That “Don’t Insure Me” option hidden in the middle of a country list is pure evil. I’m used to seeing dark patterns everywhere but that’s a first for me.
From where I stand, it’s not fair to charge the hell out of people who fall for these tricks while giving steep discounts to the ones who don’t. Maybe there’s a “fool me once” aspect to Ryanair’s shenanigans, so at least their impact might be limited somehow.
To be fair, that is described as an 8 year old example. Their current UX is much more clear.
Their current pattern is more about playing into the fear of what happens without insurance, without selecting your seat, when you don't pay for early check in and forget to do it online on the day before the flight, or what happens if you show up with more or larger luggage than what you booked. Fears they themselves create with high fees for showing up with too much luggage or for checking in at the airport
There is still a bit of praying on people who are in a hurry or are impatient, don't read the screens and just click the most prominent button. The most obvious is the seat selection. But it's no longer the most prominent way they get you
It's funny, I booked a flight with Ryanair only about an hour ago - out of pure desperation - first time in 15 years.
I remember them being crafty, but I have to admit I was surprised by the level of tactics ... that is to say, what they are still allowed to get away with given European / UK consumer law.
Not to mention that a 20kg bag and hand luggage cost me significantly more than the fare itself. They even had upfront "package deals" that would have actually worked out more expensive - bundles of nonsense benefits.
In Australia most of this kind of borderline deceptive selling has been stepped on, to the point that you hardly see it any more.
I would counter this by saying we might all be better off if consumer protection laws were stronger and actively enforced against this.
I don't really have a problem with offering discounts to members of X program, or if insurance is pre-selected.
But the advertised price should be inclusive of everything (taxes, fees, charges, etc) and the price available to the general product before membership-exclusive pricing.
So if you advertise a product for $100 then any normal person can pay $100 and get it for that.
Want to sell it from cheaper to members of your reward program? Go ahead. But it can't be the most prominent price advertised for it.
You want to sell insurance pre-selected? No problem but again the default advertised price needs to include it. Even if they can opt out for a cheaper price.
There are sure to be edge cases. But the point being is that the price you advertise most prominently needs to be the all-inclusive price any member of the public can get without having to fight to select the correct option.
We don't accept misleading and deceptive practices in other areas, why do we let airlines, hotels and hire car places do it?
Better off by being exhausted on never trusting any purchasing process? No, thank you, I don't need nor want to be curious when I just want to purchase a flight ticket.
I consider myself kind of sensitive to being forced to do stuff, but Ryanair just doesn't seem that bad. Of course, you get a million offers for things you probably don't need, but I genuinely don't feel like they're trying to scam me. It's like ad-supported Spotify or something. Annoying, but not actively trying to vacuum up my credit card.
Yeah. I fly budget and mid tier all the time, they’re all the same trying to upsell a bazillion services. Just click no/decline/reject all the way, what’s so difficult about it?
About 1/3 of their revenue is ancillary (the dark patterns are there to cause ancillary revenue).
I just flew from Bournemouth to Alicante on Ryanair for £50. A similar flight in the US (DC to Miami, for example) would be easily 5x that, possibly 7-8x. The dark patterns took me about 10min to click through. Doing the math, that means my time would have to be worth $1500/hr which is higher than the take-home (not billable) of senior partners at law firms.
Ryanair has severely improved my life, especially for my fellow sun-deprived Northern Europeans.
> £50. A similar flight in the US (DC to Miami, for example) would be easily 5x that, possibly 7-8x.
???
Maybe round-trip at a peak time. But if you're talking about one-way flights, you can fly across the entire country (NYC to SFO) for <$150 without hunting for a deal. DC to Miami is $50 (£37) each way, all of next month.
I don't find Ryanair much cheaper than Aer Lingus. In my experience there's up to a 20% premium, and I just cross checked the Alicante route for next week with the same results.
Compared to the high likelihood of delays or cancelled flights with Ryanair, I think it's worth it for peace of mind.
Aer Lingus is a slightly weird case; they have essentially become a budget airline (at least for their European business) to compete with Ryanair, but they haven't yet gotten around to adopting most of the dark patterns.
Well, the thing is they historically weren't a budget airline. They've taken on some budget airline attributes, but mostly not the dark patterns. Yet. They'll get there.
As a bit of a bonus for the latter airline, you are permitted to yell "Forth Aer Lingus!" as you charge headlong towards your seat.
RyanAir is ultra-budget. You need to be ready for the whole thing, but often you can get something much cheaper. As an example, looking for London to Belfast next month, RyanAir is a fifth the price.
Thanks, I hadn't seen a price difference like that.
I'm unsure about the following. Do you know if flights between London and Belfast be covered under EU airline rules regarding missed and delayed flights?
Those incidentals would not increase your fare 5-8 times. So that some passengers fall into the dark patterns cannot possibly make up for the price difference nor can the price difference to US be the base for your cost savings.
Well, I suppose the argument is that Ryanair et al fundamentally changed the European market, and without them the European market would be like the US market, and way more expensive. Which is definitely _plausible_, but kinda counterfactual.
>Those incidentals would not increase your fare 5-8 times
Oh I see what you're saying. What I'm saying is, what's the alternative? Another more expensive airline whose online check-in takes 5min instead of 10min? I'm contending that even with the dark patterns, my downside is only 1.5x cost, which is still far, far below a non-budget airline.
>nor can the price difference to US be the base for your cost savings
Yeah I agree it's not perfect — but as someone who used to live in the US it's a base for me
I think that sometimes we think just in terms of the raw price of the incidentals rather than the effect of reducing demand for incidentals.
The main reason Ryanair is so cheap is that they have the fastest turn around time in the industry. This means the utilisation rate is far higher. Part of the reason they're able to turn around so quickly is that they take less hold luggage (so unloading/loading is not holding them up), un-allocated seating means they get to overbook/bin pack better, worth thinking through the second order effects.
After reading their SEC filing I would push back on that slightly.
