When British airline passengers were forced to stage a giant whip-round and hand over £20,000 incash after being ‘held to ransom’ by their airline,I was intrigued.

At last, I thought, Ryanair has abandoned the drip-drip chiselling (£5 for ‘speedy boarding’ or £4 for a bottle of mineral water) and gone for a broader brush £20,000 ‘whip-round’ when the plane has been loaded up and is still sitting on the tarmac.

Easy to imagine a Bob Geldoffian flight attendant stomping up the aisle bellowing: ‘Do you want this -expletive-deleted – plane to take off or don’t you…?’

No, of course, not. The airline in question was Comtel Air which had ‘run out of money’. You can imagine the pilot feeling his pockets: ‘I must have left my wallet in my other jacket.’

I’d love to know how the whip-round actually worked out. Did the captain invite people to dig deep? Did a passengers’ committee get organised? Did their withdrawals completely empty the ATM they went to?

Some people inevitably gave a lot more than others (most people would have given a lot more than me, I wouldn’t have given anything). Are they hoping to get this money back? Best of luck with that one.

The whip-round story succeeded in eclipsing the news that easyJet is planning to allow passengers to choose the seat they want at the time of booking. For an extra price, of course.

Ryanair is also testing the pre-allocated seat concept.

I don’t understand why this has taken so long to come about. There used to be an argument that free seating was quicker. This is rubbish, of course. In practice, what it means is that in a bid to get the best places there’s an unholy rush to the plane followed by an agonising crawl up the aisle once on board followed by protracted bickering as a late-boarding parent discovers she will have to sit at the opposite end of the plane from her three-year-old child.

The problem with no-frills airlines is that they are rarely candid about what they do and why they do it.

But at least they’ve spared us the indignity of a whip-round. So far, that is…

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