Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher
blog.osull.comI just flew from Bournemouth to Alicante on Ryanair for £50. A similar flight in the US (DC to Miami, for example) would be easily 5x that, possibly 7-8x. The dark patterns took me about 10min to click through. Doing the math, that means my time would have to be worth $1500/hr which is higher than the take-home (not billable) of senior partners at law firms.
Ryanair has severely improved my life, especially for my fellow sun-deprived Northern Europeans.
[1] https://investor.ryanair.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ryan...
Those incidentals would not increase your fare 5-8 times. So that some passengers fall into the dark patterns cannot possibly make up for the price difference nor can the price difference to US be the base for your cost savings.
>nor can the price difference to US be the base for your cost savings Yeah I agree it's not perfect — but as someone who used to live in the US it's a base for me
The main reason Ryanair is so cheap is that they have the fastest turn around time in the industry. This means the utilisation rate is far higher. Part of the reason they're able to turn around so quickly is that they take less hold luggage (so unloading/loading is not holding them up), un-allocated seating means they get to overbook/bin pack better, worth thinking through the second order effects.
(In fairness, they don't _always_ do this at Brussels airport, sometimes using a normal jet bridge).
Decided to head down and work out why, only to get shouted at by a very angry staff member as they wanted to depart early....
I think the main reason Ryanair is so cheap is that they get insanely good deals with the airports because they bring so much business to the region. Ie Alicante, a secondary airport, is somewhat tourist-dependent.
Ryanair makes a deal with the municipally-owned airport and says hey, we're going to bring thousands of Brits and Germans to you (with full wallets). The municipality gives a good deal in return.
There's also the 1.5x revenue multiplier from ancillary revenue.
Finally, they only own one type of airplane. Makes the maintenance etc easier.
[0] https://www.google.com/travel/flights/booking?tfs=CBwQAhpFEg...
40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, that's only $3 million/yr. If you've been at OpenAI for 10 years, you'll net more than that this year after they IPO.
I find that difficult to believe. Ten minutes is a long time.
Ten minutes is a long time. That's the purpose of dark patterns.
Compared to the high likelihood of delays or cancelled flights with Ryanair, I think it's worth it for peace of mind.
RyanAir is ultra-budget. You need to be ready for the whole thing, but often you can get something much cheaper. As an example, looking for London to Belfast next month, RyanAir is a fifth the price.
I'm unsure about the following. Do you know if flights between London and Belfast be covered under EU airline rules regarding missed and delayed flights?
My question was more to do with the European Single Market, and the considerations given to Belfast during Brexit negotiations. That's where my ambiguity came from.
Thanks for the info!
(of course, they can be both at the same time)
???
Maybe round-trip at a peak time. But if you're talking about one-way flights, you can fly across the entire country (NYC to SFO) for <$150 without hunting for a deal. DC to Miami is $50 (£37) each way, all of next month.
Too bad they’re never cheap when I need to travel…
Great. Now quit bachelor partying in Spain before they throw objects at you. I thought East Europeans were the worst tourists before I enountered the English and Russians. The elderly are usually fine.
While a fair number of us do a lot to earn our collective reputation, some of us nip to Spain for other reasons and carry ourselves with a bit of care and comportment so your assumption there might be a bit too knee-jerk.
Anecdata: I spent a week in a small seaside town in Costa Brava in mid May. Took part in their local annual running festival, explored the countryside, did some more obvious touristy bits around there and in Barcelona. I'm trying to learn the language¹, and managed to use some of it without people spotting my lack of ability and instantly switching to English².
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[1] as I might like to live over there in later life and refuse to be the sort of git who arrives and expects everyone to speak English.
[2] in fact a couple of people I encountered, a taxi driver and a lovely woman running a small family run bookshop³, didn't speak a word - and through their patience and my pidgin Castilian we managed to successfully interact.
[2] a rare to find these days, especially in a bit city, I hope the place does the roaring trade it deserves as I hope it'll still be there so I can drop back to get more practice reading material next time I'm nearby.
We were also there in May a few years ago. An English drunk individual took off his indispensables at the hotel's pool so that the lifeguard, a middle aged woman, had to caution him to put them back on, accompanied by the laughter of his drinking companions. It at Occidental Puerto Banús, so not at a cheap hotel.