I think the main reason Ryanair is so cheap is that they get insanely good deals with the airports because they bring so much business to the region. Ie Alicante, a secondary airport, is somewhat tourist-dependent.
Ryanair makes a deal with the municipally-owned airport and says hey, we're going to bring thousands of Brits and Germans to you (with full wallets). The municipality gives a good deal in return.
There's also the 1.5x revenue multiplier from ancillary revenue.
Finally, they only own one type of airplane. Makes the maintenance etc easier.
Ryanair haven't had unallocated seating for years (I don't think it's generally allowed anymore); if you don't choose a seat you just get one allocated for you.
Or to look at it another way, they're perfectly happy to let you stand in a queue, outside, on the runway, in the cold/heat, waiting for them to unload/load the plane that has just landed and is often already late.
My personal favourite is Ryanair in Brussels airport. Ryanair generally use airstairs, and, as you say, often queueing outside. Brussels airport doesn't allow the use of airstairs. So Ryanair found a solution to be appropriately annoying; you get on the plane via a jet bridge... from an isolated building which has to be reached by bus, and which has no inside waiting space so you still have the opportunity to queue in the rain!
(In fairness, they don't _always_ do this at Brussels airport, sometimes using a normal jet bridge).
Last time I flew from Brussels was in COVID, and with Ryanair. Was sat in the bar monitoring the app because it was still "No gate" 20 minutes before departure.
Decided to head down and work out why, only to get shouted at by a very angry staff member as they wanted to depart early....
> would have to be worth $1500/hr which is higher than the take-home (not billable) of senior partners at law firms.
40
hours a week, 50 weeks a year, that's only $3 million/yr. If you've been at OpenAI for 10 years, you'll net more than that this year after they IPO.
They managed to create a business model relying in some sort of "slot machine" where customers buy the ticket to discover later they are "stupid" not noticing some rule hidden in the meticulously engineered dark patterns and, to board now and do not miss the planned trip, they will have to pay an expensive fee.
It is still impressive for me they managing to be this good in being nefarious at same time they have to worry about executing the service in such a complex industry.
The cherry on top is their social media, successfully bringing humour to alleviate and to make all of this acceptable, as it was just part of a bigger joke.
And a last, most sneaky one: At checkout if you pay with credit/debit card don't use Ryanair's "guaranteed exhange rate" if the cost of the flight is not in your card's currency (ticket by default, at least two clicks to find and untick it). That's ~6% gap from mid-market exhange rate, the worst cards do better than that.
The funny thing about our era is that there is no censorship on corporations, but the state is very active in censoring individuals. Sometimes I feel that legal action is needed against the UX dark patterns of these corporations
Sure there's censorship on corporations. Look at how PayPal and other payment processors have been treating Steam lately. And any other platform that promotes individual freedom. Corporations are no longer immune as long as they don't support the ideology.
Uber Taxis has started pushing "Uber Comfort" to the top of the list too, you get a discounted rate that's lower then the standard one. But you have to wait longer, and I assume it signs you up to another premium product.
I had "Uber One" for a month then cancelled just before renewal around Christmas. :D
You go through what seems the entire check-in process, you get what seems like a summary at the end, with a link to a UK government site where you need to go next to get a travel authorization, I spend an hour doing that, finally finish that, I show up to the airport the next morning to be told I'm not checked in, having to pay a hefty fee to do a late check-in for each of my five passengers. The staff at the airport isn't really Ryanair's, so recourse there. (As if having real Ryanair staff would have made a difference.)
Same trip, coming back, we wait in the central terminal building until our gate is published. We go over to the gate, one of our passengers being in a wheelchair, needing an elevator, which are out of service. Friendly airport staff help us with the long detour to get to our gate. By now the doors are closed, we missed our flight. Again, having to pay a hefty fee to rebook for each of my five passengers. This is Ryanair staff, still no recourse. (But plenty of contempt.)
I admit defeat, but my wife is still motivated to talk to customer support. This is months ago, I don't think that went anywhere either. They're mostly impenetrable.
I don't mind their baggage policies, it's a known thing that there's upsales every step of the way, that's baked in by now (pretty much across the industry). But there's still plenty deep-dark patterns left.
Thank goodness that we can vote with our feet, right, and just don't buy from them anymore. But guess what, we booked another flight for next month :)
Bad UX (online, onsite, customer service) is not a bug. Ryanair makes you feel like livestock so you experience their cheapness. You must feel like they are milking everything they can to offer absolute lowest possible price.
This include never taking accountability when shit hits the fan.
A few years ago, I applied for a customer service job for an outsourcing company that was contracted by Ryanair. They had a two week unpaid training, I tapped out on day 3 of the training, but until that point, I was given all the training material, including the spiels they train the agents on, which they actually call spiels.
Unless a customer mentions, specific wording (I forget what exactly now) - wording that matches the underlying regulation that entitles the customer to some kind of recourse by law, the agents are instructed to deny and weasel out of it. As in, even though they are legally obliged to give you that specific recourse, unless you demonstrate to them that you have proper knowledge of the law, they will simply act like you have no rights.
It was very slimy, and I literally couldn't stomach it. I don't know how they train their customer service agents now, but I would highly recommend doing a few google searches and some prompting to see exactly, literally, what words one must utter to a customer service agent.
Of course, that alone is not enough, the stars also have to align so that the agent you're talking to commands enough of the English language to have comprehended their training, and what you're saying; and not be bogged down with the 7 simultaneous chat tickets they must handle concurrently, in addition to the calls.
Followed the app's instructions to go to gate 15, sat there waiting for the gate to open, until eventually getting a notification that I'd missed the flight from gate 30. Went to the help desk, was told that since I was the only person who made that mistake it was clearly my fault rather than the app (which was still displaying the wrong gate, even while I was at the help desk). Got booked on a $400 replacement flight for a journey which was originally $50. In the queue to board the replacement flight, I meet around 20 other people who missed the same flight for the same reason, all being told "it's clearly your own fault, ryanair has no responsibility here"...
I want to remind everyone just how bad of a deal travel insurance is.
