We'd like to remind Forumites to please avoid political debate on the Forum. This is to keep it a safe and useful space for MoneySaving discussions. Threads that are - or become - political in nature may be removed in line with the Forum’s rules. Thank you for your understanding.

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

1568101113

Comments

  • jpsartre
    jpsartre Posts: 4,087 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    pjh104 wrote: »
    Not sure where the £2.00 figure comes from. Checking various seat locations row 18+ shows between £4.00 and £10.00 per seat.

    Price is route (and possibly time) dependent. Most routes start at £2.
  • agarnett
    agarnett Posts: 1,301 Forumite
    edited 12 June 2017 at 11:23PM
    jpsartre wrote: »
    If the last couple of decades have told of us anything it is that a substantial majority of passengers make their booking decision based on the price of the headline fare and everything else is a distant second.
    Yes you are exactly right, jpsartre, which is why OFT hauled them over the coals about adding fees at a later stage because it was an unfair commercial practice.

    Funnily enough, unfair commercial practices, of which we speak, are unlawful. (It's the law!)
    People are well aware of Ryanair's reputation and have been for years but use them regardless.
    Who is "people"?

    What is Ryanair's reputation over the years? Why do you think "people" use Ryanair (now and years back?)

    PS pjh104 is more right than you are about the prices typically charged for seat allocation.
  • jpsartre
    jpsartre Posts: 4,087 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    I didn't disagree with pjh104 about anything. Some routes start at
    £4, others £2.
  • buglawton
    buglawton Posts: 9,235 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    pjh104 wrote: »
    Awfully cynical policy here.

    1. Checking in for STN-DUB flight my wife and I are allocated middle seats many rows apart. Not that bothered about the rows apart on a short flight, but the middle seats when all around are empty?

    2. Not sure where the £2.00 figure comes from. Checking various seat locations row 18+ shows between £4.00 and £10.00 per seat.

    3. Once you've entered the seat selection process it is difficult to find the way to abandon the selection and revert to random.
    Exactly right, the actual seat booking process to get adjacent placing is a real faff and very unwelcome on a mobile phone or small tablet. Ryanair are crackers and it Ladbrokes were laying odds, I'd bet that Ryanair will abandon this folly sooner rather than later.
  • agarnett
    agarnett Posts: 1,301 Forumite
    edited 13 June 2017 at 4:57PM
    In between my last post and this, I flew on Ryanair.

    Half the passengers were talking about it. It's a bloody stupid policy currently and the person that dreamed it up should not be in aviation. It also raises doubts about the suitability of Ryanair's executive directors to be appropriate persons to run an airline.

    On my flight while I stood n the tarmac waiting to board, I witnessed a Swissport employee pull out a bag from the hold because he had happily noticed that it had been incorrectly labelled and should not fly. That was not before it had reached the hold. ANd when he showed it to his colleague, his colleague could not see what was wrong with it.

    The whole system now employed by Ryanair is wobbly again because of their policy of taking bags off passengers once they think they have reached overhead bin capacity via early boarding passengers.

    The type of labels they attach to those bags are ad hoc in nature and there is no 3 stage A check that I can ascertain which prevents a bag from flying without a passenger. There's only maybe a 1½ stage check and discrepancies rely upon only the most experienced of ramp agents to notice something isn't quite right if he or she is concentrating on reading the labels instead of just bunging the bags into the hold and counting them. Ramps and terminals at some airports are so busy at times that a passenger could mingle with international transfer passengers or simply arriving passengers. Items could change hands. If said item is then volunteered for a Ryanair hold without being checked in then there seems to me to be a risk that on a busy ramp a passenger could subsequently get lost on the ramp, miss the flight and exit the airport.

    Meanwhile the bag carrying goodness knows what to goodness knows where may be travelling without an "A checked" linked passenger.

    It still isn't so far back where I regularly experienced delayed 'doors closed' because multiple recounts of passengers needed to take place in the cabin due to discrepancies in the paperwork. IT isn't impressive when that happens. It shows a wobbly system exists.

    Messing with systems the way Ryanair does, introduces risk, and if they do it with the parts of the systems we can see, what are they messing with in aviation systems the public do not get to see?

    It is not funny. It is not business. It is not safe practice.

    Ryanair should be made to desist, and so should any other airline who thinks they always know better than those who devised systems and civilised safety-enhancing cultures that have lasted decades.

    I've praised Ryanair during the last 12 months, but not now.
  • Forwandert
    Forwandert Posts: 1,211 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    I travelled with Ryanair roughly a month ago with my wife, outbound both seated together, inbound we were on separate rows, wife was on the row behind me. We both had empty seats next to us but to be honest I think we where both happy to have the extra room to relax in.
  • richardw
    richardw Posts: 19,458 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts
    agarnett, please raise your concerns with transport ministers in governments.
    Posts are not advice and must not be relied upon.
  • agarnett
    agarnett Posts: 1,301 Forumite
    edited 14 June 2017 at 8:13AM
    How many transport ministers would you like me to lobby, Richard? Will you join me in doing so?

    These things aren't unique to Ryanair or to UK or Eire, but if you are amongst the biggest and ugliest like Ryanair, people like me (and there are plenty of us about aren't there, Richard?) do notice and in my humble opinion, one of the best ways for it to be noted is for it to get discussed in various media.

    There are so many latent risks in all commercial endeavours and some of us can recognise them from small signs on the surface depending on our past experiences.

    Look at the terrible fire in West London last night.

    It is not the wonders of hindsight to say that should never have happened, as ex fireman MP Jim Fitzpatrick has been saying this morning.

    I personally cannot believe such a building was so vulnerable and I was trained as a fire surveyor in that area of town nearly forty years ago when there had been a number of awful fires in typical student bedsit accommodation in large converted four and five storey terraced houses which the fire brigade couldn't control. This was 24 storeys and purpose built.

    This morning's fire I just cannot get my head around. So much risk assessment and reporting expense is the norm these days - far more than when I was writing fire hazard survey reports, yet it has all failed.

    Architects, surveyors, and LFB inspectors must be feeling sick to the bottom of their stomachs. I sympathise with them as individuals, but it is those who have the power to allow (and indeed encourage) unsafe operational cultures to develop that we must point the finger at.

    We must all open our eyes and our mouths when we see things which demonstrate inappropriate risks are being taken. It makes inspectors and companies uncomfortable to read it about themselves or their industry, but I am sure they'd rather that than have to explain a catastrophic incident like that we are observing this morning.
  • richardw
    richardw Posts: 19,458 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts
    No it's a waste of time on here, write to the transport ministers.
    Posts are not advice and must not be relied upon.
  • budgetflyer
    budgetflyer Posts: 5,949 Forumite
    How is 2 adults (who have the option to pay to sit together) sitting apart a safety issue? Ryanair addressed the situation so that children are ALWAYS sitting with at least one adult member of a booking..
    To even compare a horrific tower block fire is ludicrous
This discussion has been closed.
Meet your Ambassadors

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 346.7K Banking & Borrowing
  • 251.4K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 451.5K Spending & Discounts
  • 238.9K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 614.5K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 174.9K Life & Family
  • 252.2K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 16K Discuss & Feedback
  • 15.1K Coronavirus Support Boards

Is this how you want to be seen?

We see you are using a default avatar. It takes only a few seconds to pick a picture.