Ryanair seating policy changes

Mebuntu

Whatever about the seating policy I find the allegation of price gouging by Ryanair to be way over the top. I'm sure you remember the £400 return DUB-LHR by both Aer Lingus and BA. Now, that was price gouging as are current prices for goods in ROI compared to UK/NI.

When you get on a bus, tram or train you have absolutely no guarantee that your partner or family can be seated together. You may not even get on the transport if it is already full.

I checked back my last 20 return flights on FR and these are the (rounded) prices including reserved seats cost in all cases. These were all to UK. By no stretch of the imagination can those fares be considered price-gouging.

51
31
68
12 (yes, I didn't believe that myself until I double checked. It was mid-week return to BRS.
24
35
35
47
50
49
37
38
58
36
49
56
55
68
39
52

Aer Lingus - I asked if we could be seated together in the front of the aircraft and we were duly accommodated with seats 2E and 2F.

What about the other various Joe and Mary Soaps behind you who didn't get changed because all the other seats were already spoken for. If the flight was full they couldn't have possibly agreed to all requests for seat allocations. They would have had to say no and would have had no compunction in doing so. You were just lucky on these occasions.

JCX BXC

bigar wrote: »

But you do not want to pay the 2 Euro extra to pick a seat with Ryanair when booking?

Very few seats are €2, that's generally on short flights and for a very few limited rows (which consequently get sold out) and you'd never find one on a flight to the canaries!

Bazzy

Irish Steve wrote: »

If there was a cost involved in providing the service, then I'd be prepared to consider it. When it is a simple pure gouge to provide a "service" that almost every other carrier (as far as I know) provides without charge, then I am going to be hostile to such gouging, and look at alternative suppliers for the same route.

The €2 option is not that common, as mentioned in another post, the cost of booking specific seats can be considerably more.

Another aggravation is that I can check in up to 60 days ahead, but again, only by being gouged for extras, if I want to keep the costs down, I can only check in 4 days ahead, so that means for a longer trip either finding a printer to print boarding passes, or being very sure that the smartphone is going to work at the airport, which in some cases is not guaranteed, and may cost depending on the airport.

Yet another petty issue that makes for additional stress that's not needed, given the massive rip off of airport check in. Free WiFi at some airports comes with a lot of strings, and restrictions, so the only safe way to use a smartphone for the boarding pass is to download the boarding pass before arriving at the airport, to be completely sure that it's there and available, to avoid the sort of hassles that can happen if the Free WiFi works for 2 hours, depending on the airport, that could mean that when you get to the gate to board, the pass can't be accessed as the time has expired. Not exactly friendly.

I always just check in and take a screenshot of the boarding pass

The app allows you to save it in the apple wallet ( not sure about android)

I always send it to who i'm travelling with or a whatsapp group etc so someone else will have it if i need it

Fully understand not everyone has a smart phone etc

Irish Steve

Bazzy wrote: »

I always just check in and take a screenshot of the boarding pass

The app allows you to save it in the apple wallet ( not sure about android)

I always send it to who i'm travelling with or a whatsapp group etc so someone else will have it if i need it

Fully understand not everyone has a smart phone etc

Android has similar, and I have used it a number of times to avoid possible problems of no access to the web at critical points at the airport, (for a number of airlines), where it gets messy is if you have to save 2 (or more) on the one phone, if the people they relate to get separated in one of other of the queues.

The real fun starts when one person is told to board at the front of the aircraft, and the other is told to board at the back, as the passes are checked at the door. It means that one of the two has to use the wrong door in order for the pass to be checked, which is an immediate issue for then getting to the right place for one person.

It's changed now, in the early days of smartphone boarding passes, the bar code of the smartphone and the bar code of a paper pass were different, and that caused huge problems on one trip at Gatwick where there were 2 of us travelling, and the system conspired to separate us, so the smartphone had been used to access through security to get airside, and then at the gate, one of us had to use the backup paper pass, which the computer didn't recognise as being "in" the system, and getting the smartphone back to the second person was not easy, due to the way that the security system operates.

After an E-mail exchange with the relevant people, that issue appears to have been resolved, but at the time, it was less than helpful.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

Irish Steve

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

One one occasion, albeit a while ago, it wasn't, they may well have upgraded it since to get round that issue, but since it happened, I have taken the attitude that I won't risk being at the gate and not able to get the thing up again, so either a screen capture or a paper backup is now the best way to make sure that I don't end up with stress I don't need.