Originally Posted by
davidjohnson6
When I travel, I like to keep strong control over costs (too easy to burn through money if on a card), and avoid an audit trail that can be used to monetise any sort of profile. Consequently, I like cash. Some airlines (Easyjet and Ryanair amongst others) make a big thing about being cashless, and consequently make zero inflight sales from me. In any case, most flights over 6 hours (no, not Ryanair) seem to have a free meal anyway. Am I a rarity or do others refuse to hand over credit cards ? Does this materially affect inflight ancillary sales or profitability ?
One (welcome) casualty of cashless sales appears to be Ryanair's Scratch card sales. Talking to one of their crew it appears sales of the dreaded card have plummeted. When
passengers had a few spare foreign coins in their pockets they were more easily tempted to buy. Cashless apparently much less so. As the cabin crew are still "encouraged" to push sales,
I've often wondered how much Ryanair makes from these?