I took a Ryanair flight in Italy from GOA to STN last week. It was about 50% full but bizarrely the auto-seat allocation system had put complete strangers next to each other whilst leaving whole rows completely empty
In the aisle adjacent to ours (we were 2 people travelling) there were 3 passengers who clearly did not know each other but the 3 rows ahead of them and 2 behind were completely empty. So when the doors closed, 2 of the 3 simply moved seats...but of course the opportunity to distance had already been lost as they had sat directly next to each other for some 15-20 minutes during the boarding process.
A bit of a tangent but my daughter and BF were also on the same flight and on the same booking reference. On a 50% full flight, one was given the seat 26E and the other 11F. However, Ryanair repeatedly and categorically deny they split pax up on the same booking reference (to force pax to pay for specific seats). Difficult to believe them with seats like that on a 50% full flight
