Many apologists for Ryanair miss the point.
I recently tried to book with Ryanair from either of my two nearest airports for a flight to Dublin; there was no alternative airline operating these routes.
The website was a nightmare to negotiate. I tried to find the box to opt out of “voluntary insurance” but failed. (I have disabled pop ups on my computer so maybe that was the reason but the website should be designed to cope with this). So after a wasted half hour, I gave up trying and went to the local travel agent.
Ryanair will not deal with travel agents. So in the end, a surface route train/ferry was used. (Thank you First Choice for making the arrangements).
Ryanair seem deliberately to make their website difficult to in order to catch out the unwary. That poor woman without the boarding passes – perhaps a first (and doubtless, last) time user of Ryanair - didn’t expect to have to read through pages and pages of small print. No customer should have to do that.
I was an Air Force QFI and later an airline training captain. If one of my students didn’t understand something, I didn’t call him an idiot; I looked to myself and wondered what I was doing wrong in not getting the message across. O’Leary has obviously overlooked this simple principle: if his customer found something difficult, he should NOT blame the customer (calling her an idiot). He should look to himself and his staff and question why the customer had made the mistake: was it perhaps that his airline hadn’t made things clear enough?
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this policy of obscurity is deliberate as it brings in much extra money and thus enables a headline air fare to be advertised. Presumably it is for the same reason that the company won’t use travel agents: travel agents would quickly become savvy and avoid all the hidden pitfalls and thus deny Ryanair a substantial income.
Not every internet user is capable of making the effort to look for all the hidden traps; in many cases elderly or disabled people simply can’t work the system and are fleeced as a result. I have a mentally handicapped daughter. There is absolutely no way that she could understand that a flight advertised as being say £25 actually costs four times that amount. Ryanair's policy discriminates against the less capable.
Ryanair’s hidden agenda shows utter contempt for the travelling public. O’Leary will one day, sure as eggs are eggs, push things too far. I would not bet against a prosecution at some point.
Last edited by jackharr; 6th September 2012 at 19:21.