I’m not talking, dear reader, about airplane accidents but about when competing airlines flip positions.

The two Irish airlines, Aer Lingus and Ryanair, seemed to have flipped. They seem to have swapped places with each other.

I’ve been banging on regularly in this blog, most recently here, about Ryanair’s blithe disregard for the customer. Something’s changed in the last wee while however.

Ryanair appointed a Chief Marketing Officer at the beginning of the year, a role that many of us senior marketing people could have done and would love to have done, and the changes are already bearing fruit. They were starting from a pretty low bar of course, which is why folk were probably queueing up for the job.

It’s working already though. Those obvious things we all would have done are now bearing fruit. Now it feels like Aer Lingus is the airline that is playing catch-up in customer service. It’s almost like it wants to fill the role that the old Ryanair made its own. I guess that’s OK, except, that it’s not the Low Fares Airline, not by a long chalk, so it’s a dangerous development.

The last thing we want is one Irish airline. Not good for competition…