Yes, there are instances where travel insurance makes sense or may be practically a requirement. Health and/or evacuation insurance for foreign travel and/or cruising may be practically a necessity. You don’t want to be paying tens of thousands of dollars when you need a helicopter to take you off your cruise ship to a hospital.
But if your primary reason for purchasing insurance is insuring yourself against a trip that has to be skipped or modified last minute, you can probably skip it.
The way I insure against these sort of things:
- Buying hotel rooms that are not prepaid and refundable up until the day before check-in
- Paying attention to airline policies. Sure, my United airlines fare isn’t refundable, but if I cancel the flights I get all the money back in flight credits I can use within 6 months.
- Rental cars, same deal as hotels. They’re easy to book with no payment up front.
- Use a good travel credit card with its own trip insurance perks (usually not as comprehensive)
Do I pay more to book flexible like this? Yeah, but I can also keep my money gaining interest until the day of the trip. And the thing about travel insurance is that you still have to deal with the claims process if you need to use it.
That's a whole new can of worms though. Their scams can be a lot more expensive, and are usually after the fact (although they'll try them at the pickup counter too).
It's one of those things I will specifically always arrange through a third party that covers insurance as well, which is really an insurance against the rental companies scams.
Let us not forget that, low cost carriers and full service carriers alike _all_ have artificially lower prices, prices below what it would actually cost to render their services, as the entire commercial aviation industry is subsidized in the form of fuel, tax and other subsidies. At least in the EU.
They wouldn't be able to turn a profit even if they squeezed you hard enough.
Is seat selection really a dark pattern? Exit row seats are the most worthwhile add-on to buy when flying IMO, sometimes having even more leg room than business class seats for a fraction of the cost.
I've bought Ryanair tickets twice, but never flown with them. I used _them_ as insurance for possible issues on my preferred connection or for having a minimum viable travel path while I have time to look for a better flight.
Because they're the only option for certain airports I expect to actually fly with them at some point. May that day never come though ;)
I wonder if this makes the world a fairer place actually. Because it allows people that are attentive and have time to dig through this to save money. The lowest price would be higher without these patterns.
It’s a polarizing idea, but frankly it’s what the world moves too and seem to work on the market. Some people are lazy or don’t have time and pay more money and some people have less time and dig through dark patterns, collect coupons or utilize ramp up subsidizing.
All those people that actually "work" through it will have less of a prime as if these patterns wouldn’t exist.
The question still remains would the world be a better place without these patterns,as it wastes time and acts against user intent.
It’s just a fascinating question to me, because a lot of things are not as simple as they seem of the first glance.
Seriously, other carriers just bundle in products/features into the cost of the ticket that you may not want or need. Like a meal service (I had that on a 90 minute flight where they woke me up for it)....I'd have paid extra to be able to avoid it.
Of course these other carriers bundle it in at a premium too.
I never understand the hate RyanAir gets, for splitting off services like this as a paid option.
Some people are also old, or not very technically literate, or have poor vision, or aren't experienced flyers. I can navigate around the dark patterns despite being very lazy, but my dad who only uses a computer occasionally would really struggle with them. That is not a fairer world to me.
After studying the website we decided it was best
to pay priority boarding so we'd sit three abreast
(three abreast, that's the best)
And of course we'd all have luggage, so that's an extra cost
And then we paid insurance in case our cases might get lost
When I was a broke student I used a script to observe the RyanAir prices and frequently flew around Europe for extremely cheap (10kg carry-on/backpack). Good times. These dark patterns are a nuisance but easy enough to navigate around.
It's amazing; I take maybe five or six Ryanair flights a year, and every single time checkin is worse than the time before.
Unfortunately, they're often the only option from Dublin->wherever with reasonable times; unless I want to go at five in the morning or something I am stuck with them.
It's difficult to compete in a highly price-sensitive market with a company that is effectively scamming its customers. Better service doesn't show up on the price comparison page everyone starts out with.
Maybe I am conditioned but I totally agree. I think what makes this kind of stuff not feel like a dark pattern to me is that they are very up-front about this setup being their business model.
They are offering a cheap seat which may even be below their cost if you avoid all the add-ons.
The consumer who skips all these add-ons feels smart. They feel like someone else is subsidizing their flight.
Perhaps we can even call this booking process a game where the customer comes out at the end feeling like they beat the level.
If any of you have seen Ryanair’s social media marketing you’ll know exactly what I mean. They make jokes about how cheap they are, like this one:
But that was this persons mistake, I'm still not sure what a "Travel Authorisation" even is outside of COVID checks.
Not checking into a flight, because you wont onto an entirely different website, to complete an entirely different form isn't the airline....
Services for wheelchair are handled by the airport, not the airline, again, I don't see anything in this comment where they sorted out the services that are required prior.
If it sounds illegal, it usually is. Tricking people into buying things usually doesn't hold up in court. However, few cases ever make it there and that's what companies like these successfully gamble on.
Thanks very much for letting me know. I've just starting blogging again and the old Wordpress instance needs some love (or replacing...) I think I maybe enabled some background Captcha thing back in the day. It obviously doesn't work well as I have thousands of spam comments sitting in the moderate queue.
I kind of rate Ryanair because while yes they are dodgy at least they’re honest about it and just own it, no fake niceties like you get from American companies.
And I’ve saved thousands of pounds in flights around Europe over the years so can’t really complain
No comment about how you must download the app and it is the only way to access your pass? There is not even a QR code or barcode for the pass available any other way?
Yes, great point. Privacy / dark pattern concerns aside, I used to like having a paper pass in case something happened to my device. I wonder what would happen in practice if you printed a screenshot of the app? After all, a screenshot on a phone works fine.
My qualm is that corporate apps like this are malware and I don't want them on my device. Especially when they know the only way to get me to install it is to force it on me. That makes me especially not want it. So even installing the app in the first place just to get the code doesn't sit right.
So this has nothing to do with where the code is, but that getting access to it at all requires the malware.
