Ok, I am a cynical skeptic about the media where I have made my living for 40 years. I denounced the famous Washington Post “Jimmy’s World” story as an utterly obvious pipe-job the very day it ran, for example. But I am prepared to accept that the amazing photo showing the first-class passengers on an exclusive chute as flight 1549 drifted in the Hudson is genuine. The first-classers on their comfy chute down the door off the starboard forward galley look pretty safe; the coach passengers on the wing sinking into the Hudson River are obviously in grave peril.

HenceI’m willing to concede to Sean (he’s the source of the link below) that I owe him a UK pound coin, usable, as previously stipulated, in one of those pay toilets Ryanair is talking about installing on its airplanes.

But I am still awfully curious, assuming the photo is real, there has been almost no comment on the screaming irony of the class distinction (even on a crummy domestic flight) in the mainstream media. Which could mean many things to many people, but to me suggests (the verb is chosen carefully) that at least some smart editors (that is a leap) must have seen this photo and engaged some reportorial expertise to evaluate its provenance. But these days, as I have said here many times, I am constantly astonished that editors and reporters are not asking the most basic questions about basic stories.

Anyway, thanks for the comments, and especially to Sean for this link: (See photos 7 and Also, a great compendium of photos in all.

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I can’t tell you how often this photo has been e mailed to me, usually with the subject line “Why It Pays to Fly First Class.”

Populist resentment aside, this photo strikes me as a hoax. I haven’t noticed a chute by the forward galley in any other of the photos of the Hudson River crash.

Snopes.com doesn’t have anything on it.

Can anyone straighten me out. I’m willing to bet a British pound coin (usable for the pay johns that Ryanair is proposing, see below post), that it’s a photoshopped hoax.

Thanks-

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‘Coin operated toilets’ used to be just a joke we made about the proliferation of fees for every damn thing on an airplane.

Now, maybe not. Ryanair’s boss Michael O’Leary got the Brit newspapers all clucking when he proposed just that, charging one British pound coin ($1.43 at current exchange) to use the john on a plane.

My first hunch was that O’Leary was just off on another publicity stunt and would later grandly announce that Ryanair had listened to customers and decided not to have coil-operated toilets.

But then some Ryanair spokeswoman, possibly just a nitwit, told the Times of London that Ryanair had investigated the situation and found “that there is no legal requirement for an aircraft to have a toilet onboard, so if an airline does have a toilet they can charge to use it.”

Meanwhile, lookit this character on YouTube who has invented a coin-operated toilet paper dispenser, and touts it as another way to save the damn planet. Or another way to add a new fee to flying.

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