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Comment by teeheelol | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why because Ryanair looks really good on the scrapers. I bet it drives a lot of business their way.

That is of course until you add all the additional charges.

You can fly for not a lot of money on Ryanair, their fee structure, website, and app are similar to all other budget airlines. Those extra fees are for handling your luggage (extra manpower and fuel). If you want to complain about Ryanair's fees, get hold of the Fees Schedule for the airport you fly from and to. You will learn how much airports charge for landing, parking, hangarage, handling, fuel, etc. It's an eye-opening read.

Ryanair's claim was that Booking.com etc was reselling its seats, adding its own charges on top, and providing false passenger details. It's in Ryanair's interest to portray this as basically a screen scraping case (because Ryanair don't like screen scraping in general), but there does seem to be more to it than just that.

Ryanair relies on dark patterns and brainwashing as part of the checkout process to sell you hotels, insurance, car hire, etc. Those feed into their income stream.

If you bypass that process they don't make their profit.

I am not sure what "dark patterns and brainwashing" are you referring to, I booked flights through Norwegian- a calm scandinavian low cost company, and had to say no many times to car and hotel offers. The same when renting cars from big companies.

Lets say 20% of people booking through ryanair and paying £30 for a flight go for their "upselling" (which is deliberatly designed to get more people to add it). That makes ryanair £50 each. That pushes the revenue per customer upto £40.

Lets say the cost is £35, and thus ryanair makes £5 profit per passenger.

Now lets say someone else comes along as sells the ryanair flight for £30 and has their own "upselling": "Click here to not avoid missing out on our great protection package" etc. Ryanair now is making a £5 loss on each ticket sold, and the reseller is making it instead.

I still don't understand, I flew with them last year, and just now I dry-ran booking a flight from Prague to Bologna. The entire thing feels quite streamlined and straightforward. Pick two dates, you're offered flights on or around the dates, you pick the flights, then you pick the "package" (basic, regular, plus, flexi plus) and it shows a HUGE matrix with big fat check marks for stuff you get and no check marks for stuff you DON'T GET (reserved seats, cabin luggage, checked luggage, free check-in at the airport). Honestly, if someone can't navigate the process as it is today, I'd be worried about them traveling to a foreign country. Any additional offers (hotels, insurance, cars) you can safely ignore.

Yes, in their defense, that matrix is an improvement. Though it's not perfect and still intended to fool people: you would expect as you go up the tiers that everything from the previous tier is included but that's not the case: "Plus" doesn't include a carry-on/priority boarding from the "Regular" fare. And the most expensive option "Flexi Plus" doesn't include a checked bag (easy to miss when all other options are included)

Consider the business it drives away from Ryanair by the price raise.

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