It's why they're cheap though. I fly around Europe for 30 euro's. If this is how that works, it works. And after hundred+ flights with them, believe me, I have had my share or RyanScam. I just play their game and laugh.
The problem is that they affect people unequally. I do benefit from this stuff because I can navigate the UX struggle but many people can’t and these happen to be the not so fortunate people in society and most vulnerable.
It’s definitely why some stuff is regulated (ie: loan interest)
Leaving this here, as I couldn't leave it on authors blogpost:
I grew accustomed to these choices, so would navigate through them on autopilot. Once I was quick enough to get "We noticed suspicious activity indicating that you're a bot"; had to retry everything from beginning and hesitate when clicking :)
Using the Ryanair website makes me feel icky. The whole thing feels like you have to be constantly on guard not to get tricked - and I'm relatively wise to these things.
I dread to think how much of their revenue is generated from people buying stuff they don't want or need.
I will always pay more to not use Ryanair, given the choice. Unfortunately I don't always have a choice.
I understand the frustrations, but...we're all grown adults here right? Who DOESN'T pay for seat selection if you want or need a good one? The insurance item is ridiculous, but...again, for grown adults with families/kids, do you really fly Ryanair?
It is crazy how dark patterns are happening everywhere, for instance, in my country on post office automatons: basically in their UI, when they are asking to input your email address (which does not work with self-hosted email addresses without DNS, namely with IP literals, BTW), you cannot "see" the button to skip that step, since the button is different from all the others and clearly 'melted' in the background.
I don't think this is a mistake, but something malicous clearly thought through.
Last time I booked I was actually impressed with how well Ryanair was explaining everything. There is not much to clarify. You can see the same in the video in the post (which also features much clearer UX than the 8 year old example of the option in the country selector the article leads with).
If anything, RyanAir's strategy is to overexplain things, in hopes that people are unwilling to read what's on the screen and just click the first thing that advances the process
The problem is that, adapting Brandolini’s law, it is an order of magnitude harder to make an extension to circumvent these tricks when companies have teams that make daily changes to their applications to make it shittier than before
I am shocked that Ryanair stoop to such levels, because the Irish always come across as actually morally superior to many other people, and I thought that would extend to just implementing good and honest business practices at the expense of profit. I am also similarly shocked about past GDP shenanigans, aiding in tax evasion by large multinationals, and the Irish privacy regulator being so weak on GDPR violations. I don't get it - just an a few bad apples I guess. And also this happens in other countries so it's ok
Irish person here... Ireland is a real country, with a wide diversity of human temperaments. Culture doesn't override greed, nor does it impart 'morality'. Moreover, Ireland is perhaps the most Americanised EU nation. Decades of neoliberal government, endemic corporate corruption and poor regulation of anything that threatens the corporate tax avoidance status quo.
> because the Irish always come across as actually morally superior to many other people, and I thought that would extend to just implementing good and honest business practices at the expense of profit
(Things aren't as bad nowadays, but largely because the EU forced consumer protection and anti-corruption law upon us, certainly not because of any innate tendency to fairness.)
It's okay, the service they provide is invaluable: cheap movement. If anything, I wish the EU was regulated by Ryanair to stop taking all my money for zero result.
That “Don’t Insure Me” option hidden in the middle of a country list is pure evil. I’m used to seeing dark patterns everywhere but that’s a first for me.
From where I stand, it’s not fair to charge the hell out of people who fall for these tricks while giving steep discounts to the ones who don’t. Maybe there’s a “fool me once” aspect to Ryanair’s shenanigans, so at least their impact might be limited somehow.
To be fair, that is described as an 8 year old example. Their current UX is much more clear.
Their current pattern is more about playing into the fear of what happens without insurance, without selecting your seat, when you don't pay for early check in and forget to do it online on the day before the flight, or what happens if you show up with more or larger luggage than what you booked. Fears they themselves create with high fees for showing up with too much luggage or for checking in at the airport
There is still a bit of praying on people who are in a hurry or are impatient, don't read the screens and just click the most prominent button. The most obvious is the seat selection. But it's no longer the most prominent way they get you
It's funny, I booked a flight with Ryanair only about an hour ago - out of pure desperation - first time in 15 years.
I remember them being crafty, but I have to admit I was surprised by the level of tactics ... that is to say, what they are still allowed to get away with given European / UK consumer law.
Not to mention that a 20kg bag and hand luggage cost me significantly more than the fare itself. They even had upfront "package deals" that would have actually worked out more expensive - bundles of nonsense benefits.
In Australia most of this kind of borderline deceptive selling has been stepped on, to the point that you hardly see it any more.
Did we read the same article?
> That “Don’t Insure Me” option hidden in the middle of a country list is pure evil.
I think they may actually have gotten in trouble for that one; they've stopped doing it (as noted in the article it was from eight years ago).
If Ryanair was in the computing world, Oracle's audit department would look like nice guys.
I always think these airline people see passengers as fish and put baits all over the places.
Eh, we might be all better off if a lack of curiosity was more regularly financially excruciating.
I would counter this by saying we might all be better off if consumer protection laws were stronger and actively enforced against this.
I don't really have a problem with offering discounts to members of X program, or if insurance is pre-selected.
But the advertised price should be inclusive of everything (taxes, fees, charges, etc) and the price available to the general product before membership-exclusive pricing.
So if you advertise a product for $100 then any normal person can pay $100 and get it for that.
Want to sell it from cheaper to members of your reward program? Go ahead. But it can't be the most prominent price advertised for it.
You want to sell insurance pre-selected? No problem but again the default advertised price needs to include it. Even if they can opt out for a cheaper price.
There are sure to be edge cases. But the point being is that the price you advertise most prominently needs to be the all-inclusive price any member of the public can get without having to fight to select the correct option.
We don't accept misleading and deceptive practices in other areas, why do we let airlines, hotels and hire car places do it?
I just want to see a price and book a flight, not engage in an online escape room with financial consequences.
Better off by being exhausted on never trusting any purchasing process? No, thank you, I don't need nor want to be curious when I just want to purchase a flight ticket.
