It's been in the media for around 6 weeks and now sign of slowing down and they appear to be getting more irritated when been questioned about it by media or even people online.

Yesterday on an Irish radio programme RyR's statement was -

"the reason there are no "good" seats is they are booked (from 2€, repeated several times in the press release) other seats are allocated "randomly"

So, as expected, if you buy you get what you want, if you don't buy you get allocated randomly...

Move on, nothing to see here.

Except that's not true. They don't allocate randomly. They allocate you deliberately into poor seats, close together, usually the middle of the three. There is nothing 'random' about it.


On my last two flights, i saw a large number of people simply swapping seats once everyone was on to sit next to the people they were flying with. At some point it's surely going to cost Ryanair time and therefore money.

With EasyJet having acquired a licence in Austria, will Ryanair acquire a UK licence in preparation for Brexit, or do they already have one (Buzz)?

They have used London European Airways when they took over that airline and kept its name.

Ryanair established a UK subsidiary called Ryanair UK in the 1990s to operate Glasgow Prestwick to London Stansted to circumvent the restrictions placed upon a non UK airline operating domestically inside the UK.... not sure if that company is defunct or not....?

MOL won't like having to pay UK NI and such taxes. His business model depends on pretending that all his employees work in Ireland, even if they never go there. At least Easyjet hires all its staff under local terms.

From what I gather most UK based staff pay UK taxes already and not Irish ones......

They'll pay UK income tax, but what about national insurance, esp. the employer's contribution? And how much does FR have to contribute to the pension scheme?

Possible tie up with Primera Air for their transatlantic routes ex STN...? Would make sense
Thoughts?

Maybe I was not too clear. The implication of the press release was that the "good" seats are booked by people who pay. The remaining seats are middle, back row, etc., etc. These are allocated on a first come first served basis according to RyR.

However, there are several posts here and there saying that if you check in late, i.e. near the cut off point, you can get the expensive (e.g. leg room, first row) seats which are the slowest sales.

As to swapping seats, there is apparently an issue with this. It is believed that, in the event of an accident, identity is based on the seating data...??

One thing that I read was that allocating a seat to an under age person must be alongside an adult, is that true?

If you have an old booking made before November 2016 without assigned seats for bookings including children then their new seat alocation engine separates you. It can and most likely be in different ends of aircraft.
But they actively call and try to sell you seats in this instance (they offer to get child seat for free wich is not possible on their website for those old bookings).

CCO O'Brien in today's edition of German broadsheet Süddeutsche: Ryanair has worked out a "Plan B" that will be implemented in September 2018 should no robust Brexit aviation agreement be in place at that point. It would see up to 85 UK based aircraft moved to EU bases. Findling work for them is apparently no problem for Ryanair as Boeing cannot deliver aircraft at the rate Ryanair needs additional capacity. No talk about a Ryanair UK. Rest of the article mainly about Ryanair in Germany (scaling down of Hahn not because of Frankfurt, but Luxemburg, keep Tegel open, let airberlin die, Germany grossly underserved because of Lufthansa).

The article is by Jens Flottau, one of Europe's most respected aviation journalists.

I think I saw somewhere that, for security reasons, under age children must be alongside an adult. RyR doesn't do UMs?

I think the ranter in chief O'Leary said last week that families had to buy seats together, to ensure being seated together, and to avoid breaking security rules?

Not sure about closing U.K. Ops. Doesn't it account for disproportionately high percentage of revenues? No uk first wave departures at FR's peril.
As to saying Boeing can't deliver ac, Boeing if asked might give you a different reason.

You cannot buy a ticket for a child under the age of 12 unless you buy a seat for them and 1 person travelling with them.

Only the adult has to pay for their seat. Children will allocated adjacent seats at no charge.

You could in the past and those tickets are still being used.

Very few are still being used because they introduced free seats from Sept 1st and Summer 2017 seats released at same time.

easyJet and Jet2 will be rubbing their hands together in glee at the thought of Ryanair moving 85 aircraft out of the UK.

This is simply Ryanair threatening governments in order to generate media coverage and will be a stupid self-immolation move if they actually were to do it.