The eventually selected charity for 2009 was the homeless charity, the Dublin Simon Community but despite the good intentions of the calendar it ran into trouble almost immediately after it was published.
February: Edita, Miss Lookout
The calendar was photographed in Spain and within days of publication in November 2008 the Institute for Women in Spain announced possible legal action and complaints to both the Irish and Spanish authorities.
Killjoy spokeswoman María Jesús Ortiz claimed the images presented the women as 'sexual objects.' Er, yes... They also claimed that the airline should have included men in the calendar as they made up a significant part of the employees of the industry.
April: Sheila, Miss Cockpit
Spanish consumer lobbying organisation FACUA, which had objected to the previous year's calendar as well, said that: "The company is attacking the dignity of women workers in general and especially of cabin crew members, by presenting stereotypical images of these professionals which they have spent years struggling against." Three of the Ryanair staff posing for the calendar were Spanish (for completeness sake we can reveal that they were Andrea (Miss January), Sheila (Miss April) and Silvia (Miss May)). Ryanair sent a free copy of the calendar to FACUA and a spokesman for the airline said "Our 2009 Calendar proves yet again that Spanish women are among the most outgoing, fun and sexy women in Europe. We are calling on FACUA to embrace this year’s calendar as it raises much needed funds for charity while at the same time showing off the best Spain and Ryanair has to offer passengers."
Ryanair launched the calendar in November and managed to persuade a couple of the girls to strip off in a cold and gloomy Dublin Airport.
Slovakian Ingrid (Miss Mechanic) from August poses at the calendar launch
Unfortunately for Ryanair, the launch day co-incided with an incident at Rome when one of their planes landed heavily and skidded off the end of the runway after multiple bird strikes.
The wrong sort of birds cause problems for Ryanair
Five occupants of the plane, including two cabin crew were taken to hospital with minor injuries.
However, all of this was but a storm in a styrofoam teacup compared to what was about to hit the turbo-fan.
Edita Schindlerova in uniform
In March 2009, The Sun revealed that Stanstead based Miss February, Edita Schindlerova was moolighting as a porn star under the name Edita Bente. The 5'2" girl from the Czech Republic seemed bored with the question when approached by the press, indicating that it was no big deal.
Edita in one of the less explicit pictures she has posed for
It looks like one of the careless passengers has spilled something on Edita in return
No end to Edita's career
Ryanair's response to all this extra publicity was only to be expected: “what people do before or after they work for us is their business” they said, with commendable open-mindedness. Not only didn't they sack Edita but signed her up the following year for the 2010 calendar (which we will look at in the future).
So, all that remains is to look at the final few months of Ryanair's most controversial calendar and contemplate our examination of 2010's edition.
October: Daniela, Miss Safety
Oh, and if we had to pick a favourite it would probably be the lovely Ulle, from March.