Yes, let's pit ordinary people against gigantic companies with teams of highly paid experts who spend all day figuring out how to deceive them.
Eh, we might be collectively better of if we just all robbed your house
I consider myself kind of sensitive to being forced to do stuff, but Ryanair just doesn't seem that bad. Of course, you get a million offers for things you probably don't need, but I genuinely don't feel like they're trying to scam me. It's like ad-supported Spotify or something. Annoying, but not actively trying to vacuum up my credit card.
Yeah. I fly budget and mid tier all the time, they’re all the same trying to upsell a bazillion services. Just click no/decline/reject all the way, what’s so difficult about it?
About 1/3 of their revenue is ancillary (the dark patterns are there to cause ancillary revenue).
I just flew from Bournemouth to Alicante on Ryanair for £50. A similar flight in the US (DC to Miami, for example) would be easily 5x that, possibly 7-8x. The dark patterns took me about 10min to click through. Doing the math, that means my time would have to be worth $1500/hr which is higher than the take-home (not billable) of senior partners at law firms.
Ryanair has severely improved my life, especially for my fellow sun-deprived Northern Europeans.
[1] https://investor.ryanair.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ryan...
> £50. A similar flight in the US (DC to Miami, for example) would be easily 5x that, possibly 7-8x.
???
Maybe round-trip at a peak time. But if you're talking about one-way flights, you can fly across the entire country (NYC to SFO) for <$150 without hunting for a deal. DC to Miami is $50 (£37) each way, all of next month.
I don't find Ryanair much cheaper than Aer Lingus. In my experience there's up to a 20% premium, and I just cross checked the Alicante route for next week with the same results.
Compared to the high likelihood of delays or cancelled flights with Ryanair, I think it's worth it for peace of mind.
Aer Lingus is a slightly weird case; they have essentially become a budget airline (at least for their European business) to compete with Ryanair, but they haven't yet gotten around to adopting most of the dark patterns.
I don't think it's a weird case to compare two budget airlines to demonstrate why I think one is better than the other.
Well, the thing is they historically weren't a budget airline. They've taken on some budget airline attributes, but mostly not the dark patterns. Yet. They'll get there.
Aer Lingus is a budget airline? And here I was still thinking that they're the flag carrier of Ireland...
(of course, they can be both at the same time)
As a bit of a bonus for the latter airline, you are permitted to yell "Forth Aer Lingus!" as you charge headlong towards your seat.
RyanAir is ultra-budget. You need to be ready for the whole thing, but often you can get something much cheaper. As an example, looking for London to Belfast next month, RyanAir is a fifth the price.
Thanks, I hadn't seen a price difference like that.
I'm unsure about the following. Do you know if flights between London and Belfast be covered under EU airline rules regarding missed and delayed flights?
That math is completely off.
Those incidentals would not increase your fare 5-8 times. So that some passengers fall into the dark patterns cannot possibly make up for the price difference nor can the price difference to US be the base for your cost savings.
Well, I suppose the argument is that Ryanair et al fundamentally changed the European market, and without them the European market would be like the US market, and way more expensive. Which is definitely _plausible_, but kinda counterfactual.
>Those incidentals would not increase your fare 5-8 times Oh I see what you're saying. What I'm saying is, what's the alternative? Another more expensive airline whose online check-in takes 5min instead of 10min? I'm contending that even with the dark patterns, my downside is only 1.5x cost, which is still far, far below a non-budget airline.
>nor can the price difference to US be the base for your cost savings Yeah I agree it's not perfect — but as someone who used to live in the US it's a base for me
I think that sometimes we think just in terms of the raw price of the incidentals rather than the effect of reducing demand for incidentals.
The main reason Ryanair is so cheap is that they have the fastest turn around time in the industry. This means the utilisation rate is far higher. Part of the reason they're able to turn around so quickly is that they take less hold luggage (so unloading/loading is not holding them up), un-allocated seating means they get to overbook/bin pack better, worth thinking through the second order effects.
After reading their SEC filing I would push back on that slightly.
I think the main reason Ryanair is so cheap is that they get insanely good deals with the airports because they bring so much business to the region. Ie Alicante, a secondary airport, is somewhat tourist-dependent.
Ryanair makes a deal with the municipally-owned airport and says hey, we're going to bring thousands of Brits and Germans to you (with full wallets). The municipality gives a good deal in return.
There's also the 1.5x revenue multiplier from ancillary revenue.
Finally, they only own one type of airplane. Makes the maintenance etc easier.
Ryanair haven't had unallocated seating for years (I don't think it's generally allowed anymore); if you don't choose a seat you just get one allocated for you.
Or to look at it another way, they're perfectly happy to let you stand in a queue, outside, on the runway, in the cold/heat, waiting for them to unload/load the plane that has just landed and is often already late.
My personal favourite is Ryanair in Brussels airport. Ryanair generally use airstairs, and, as you say, often queueing outside. Brussels airport doesn't allow the use of airstairs. So Ryanair found a solution to be appropriately annoying; you get on the plane via a jet bridge... from an isolated building which has to be reached by bus, and which has no inside waiting space so you still have the opportunity to queue in the rain!
(In fairness, they don't _always_ do this at Brussels airport, sometimes using a normal jet bridge).
Last time I flew from Brussels was in COVID, and with Ryanair. Was sat in the bar monitoring the app because it was still "No gate" 20 minutes before departure.
Decided to head down and work out why, only to get shouted at by a very angry staff member as they wanted to depart early....
> The dark patterns took me about 10min to click through.
I find that difficult to believe. Ten minutes is a long time.
Whenever I have to book Ryanair, there's a lot of clicking back and forth between screens to confirm I've made the right choices.
Ten minutes is a long time. That's the purpose of dark patterns.
Found a Frontier ticket next week BWI-MIA £42 ($56) [0]
[0] https://www.google.com/travel/flights/booking?tfs=CBwQAhpFEg...
> would have to be worth $1500/hr which is higher than the take-home (not billable) of senior partners at law firms.
