US BRITS love a bargain in almost any form, but one thing which makes us particularly jubilant is scoring ourselves a cheap flight. I d bet that most people you know will, at some point, have told you about the £5 return they got to Prague or the holiday

US BRITS love a bargain in almost any form, but one thing which makes us particularly jubilant is scoring ourselves a cheap flight.

I'd bet that most people you know will, at some point, have told you about the £5 return they got to Prague or the holiday they had in some random outpost of Sweden because it only cost them £2.50 each.

Because of this budget airlines are seen as a positive force for good in this country and I strongly suspect we'll put up with pretty much anything from them (climate change, anyone?) so long as we can continue going on cheap mini breaks abroad.

Which makes me believe that Ryanair's unbelievable threat to sue the Government for compensation following the recent disruption at UK airports won't actually do them any harm at all, even if we're all left a bit flabbergasted by it.

Apparently the disruption has lost them £2m in cancelled flights.

By rights their attitude should be costing them even more as we'll all turn our backs on this insensitive airline.

To be blithering on about money at a time when we are all still digesting the news that an alleged terrorist plot was foiled is desperately inappropriate.

Earlier this month, Ryanair announced an 80 per cent surge in profits - its net profit from the three months leading up to June was 115.7m euros, up 64.4m euros from last year.

I hardly think that Michael O'Leary, the company's chief executive, is on the breadline so he's got some nerve threatening legal action.

There is no doubt that our airports endured a massive melt-down earlier this month but let's not forget that this was because of suspected, terrifying terrorist plots, not because somebody thought it would be funny to make everyone carry their stuff in clear plastic bags.

Mr O'Leary said that disruption at airports handed extremists a public relations victory, which is quite possibly the biggest load of irrelevant nonsense I've heard this year.

It's true that the end result of an act of terrorism is not simply the deaths it causes but the climate of fear and hatred it creates.

But even if the alleged terrorists are celebrating a publicity coup that would make Max Clifford proud, who cares as long as people didn't die?

Now Ryanair has announced that it will release one million cheap seats in a bid to "get Britain flying again" and "beat terrorism".

How stupid all those bods at M15 must feel now that they've realised that rather than high-level surveillance work, it's actually a 99p flight to Gdañsk which will make our world a safer place.

Ryanair should leave the anti-terrorism work to the experts and go back to counting their (extensive) profits.