…but not to Newcastle, Newquay or Norwich.
Flybe collapsed on Thursday. The CEO blamed a snot encrusted cotton handkerchief for the airline’s demise. The offending cloth was found in the air conditioning unit of a Dash 8 Q400 and was responsible for spreading a virus throughout the cabin potentially infecting over 70 people.
Mrs Agnes Pantsgirdle was on the aircraft’s last flight from Manchester to Gatwick and was just one of the people exposed to the potential threat of experiencing a sore throat and ‘feeling a little off’. When interviewed by her local paper, Mrs Pantsgirdle described her ‘horrific ordeal’ when told by Flybe staff of the potential risk of exposure.
“I was at home enjoying a Prosecco while watching Eastenders when the call from Flybe came through. They said they were sorry to inform me that a used cloth had been found in the aircraft I was a passenger in. Imagine my horror. I spilled the glass and wet myself with fear. I shall be pursuing this in the courts for compensation. I will probably get PTSD if I think hard and long enough about this. Anxiety induced incontinence is not pleasant. My knickers were not cheap knock offs from the market, and Prosecco is a bugger to remove from one’s gusset. The shock was palpable, I can empathise with the citizens of Aleppo now.”
Other passengers were similarly incensed by the lapse in hygiene precautions of the airline.
Mr Barry Bashmebishop of Croydon has already organised an online support group for those affected by the crisis and asks anyone feeling a bit tearful to contact him or the Police.
“I blame the Chinese”, he said, “it must be their fault…or the Muslims…they don’t use paper tissues as it’s against their religion, and stuff, you know”.
This is not the first time a company has been undermined by a seemingly trivial issue. Who can forget the ‘Hymenoptera and the Tampon’ scandal, otherwise known as the ‘Ants in you Pants’ story of 1960? Or the thinning of the chocolate on the chocolate wafer that did for Arkwrights’ Chocolatiers of Preston in 1926? And we all know what a casual dismissal of the dangers of ice can do for a cruise liner company.
A Government Minister was quick to respond to the looming crisis for the UK economy of the company’s collapse but said “companies do fail and it is not the role of government to prop them up”. It was the view in Cabinet that Flybe always did have a dodgy business model. London and the South East was where all decent people wanted to live and work. “A pound spent in Croydon is worth more than a pound spent in Strathclyde” is the guiding principle. Mr Barry Bashmebishop (of Croydon) agreed.
Flybe however, had routes to Inverness, Newquay and Manchester. These are fine, if you like a bit of haggis, a pasty and a rain soaked pork pie. Opinion in Government was that all right thinking people however prefer Chelsea to Cardiff, Bromley to Birmingham and Deptford to Durham Tees. Therefore the regions should just wither and die, or reinvent themselves as hotspots of technological Silicon Valley development or tourism. Given any young person with ambition, hope and a brain cell moved to London and the vagaries of the UK weather systems, either ambition would be thwarted, strangled at birth by the umbilical cords of Northern intransigence, ignorance and incest.
Mrs Pantsgirdle confirmed the prevailing opinion of Manchester as a sodden cesspit of chippy northerners whose only merit was as a warning to Southern children about what can happen if you don’t eat your greens. When asked why she had been to Manchester, she replied that it was a need to see a “business client needing some services of a personal nature not available in the streets of Salford”. The exact nature of her business was not revealed, although she did look coy when asked about it.
Flybe’s collapse is merely another brick in the wall that is the United Kingdom’s gradual descent into obsolescence and break up into warring factions. London will soon declare unilateral independence offering citizen rights to the Home Counties. Cornwall is to be sold off to the highest bidder, a customs border will be built from the Wash to Bristol, and Newcastle can become an autonomous region for the terminally disaffected, disoriented and disillusioned.
No one will fly there.
Ever.
FunnyPeopleFunnyThings 