40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, that's only $3 million/yr. If you've been at OpenAI for 10 years, you'll net more than that this year after they IPO.
They managed to create a business model relying in some sort of "slot machine" where customers buy the ticket to discover later they are "stupid" not noticing some rule hidden in the meticulously engineered dark patterns and, to board now and do not miss the planned trip, they will have to pay an expensive fee.
It is still impressive for me they managing to be this good in being nefarious at same time they have to worry about executing the service in such a complex industry.
The cherry on top is their social media, successfully bringing humour to alleviate and to make all of this acceptable, as it was just part of a bigger joke.
And a last, most sneaky one: At checkout if you pay with credit/debit card don't use Ryanair's "guaranteed exhange rate" if the cost of the flight is not in your card's currency (ticket by default, at least two clicks to find and untick it). That's ~6% gap from mid-market exhange rate, the worst cards do better than that.
Yeah but that's general advice, you shouldn't also do that with PayPal, or while paying abroad. ALWAYS pay in the local currency, never in your own.
This is like in stocktrading platforms where "best rate" is offered, and is in fact the worst of several options.
----
Can we stop with all this Newspeak, already? Words should flow with the conversationalists, not political spindoctor lexicologists.
Even Amazon does this. So scummy. This exchange rate trick should be illegal everywhere.
The funny thing about our era is that there is no censorship on corporations, but the state is very active in censoring individuals. Sometimes I feel that legal action is needed against the UX dark patterns of these corporations
Just a couple of days ago a German newspaper subscription seller successfully sued Google's Gemini for slander.
Sure there's censorship on corporations. Look at how PayPal and other payment processors have been treating Steam lately. And any other platform that promotes individual freedom. Corporations are no longer immune as long as they don't support the ideology.
I just ordered a pizza from Uber Eats here in Taiwan and was offered the option to "Try Uber One".
Clicking "Try now" in fact just signs you up for Uber One. So I suppose you are, technically, trying it. For money.
Dirty. I'm Australian and I'm sure that wouldn't be legal.
Uber Taxis has started pushing "Uber Comfort" to the top of the list too, you get a discounted rate that's lower then the standard one. But you have to wait longer, and I assume it signs you up to another premium product.
I had "Uber One" for a month then cancelled just before renewal around Christmas. :D
When I am looking at airbnb I use an Australian VPN to get pricing to work as it should.
Oh, don't get me started on Ryanair, but alas.
You go through what seems the entire check-in process, you get what seems like a summary at the end, with a link to a UK government site where you need to go next to get a travel authorization, I spend an hour doing that, finally finish that, I show up to the airport the next morning to be told I'm not checked in, having to pay a hefty fee to do a late check-in for each of my five passengers. The staff at the airport isn't really Ryanair's, so recourse there. (As if having real Ryanair staff would have made a difference.)
Same trip, coming back, we wait in the central terminal building until our gate is published. We go over to the gate, one of our passengers being in a wheelchair, needing an elevator, which are out of service. Friendly airport staff help us with the long detour to get to our gate. By now the doors are closed, we missed our flight. Again, having to pay a hefty fee to rebook for each of my five passengers. This is Ryanair staff, still no recourse. (But plenty of contempt.)
I admit defeat, but my wife is still motivated to talk to customer support. This is months ago, I don't think that went anywhere either. They're mostly impenetrable.
I don't mind their baggage policies, it's a known thing that there's upsales every step of the way, that's baked in by now (pretty much across the industry). But there's still plenty deep-dark patterns left.
Thank goodness that we can vote with our feet, right, and just don't buy from them anymore. But guess what, we booked another flight for next month :)
Bad UX (online, onsite, customer service) is not a bug. Ryanair makes you feel like livestock so you experience their cheapness. You must feel like they are milking everything they can to offer absolute lowest possible price.
This include never taking accountability when shit hits the fan.
A few years ago, I applied for a customer service job for an outsourcing company that was contracted by Ryanair. They had a two week unpaid training, I tapped out on day 3 of the training, but until that point, I was given all the training material, including the spiels they train the agents on, which they actually call spiels.
Unless a customer mentions, specific wording (I forget what exactly now) - wording that matches the underlying regulation that entitles the customer to some kind of recourse by law, the agents are instructed to deny and weasel out of it. As in, even though they are legally obliged to give you that specific recourse, unless you demonstrate to them that you have proper knowledge of the law, they will simply act like you have no rights.
It was very slimy, and I literally couldn't stomach it. I don't know how they train their customer service agents now, but I would highly recommend doing a few google searches and some prompting to see exactly, literally, what words one must utter to a customer service agent.
Of course, that alone is not enough, the stars also have to align so that the agent you're talking to commands enough of the English language to have comprehended their training, and what you're saying; and not be bogged down with the 7 simultaneous chat tickets they must handle concurrently, in addition to the calls.
Followed the app's instructions to go to gate 15, sat there waiting for the gate to open, until eventually getting a notification that I'd missed the flight from gate 30. Went to the help desk, was told that since I was the only person who made that mistake it was clearly my fault rather than the app (which was still displaying the wrong gate, even while I was at the help desk). Got booked on a $400 replacement flight for a journey which was originally $50. In the queue to board the replacement flight, I meet around 20 other people who missed the same flight for the same reason, all being told "it's clearly your own fault, ryanair has no responsibility here"...
Where are Ryanair flying that you paid in dollars?
I want to remind everyone just how bad of a deal travel insurance is.
Yes, there are instances where travel insurance makes sense or may be practically a requirement. Health and/or evacuation insurance for foreign travel and/or cruising may be practically a necessity. You don’t want to be paying tens of thousands of dollars when you need a helicopter to take you off your cruise ship to a hospital.
But if your primary reason for purchasing insurance is insuring yourself against a trip that has to be skipped or modified last minute, you can probably skip it.
The way I insure against these sort of things:
- Buying hotel rooms that are not prepaid and refundable up until the day before check-in
- Paying attention to airline policies. Sure, my United airlines fare isn’t refundable, but if I cancel the flights I get all the money back in flight credits I can use within 6 months.
