Ryanair prices increase the more seats i book at once

mangochut_2

Hi, this is my first ever thread so apologoies if I break any etiquette rules. I am currently planning a stag weekend and was comparing flights from east midlands to Riga.
I first got the price for 25 adults which worked out at £114 each, if i book for 10 adults it works out at £70 each, if i book for 5 adults £62 each.
The taxes and charges range from 0 to over a grand? has anybody ever seen this before or can anybody explain why this happens? The obvious thing to do is to book 5 seats at a time but I would prefer to book all seats at the same time to be sure that the flight has the capacity. I have also ordered a prepaid master card to save on the admin charges.

Any advice is much appreciated.

Thanks

dmg24

Yield management - the flight will have x seats available at £10, another x available at £20 etc.

I have never seen taxes etc come to over £1000 - are you sure that is not for all of you?

mangochut_2

Thanks for getting back to me so quikly.

Yeh sorry the taxes range from 0 to over a grand for everybody. zero for the 5 seats, over a grand for 25.
I have the prices from the website saved as .jpg but not sure how to attach here.

dmg24

The first five seats would be available on a 'No Taxes' offer. As this will only apply to a few seats on the flight, when you add more seats you will go into the regular pricing i.e. taxes payable, hence the difference in amounts.

mangochut_2

So it wouldn't be possible to book the seats 5 at a time?

dmg24

mangochut wrote: »

So it wouldn't be possible to book the seats 5 at a time?

It would, but it would be likely that each five seats will be a different price. There are quirks when this does not happen, but it is usually the case. Also before you do this ensure that there are a few extra seats spare, in case someone else books in the meantime!

mangochut_2

Thats great thanks i'll give it a try, I'll make sure to be careful.

Thanks again

bagand96

Ryanair will charge you the same price for all seats on a booking. They only have X amount of seats available at a certain price and on a certain offer.

So when you book more seats, you are all charged the higher amount and you don't get the cheaper rate. As you said you could book the seats in blocks of 5. This shouldn't be a problem availability wise as you know they have at least 25 seats available as they can quote you for that.

Thing is breaking it up you don't know the total cost. At the moment you know 25 seats will cost you £xxx. If you book 5 at a time, you know you will get some cheap seats but you don't know what the later seats cost. Ryanair's system MAY detect the demand on the flight (lots of searches and bookings consecutively) and up the price meaning you may pay more for the later seats. I don't know this, its hypothetical, I don't know how their yield management works.

Either way, if you do book 5 at a time please come back and let us know how it went and what the cost difference were in the end, interesting experiment!

SaveTheEuro

One tip, if you are booking for so many people, make sure they tell you their exact names as they appear on passports.

dzug1

Are you paying for all those yourself? If not, and to save any difficulties with people cancelling and not paying you might it not be better for everyone to do their own booking?

mangochut_2

bagand96
SaveTheEuro
dzug1

Thanks for the advice, we are looking at many avenues for this. Currently getting quotes from agencies so they can have all the hassle and we will be protected, may be a wee bit more expensive but might be worth it in the long run. Paying for flights seperately is a good idea. The same group is currently organising a trip to Newcastle and we have experienced the same thing with train tickets, every time one of us books then the exact same journey on the same sight increases in price, we scoured all the advance booking sites and all possible journeys. It should be a price from A to B and thats it.

P.S, is there a way I can get email alerts to let me know somebody has podted on my thread?

Thanks