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Comment by rsynnott | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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)

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