robocoder
In case you missed it: Ryanair is a for profit organization. You booked on Ryanair because they were the cheapest, and you were too cheap to pay extra for pre assigned seats. If Ryanair would have given you seats together the next time you definitely wouldn't have paid extra (you proved you were cheap booking them in the first place), so it is definitely in their best interest to put everyone who doesn't pay extra for a seat-assignment in a middle seat as far away from the rest of their group as possible. If you don't like that fly legacy (or Netjets). I remember when the charter company I worked for doubled their profit margin by not handing out free news papers (it went from $1 to $2 per pax......). We all are trying to get the cheapest ride and then complain about the race to the bottom.