- Rental cars, same deal as hotels. They’re easy to book with no payment up front.
- Use a good travel credit card with its own trip insurance perks (usually not as comprehensive)
Do I pay more to book flexible like this? Yeah, but I can also keep my money gaining interest until the day of the trip. And the thing about travel insurance is that you still have to deal with the claims process if you need to use it.
> Rental cars
That's a whole new can of worms though. Their scams can be a lot more expensive, and are usually after the fact (although they'll try them at the pickup counter too).
It's one of those things I will specifically always arrange through a third party that covers insurance as well, which is really an insurance against the rental companies scams.
Yeah, I don't think I'm ever getting that €600 back from Hertz Calais. Still bitter about it.
Let us not forget that, low cost carriers and full service carriers alike _all_ have artificially lower prices, prices below what it would actually cost to render their services, as the entire commercial aviation industry is subsidized in the form of fuel, tax and other subsidies. At least in the EU.
They wouldn't be able to turn a profit even if they squeezed you hard enough.
I see EU always regulating all sorts of things, ostensibly to help consumers, but why aren't they doing something about scam airlines like Ryanair?
Dark patterns are already regulated, but Ryanair does not comply.
Is seat selection really a dark pattern? Exit row seats are the most worthwhile add-on to buy when flying IMO, sometimes having even more leg room than business class seats for a fraction of the cost.
Frustratingly my GF's first ever flight was in COVID, and she wanted to ensure we sat together, so I paid for seat selection, and for an exit row.
We were one of the 10 people on the flight...including some of our friends who didn't select seats, but sat on the same row.....
Unfortunately some of the airports I care about only have connections mostly with low cost, Ryanair and others.
If regular lines would care to offer similar connections, I would gladly pay a bit more.
By now they have so many unique routes people with more willingness to spend have to fly Ryanair anyway (or do a layover with a “premium” airline).
People often say they'd gladly pay a bit more, but I don't think that's how they act.
In the case of Ryanair, I think not using them often means that a casual weekend away could become a much bigger dent in my family's monthly budget.
True, however in many cases they, or other similar companies, are the only ones covering for the route.
I've bought Ryanair tickets twice, but never flown with them. I used _them_ as insurance for possible issues on my preferred connection or for having a minimum viable travel path while I have time to look for a better flight.
Because they're the only option for certain airports I expect to actually fly with them at some point. May that day never come though ;)
RyanAir is fine, and has one of the best safety records in the industry.
I never quite understand the hate they get, they compartmentalise the various costs into options.
I've had <2hr flights before that have had a meal service I didn't need/want, but it's baked into the price and unchangeable...
> People often say they'd gladly pay a bit more, but I don't think that's how they act.
No.
I'd gladly pay more and do. However, Ryanair (piss be upon them) have a virtual monopoly on routes I need.
I wonder if this makes the world a fairer place actually. Because it allows people that are attentive and have time to dig through this to save money. The lowest price would be higher without these patterns.
It’s a polarizing idea, but frankly it’s what the world moves too and seem to work on the market. Some people are lazy or don’t have time and pay more money and some people have less time and dig through dark patterns, collect coupons or utilize ramp up subsidizing.
All those people that actually "work" through it will have less of a prime as if these patterns wouldn’t exist.
The question still remains would the world be a better place without these patterns,as it wastes time and acts against user intent.
It’s just a fascinating question to me, because a lot of things are not as simple as they seem of the first glance.
Seriously, other carriers just bundle in products/features into the cost of the ticket that you may not want or need. Like a meal service (I had that on a 90 minute flight where they woke me up for it)....I'd have paid extra to be able to avoid it.
Of course these other carriers bundle it in at a premium too.
I never understand the hate RyanAir gets, for splitting off services like this as a paid option.
Some people are also old, or not very technically literate, or have poor vision, or aren't experienced flyers. I can navigate around the dark patterns despite being very lazy, but my dad who only uses a computer occasionally would really struggle with them. That is not a fairer world to me.
If you can't navigate around "Would you like to choose this extra option", with a massive "no" button. You shouldn't be allowed outside.
My favorite is how if you buy a “premium” ticket that comes with a checked bag they still try to trick you into paying for a checked bag (again).
Fascinating Aida: Cheap Flights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAg0lUYHHFc
When I was a broke student I used a script to observe the RyanAir prices and frequently flew around Europe for extremely cheap (10kg carry-on/backpack). Good times. These dark patterns are a nuisance but easy enough to navigate around.
It's amazing; I take maybe five or six Ryanair flights a year, and every single time checkin is worse than the time before.
Unfortunately, they're often the only option from Dublin->wherever with reasonable times; unless I want to go at five in the morning or something I am stuck with them.
And this the big problem. Normally, competition would take care of this. Someone would come along and offer a better service.
Unfortunately there are many instances of no competition - which then leads to abuse.
It's difficult to compete in a highly price-sensitive market with a company that is effectively scamming its customers. Better service doesn't show up on the price comparison page everyone starts out with.
Ryanair is genuinely a good product. You get what you pay for.
The website reflects their corporate attitude, which i think is okay.
Maybe I am conditioned but I totally agree. I think what makes this kind of stuff not feel like a dark pattern to me is that they are very up-front about this setup being their business model.
They are offering a cheap seat which may even be below their cost if you avoid all the add-ons.
The consumer who skips all these add-ons feels smart. They feel like someone else is subsidizing their flight.
Perhaps we can even call this booking process a game where the customer comes out at the end feeling like they beat the level.
If any of you have seen Ryanair’s social media marketing you’ll know exactly what I mean. They make jokes about how cheap they are, like this one:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DRWGfNvDryu/
The dark patterns are one thing; the criminal customer service once you're booked, however, seems much harder to game.
Stories from this thread mean I'd never fly them (admittedly, I'll probably never have the opportunity):
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48502935
But that was this persons mistake, I'm still not sure what a "Travel Authorisation" even is outside of COVID checks.
