it will not cover the whole cost. If you can't donate, I'd appreciate if you reblog this or share the link!

Link is here. I also have pay pal and ven mo under logicalmoose@gmail.com for both. I will try to update the amount we've received on this post periodically! Thank you for all your help 💙

Edit: Put a google document below the read more to share the estimates from the vet I received earlier this morning.

$10/$1000

I put together a google document with the estimates I received from the vet clinic I take Sprinkle to.

Here is the link.

For just the boys, the possible estimates go up to:

Low Total for all three appointments: 237.64 (475.28 for both males)

High Total for all three appointments: 430.64 (861.28 for both males)

It's very pricey, unfortunately, but it'll be easier to get both the boys fixed than try to get all of the girls fixed; and avoid possible spraying. As the age of reproduction can be as low as 3 months, but typically around 4-6 months, we are nearing the age that could be an issue.