Fury as Ryanair seats passengers 'rows apart' unless they pay to sit together

attributed_to_Ryanair_by_MSE wrote:

When challenged by MSE on whether it had changed its policy to deliberately separate groups, a spokesperson said: "No, there has been no change. Customers who do not wish to purchase a seat are randomly allocated a seat, free of charge."

I haven't witnessed the phenomenum firsthand yet, but I expect to very shortly based on very credible reports on this thread so far. An outright lie by Ryanair, like the above quote appears to be, is an insult to the intelligence of those of us who have flown with Ryanair since before jpsartre was out of short trousers (if jpsartre is yet out of short trousers).

If they lie so easily about this, how can they be trusted on anything else? Particularly issues directly affecting safety? Do they lie to IAA about how they monitor and maintain their rapidly ageing aircraft, for example? It is a very valid question when you get such a bald lie as the one they have apparently just told MSE.

If I was in charge of a supposedly safety-first company caught out like this, I would sack both the slippery spokesman and the director responsible for the error, and retract the bloody stupid reputation killing seat charging policy immediately.

Ryanair are not like any other airline and that includes Easyjet. Ryanair are totally in command of their seating and booking policy. They quite evidently have some of the best statisticians adjusting their pricing up and down continuously to maximise load factors and revenue. It is a beautiful statistical model for those stats people to play with - every single one of their 400 aircraft has exactly the same seating plan and they keep a database containing the details of every single customers' activity with them over years with which to decide whether or not to offer flexibility. I would not be surprised actually to find that as a very regular traveler, they may even have programmed the booking system to exclude me from this new policy and give me seats next to my normal travel partner when we travel together.

As for milking the bulk of their passengers, they patently do not need to break laws regarding unfair commercial practice in this regard, so why the hell are they apparently doing so? They adjust up front prices for the exact same flight continuously up and down over months and weeks and days by huge amounts - one particular flight price I have been monitoring has gone from £80 to £95 to £135 to £55 to £95 to £41 in as many weeks and in that order. Why are they taunting OFT by messing with these two pound unnecessary post-booking tweaks?

I do not believe in exploiting the many with a new tax-like charge on normal living habits, and favouring the few who choose to live their lives like lone wolves.

Ryanair's long-term processing of customer personal data - that's another security question - if a company is caught lying so easily, are they a safe company to hold so much data on so many people for so long? Have they also told porkies to ICO about their data security policy? I am not kidding. They must have one of the largest repositories of dangerously combined personal data on the planet. Have they ever been hacked? Could we trust them to ever tell us if they had been?

Whatever next? An extra charge payable to stop the booking engine asking your wife if she and her husband would like to sit next to a named someone who happens to be the lady you last booked to sit next to on a 2 day mid-week break for two in Majorca?

Ryanair are playing with fire.

We can only trust responsible adults to play with fire as big as this. Are they?

antenna wrote: »

If I pay for greedy boardng the last thing I want is filthy scumbag stearage passengers pushing up against me in their charity shop bought clothes.
I have a timeshare in marrrbella and as such I am not used to mixng with these common lowlfe hoards

'Stearage' sounds to me like there might be soap involved - I don't think that's what you meant?