Join the Mile High Loser Club - Lose your shirt at 20,000 feet

Joining the Mile High Club will have new meaning if UK based airline Ryanair introduces internet-style gambling on its international flights.

Michael O'Leary, chief executive officer of Ryanair sees in-flight gambling as a way to entertain passengers and offer players potentially a way to recover the cost of their flight before they land.

Ryanair also believe this will set the standard for other aitlines to follow.

One worrying comment is that they believe that profits from offerring gambling in-flight will be so high that flight prices can be reduced.

There are many significant issues with this development:

1. In a flight, passengers are a captive audience. There is no way they will be able to escape exposure to the promotion of the gambling opportunity or may be even the gambling itself as depending on the design of the system, promotion of the gambling opportunity may pervade all other forms of entertainment that are offerred in-flight.
2. There is little or no regulation as Ryanair aim to take advantage of the inability to set laws in international airspace. This means there will not need to be any player protections in place at all.
3. There are safety issues on board. If a player loses or gets upset, a land based venue could throw them out. At 20,000 feet this is not possible and could cause issues for flight crew and/or other passengers, or even effect the safety of the flight as a whole.
4. There are safety issues involved that go beyond the gambling that occurs on board. As gambling is via credit card, players may arrive in their destination (a foreign company) with no access to funds and encumbered with debt. This can cause significant problems for gamblers with little access to help.

There are plent of non-gambling forms of entertainment which are capable of being offerred in-flight without airlines being so desperate for funds that they decide to become gaming operators.

We just don't need more greedy companies trying to take advantage of people succumbing to the false promises gambling offers. Ryanair should think very carefully before making this foolish decision.

GG