Not checking into a flight, because you wont onto an entirely different website, to complete an entirely different form isn't the airline....
Services for wheelchair are handled by the airport, not the airline, again, I don't see anything in this comment where they sorted out the services that are required prior.
If it sounds illegal, it usually is. Tricking people into buying things usually doesn't hold up in court. However, few cases ever make it there and that's what companies like these successfully gamble on.
When is the EU fining these morons?
The Foil Arms & Hog 12 year old skit [1] is still relevant.
- [1] https://youtu.be/Id-zzOGnN6A (Website part at 1:42 calling out the insurance example).
Your comment form is broken on mobile. It asks for a captcha but doesn't prompt one
Thanks very much for letting me know. I've just starting blogging again and the old Wordpress instance needs some love (or replacing...) I think I maybe enabled some background Captcha thing back in the day. It obviously doesn't work well as I have thousands of spam comments sitting in the moderate queue.
Classic dark pattern /s
I kind of rate Ryanair because while yes they are dodgy at least they’re honest about it and just own it, no fake niceties like you get from American companies.
And I’ve saved thousands of pounds in flights around Europe over the years so can’t really complain
No comment about how you must download the app and it is the only way to access your pass? There is not even a QR code or barcode for the pass available any other way?
Yes, great point. Privacy / dark pattern concerns aside, I used to like having a paper pass in case something happened to my device. I wonder what would happen in practice if you printed a screenshot of the app? After all, a screenshot on a phone works fine.
They currently don't check that at the gate. They just look if it's on a phone or not.
My qualm is that corporate apps like this are malware and I don't want them on my device. Especially when they know the only way to get me to install it is to force it on me. That makes me especially not want it. So even installing the app in the first place just to get the code doesn't sit right.
So this has nothing to do with where the code is, but that getting access to it at all requires the malware.
Yes - that's worth a mention!
I would argue that 4 and 6 are not dark patterns but necessary CYA given they cover two of their most common complaints.
The Ryanair website is a who's who of everything you're supposed to avoid in UI/UX design.
> Don’t rent a car, don’t buy parking, don’t buy a train(?)
In Europe, it is pretty common to continue onwards to your actual destination by train!
I find the dark patterns here acceptable because the prices on their flights are so grossly cheap. I can always fly on KLM, British Airways ect
I have never flown with them only because they're the only airline I have come across that forces you to create an account to buy a ticket.
It's why they're cheap though. I fly around Europe for 30 euro's. If this is how that works, it works. And after hundred+ flights with them, believe me, I have had my share or RyanScam. I just play their game and laugh.
The problem is that they affect people unequally. I do benefit from this stuff because I can navigate the UX struggle but many people can’t and these happen to be the not so fortunate people in society and most vulnerable.
It’s definitely why some stuff is regulated (ie: loan interest)
There is definitely room for budget airlines but the sort of dark patterns Ryanair employs is dishonest.
Personally I wouldn’t do business with someone who is constantly trying to scam me.
Leaving this here, as I couldn't leave it on authors blogpost:
I grew accustomed to these choices, so would navigate through them on autopilot. Once I was quick enough to get "We noticed suspicious activity indicating that you're a bot"; had to retry everything from beginning and hesitate when clicking :)
Using the Ryanair website makes me feel icky. The whole thing feels like you have to be constantly on guard not to get tricked - and I'm relatively wise to these things.
I dread to think how much of their revenue is generated from people buying stuff they don't want or need.
I will always pay more to not use Ryanair, given the choice. Unfortunately I don't always have a choice.
I understand the frustrations, but...we're all grown adults here right? Who DOESN'T pay for seat selection if you want or need a good one? The insurance item is ridiculous, but...again, for grown adults with families/kids, do you really fly Ryanair?
It is crazy how dark patterns are happening everywhere, for instance, in my country on post office automatons: basically in their UI, when they are asking to input your email address (which does not work with self-hosted email addresses without DNS, namely with IP literals, BTW), you cannot "see" the button to skip that step, since the button is different from all the others and clearly 'melted' in the background.
I don't think this is a mistake, but something malicous clearly thought through.
Someone should make an extension that clarifies everything, kind of like the anti-enshitification extensions for youtube.
https://unhook.app/
Last time I booked I was actually impressed with how well Ryanair was explaining everything. There is not much to clarify. You can see the same in the video in the post (which also features much clearer UX than the 8 year old example of the option in the country selector the article leads with).
If anything, RyanAir's strategy is to overexplain things, in hopes that people are unwilling to read what's on the screen and just click the first thing that advances the process
The problem is that, adapting Brandolini’s law, it is an order of magnitude harder to make an extension to circumvent these tricks when companies have teams that make daily changes to their applications to make it shittier than before
"You must download the RyanAir app."
I am now notoriously fast at speedrunning the various airlines and ticketing sites.
Wonder if that could be a YouTube Channel
I am shocked that Ryanair stoop to such levels, because the Irish always come across as actually morally superior to many other people, and I thought that would extend to just implementing good and honest business practices at the expense of profit. I am also similarly shocked about past GDP shenanigans, aiding in tax evasion by large multinationals, and the Irish privacy regulator being so weak on GDPR violations. I don't get it - just an a few bad apples I guess. And also this happens in other countries so it's ok
Irish person here... Ireland is a real country, with a wide diversity of human temperaments. Culture doesn't override greed, nor does it impart 'morality'. Moreover, Ireland is perhaps the most Americanised EU nation. Decades of neoliberal government, endemic corporate corruption and poor regulation of anything that threatens the corporate tax avoidance status quo.
> because the Irish always come across as actually morally superior to many other people, and I thought that would extend to just implementing good and honest business practices at the expense of profit
Ahahahahahah.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Haughey
(Things aren't as bad nowadays, but largely because the EU forced consumer protection and anti-corruption law upon us, certainly not because of any innate tendency to fairness.)
It's okay, the service they provide is invaluable: cheap movement. If anything, I wish the EU was regulated by Ryanair to stop taking all my money for zero result.