Well when the head of marketing won't admit what they are doing, it's a bit unfair to expect a CSR to take responsibility.

For God's sake people, if you don't like their policy, don't fly with them! I have never been a fan of RYR's product from Day 1 and I have never been tempted to fly with them, not once.

Big difference between a restaurant and travel. 8 people book a bus, and they can't sit together is more a realistic example. Bending the truth is great isn't it?

HT you are so right..Though I did once fly with them and got precisely what I paid for :}..Like you never been tempted since, There are better ways to travel

I've actually been quite happy to fly FR in recent times, until this change on seating. They often fly to obscure places that I want to travel to but when they deliberately screw you over you think why bother?

If you pay to reserve seating & check in after random seating is allowed, how do you sit together when all the middle seats have been allocated?

If you are prepared to pay for choosing a seat, you can check in up to 60 days before departure.

If you leave choosing your seat until free check-in opens 4 days before departure, you only have yourself to blame. :O

If you were the absolute first to "check in" for a bus with allocated seating and a booking of 8, you wouldn't expect to be deliberately separated across the entire bus rows apart with no possibility to sit next to each other.

It's a giant middle finger to PAX when you implement an algorithm to intentionally inconvenience the customer. If you were the last to board, then you get the luck of the draw.

Passengers who were going to pay for a seat will already do so prior to this change. The algorithm has been changed to encourage those have been checked in with inconvenient seats to then pay to upgrade; looking to increase revenue.

However, their genius system allocates all middle seats first thereby ensuring this new segment of PAX who would then consider to pay to sit directly next to each other actually can't (because the middle seats are all gone).

End result is a "punished" customer who was actually willing to pay in the end, which is more than likely to result in a lost customer, as opposed to repeat.

I'd be curious to know the fate of the revenue intern who came up with this idea when it's all set and done. :}

They will soon stop it if pax vote with their feet! The problem with many RYR customers is that they want the cheapest deal, and then moan like hell if they don't get this, that and the other. Yet, these very same people keep on using RYR and MOL is laughing all the way to the bank!

Not necessarily.

You could equally argue that, as word gets around, the FUD factor will encourage a higher proportion of passengers to opt for paying in advance to reserve seats than at present.

He or she will probably get a bonus. :O

So why are you such a tight git that you wouldn't buy them seats together..................

You are probably right and Ryanair will then realise and change their seating policy and devise another plan to extort money out of customers, they have being doing it for years, that is why I stopped using them more than 10 years ago.

It's the principle of the matter racedo. And the fear would be that in the same way as luggage, catering etc becoming a costly add on to a ticket that the privilege of sitting with the person(s) that you are on the same booking as will be one that you feel compelled to pay for. It defeats the principle of a cheap, simple flight and its a new level of opportunism I thought FR even would have refrained from. As a business they have done very nicely out of treating customers with more respect, this seems to have sent them back several years, and all the time the competition is there around them and if they don't handle this well they may very well find themselves handing business away.

From a personal standpoint, I really like this new seating policy. I fly about 20 sectors per year with Ryanair, almost all on my own. I never pay for an assigned seat and generally checkin the night before flying. The new policy means I will be almost guaranteed not to get a middle seat.

I did say *personal standpoint*. Bit of a bugger for people not travelling on their own though

Amusingly I was on a flight to a European capital city yesterday, it’s the sort of city where Friday is stag and hen party day but there are business travellers as well.

As I boarded I was treated to the sight of a stag dressed in a pink ballet dress seated in a middle seat with businessmen seated in the aisle and window seats either side of him. That was really quite funny but also highlights two serious points.

Regular business travellers have worked out already that they can get a guaranteed window or aisle seat by checking in late, in that sense much better than the old algorithm. The second point is that the Stag did not drink anything as his mates were seated elsewhere on the flight. There were four hen/stag parties on the flight and it was the quietest Friday flight I can remember.

The only way the seating algorithm will change is if the loss on onboard sales is greater than the income from seat sales less the commission that the crews are certainly loosing.

Was sitting beside a group heading to a wedding on my last flight, and trust me, the seperation did not stop them from drinking.

How someone can pay €55 for 10 cans of 330ml lager is beyond me. Twas fairly beyond him by the time we landed too!

Weird! People pay d!ck all for a FR ticket then almost expect silver service and butlers on board. Seriously folks, a sense of perspective. It's a bus in the sky. You buy a bloody ticket, hop on, hop off. If you want a BA type service then buy a BA ticket. It's really that binary. Another thing, likes of FR and EZY have dramatically helped unlock the strangle hold other carriers had on the market. Ultimately YOU as the consumer win, you got a choice you didn't once have.

Because under any reasonable seating algorithm (i.e. all the ones that we've had so far) and if you check in in good time, then you can reasonably expect to sit together. This new system deliberately screws you over. If I left it late to check then I wouldn't complain. But this policy just creates animosity where there needn't be any.
Besides, what gives you the right to pontificate on our financial situation?

I get that you pays your money and takes your choice, but not everyone is paying a low fare for their ticket. It's unnecessarily pissing people off. easyJet and BA aren't getting these complaints, so I think Ryanair is doing something different.

At the same time, I don't get why people who leave prebooking a seat are surprised when their first choice isn't available.

OK understand, then just buy a ticket from EZY or BA. If you don't want the FR hassle, vote with your feet and take your business elsewhere. But if you decide to remain and buy a FR ticket then I think we all know it can present a set of challenges.

It's like the guy who bangs on about government policies but when it comes to a general election he decides not to vote. People who don't vote then bang on about government policy have no argument.

Similarly people who buy a FR ticket for peanuts then bang on about trivial matters have no argument.

It's a bloody short haul flight. You hop on. You hop off. It's really that simple. Don't expect Etihad style in flight services when you buy a low cost ticket. As I say, if you don't like the FR approach then move your business, nobody is putting the gun to people's heads. People need to quit moaning and take control.