Save for families with Ryanair

malnik

We are a family of 2 adults and 3 children. Sadly we have to use Ryanair as they are the only airline that flies where we want to go.
I have always thought Ryanair penalise us as we are a family group as opposed to single or couples traveling. When i didnt update the number of people traveling i often get cheaper fares than when i put in the 2adult/3 kids person group.
So now...always just search for 1 person. This then shows me how many seats are available at the cheapest rate. For example today i looked and it showed 2 seats at 16.99 inc all taxes and 3 on the return. If i put in my family group it shows all seats at 33.99.
So now i book the max number at the cheapest price, then the rest of us on a seperate booking at the higher price. Saved about £65 doing it this way.

Bob_the_Saver

When i didnt update the number of people traveling i often get cheaper fares than when i put in the 2adult/3 kids person group.

An English translation please,
I got as far as 'When I didn't update the number of people travelling, I'.......then I lost the will to live!

budgetflyer

They are not penalising families ! Thats just how many seats on offer at a given price. That number will vary, day to day as the plane fills and demand falls + rises, + if they have a particular sale on.

babyfruitella

What annoys me with Ryanair is they have all these promotional fares, which I can get for my husband & I, yet I have to pay a fortune for my infant!

peterbaker

Ryanair do seem to be mixing it up almost daily at the moment. I booked some £5 flights yesterday but I see the cheapest are £8 today ... how long was that £5 offer actually open?

The OP is clearly not a seasoned Ryanair traveller like you or me Bob, so it's understandable that the price model may not be understood yet.

The OP is right. Clearly Ryanair do penalise groups because with all the other tweaking they have done to the website, they still do not offer the last of the cheap seats as part of the overall price quoted for a groupsize which crosses the divide between two price levels. It means that if the OP had actually accepted the 33.99 seats, individuals or smaller groups will have been given the last of the cheaper seats AFTER the OP had made a purchase.

To get round this, the OP of course has the right idea about splitting the booking, but with the children clearly has to be careful that there is an accompanying adult on each separate booking.

Ryanair is now by far I think the largest airline in Europe. Over the last 10 years, they have brought us, taught us, sometimes forced us to accept a new way. I don't think anyone foresaw, least of all their competitors, how successful their website booking engine would be when Ryanair launched it around 2000 and they haven't looked back.

I have a feeling that my average 2010 spend per trip with Ryanair is probably double or even treble what it had been up to as recently as 2006/2007. Biggest is not always best, but Ryanair remains my favorite airline in Europe.

As a matter of general interest, as you are one of the acknowledged MSE kings lording up the Ryanair experience , what do you think has happened to your average spend per trip this year, Bob?

jamesbrownontheroad

peterbaker wrote: »

Ryanair do seem to be mixing it up almost daily at the moment. I booked some £5 flights yesterday but I see the cheapest are £8 today ... how long was that £5 offer actually open?

Might I suggest you acquaint yourself with my contributions to this thread? ... See tomorrow's Ryanair sale today

Look for the flashing square logo at the top right of the ryanair.com homepage. It will tell you details of the current promotion: flat fare or maximum % discount, the time period in which it's available and until when it is available.

For more details, find your home airport here: http://www.ryanair.com/en/fares-to-europe and then click on your desired destination to see the precise dates of the offer.

The promotion changes twice a week - normally running Tuesday to Thursday and Friday to Monday. You can get a sneak preview of "tomorrow's" sale from about 4pm the day before the sale changes by clicking on that thread above.

I have been tracking every Ryanair headline promotion for more than a year now in this Google Docs spreadsheet:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Aste06-Zgp-bdGFVX1RaaTNUQi1oTUxWakJkQ0FOWEE&hl=en_GB

You can see that the cheapest headline promotional fares ("free", £0.01, £1, £2 etc) have all but dried up over the busier summer months. These promotions generally open up for travel two to three months in advance. It is not necessarily cheaper to book twelve months in advance - these sale fares are released a few months out to fill up half-filled planes.

peterbaker wrote: »

The OP is right. Clearly Ryanair do penalise groups because with all the other tweaking they have done to the website, they still do not offer the last of the cheap seats as part of the overall price quoted for a groupsize which crosses the divide between two price levels. It means that if the OP had actually accepted the 33.99 seats, individuals or smaller groups will have been given the last of the cheaper seats AFTER the OP had made a purchase.

Yes... quite right. Although in my experience as the allocation of cheapest promo seats on each flight runs out, you'll see a small line of red text advising you that there are only "x seats left at this price" at the flight selection stage.

peterbaker wrote: »

As a matter of general interest, as you are one of the acknowledged MSE kings lording up the Ryanair experience , what do you think has happened to your average spend per trip this year, Bob?

I appreciate that I wasn't asked, but I will modestly answer this question myself. As someone who commutes several times a month between GB and Ireland I have taken in excess of fifty flights across the Irish Sea in the last twelve months. I can't really compare this to previous years as it relates to a change in my work situation.

Having carefully observed the pattern of Ryanair sales, always travelling hand luggage only and using a Co-Op Electron and then Neteller Prepaid Mastercard (the real one, not a virtual one), I've been able to make the trip for an average of £5 each way. Sometimes in the winter it's been much less... as little as £0.01, which is so cheap I've block booked dozens of flights to give myself flexibility in advance, and then only used the ones I've needed.

Once the fare gets nearer £20 I generally use other airlines, since FlyBe and Easyjet both offer alternatives that are more convenient once Ryanair gets pricier. I've even returned to the train and ferry combination, which is startlingly cheap between any UK and any Irish train station.

alanrowell

malnik wrote: »

I have always thought Ryanair penalise us as we are a family group as opposed to single or couples traveling.

I don't know any airline that will book 2 people of a group at one price and 3 people in a group at a higher price. They will always book 5 people at the higher price as that's the lowest price all the group can be booked at at a single price WITH IDENTICAL RESTRICTIONS.

So it's nothing to do with Ryanair specifically

peterbaker

alanrowell wrote:

They will always book 5 people at the higher price as that's the lowest price all the group can be booked at at a single price WITH IDENTICAL RESTRICTIONS.

That's just not applicable with Ryanair, Alan. With Ryanair all bookings are identical no matter what price you pay or whether you booked it as a one-way or as part of a "return".

So there is absolutely no difference in restrictions terms or conditions for the three "last of the cheaps" booked at 16.99 and the two higher priced ones booked separately at 33.99.

No, I suspect that the real reason Ryanair continue to lay themselves open to a little criticism on this from time to time is because keeping the price bands separate keeps the internet booking engine running more smoothly.

Now I have thought about it a little more, as a one-time database applications programmer (third class:p) I can imagine all kinds of extra database record lock programming difficulties if the OP starts a booking for 5 seats including the last 3 cheaps, and then Bob comes on and starts a booking for 1 or 2 of them, and I then come on and start a booking for the one that's left plus one of the next price-level.

I could see such an application falling base over apex pretty fast unless it was put together by a top rocket scientist/hedge fund modeller