Our big drinkers are a problem at home as well as aboard. Unfortunately our other stereotype comes into play in that for every loud idiot, there are many of us quietly tutting at them and hoping they'll get bored and bugger off if we don't interact with them… One of the reasons I drink a lot less these days is that I grew tired of apologising for other people's behaviour when someone in or associated with our group had "one too many" and couldn't regulate himself¹ after that, or making excuses to leave early before that happened. In the generation after mine (and the next so far, but many in that cohort are not yet old enough to, so more time is needed to see if the pattern holds) are drinking a lot less, both in the sense of having a healthier attitude to drinking when they do and in many cases simply not taking alcohol at all, in part as a reaction against all this too.
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[1] Not all unpleasant drunks are male of course, but in my experience a higher proportion of us that drink much have an unhealthy relationship with it, and this is exacerbated by a lower proportion of women drinking a lot. I'm not sure how other types fit into this, certainly none of the out trans people I know are that sort of problem but this is probably too small a sample to be making generalisations from.
Absolutely not. Not even close. Maybe in peak season, but then you can't fly Ryanair for 50 GBP in peak season either.
Wonder if that could be a YouTube Channel
You go through what seems the entire check-in process, you get what seems like a summary at the end, with a link to a UK government site where you need to go next to get a travel authorization, I spend an hour doing that, finally finish that, I show up to the airport the next morning to be told I'm not checked in, having to pay a hefty fee to do a late check-in for each of my five passengers. The staff at the airport isn't really Ryanair's, so recourse there. (As if having real Ryanair staff would have made a difference.)
Same trip, coming back, we wait in the central terminal building until our gate is published. We go over to the gate, one of our passengers being in a wheelchair, needing an elevator, which are out of service. Friendly airport staff help us with the long detour to get to our gate. By now the doors are closed, we missed our flight. Again, having to pay a hefty fee to rebook for each of my five passengers. This is Ryanair staff, still no recourse. (But plenty of contempt.)
I admit defeat, but my wife is still motivated to talk to customer support. This is months ago, I don't think that went anywhere either. They're mostly impenetrable.
I don't mind their baggage policies, it's a known thing that there's upsales every step of the way, that's baked in by now (pretty much across the industry). But there's still plenty deep-dark patterns left.
Thank goodness that we can vote with our feet, right, and just don't buy from them anymore. But guess what, we booked another flight for next month :)
I also hate Ryanair and will only fly it if there is no other option.
This include never taking accountability when shit hits the fan.
Unless a customer mentions, specific wording (I forget what exactly now) - wording that matches the underlying regulation that entitles the customer to some kind of recourse by law, the agents are instructed to deny and weasel out of it. As in, even though they are legally obliged to give you that specific recourse, unless you demonstrate to them that you have proper knowledge of the law, they will simply act like you have no rights.
It was very slimy, and I literally couldn't stomach it. I don't know how they train their customer service agents now, but I would highly recommend doing a few google searches and some prompting to see exactly, literally, what words one must utter to a customer service agent.
Of course, that alone is not enough, the stars also have to align so that the agent you're talking to commands enough of the English language to have comprehended their training, and what you're saying; and not be bogged down with the 7 simultaneous chat tickets they must handle concurrently, in addition to the calls.
And I’ve saved thousands of pounds in flights around Europe over the years so can’t really complain
If regular lines would care to offer similar connections, I would gladly pay a bit more.
In the case of Ryanair, I think not using them often means that a casual weekend away could become a much bigger dent in my family's monthly budget.
No.
I'd gladly pay more and do. However, Ryanair (piss be upon them) have a virtual monopoly on routes I need.
Because they're the only option for certain airports I expect to actually fly with them at some point. May that day never come though ;)
I never quite understand the hate they get, they compartmentalise the various costs into options.
I've had <2hr flights before that have had a meal service I didn't need/want, but it's baked into the price and unchangeable...
So this has nothing to do with where the code is, but that getting access to it at all requires the malware.
Ahahahahahah.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Haughey
(Things aren't as bad nowadays, but largely because the EU forced consumer protection and anti-corruption law upon us, certainly not because of any innate tendency to fairness.)
I don't think this is a mistake, but something malicous clearly thought through.
From where I stand, it’s not fair to charge the hell out of people who fall for these tricks while giving steep discounts to the ones who don’t. Maybe there’s a “fool me once” aspect to Ryanair’s shenanigans, so at least their impact might be limited somehow.
I don't really have a problem with offering discounts to members of X program, or if insurance is pre-selected.
But the advertised price should be inclusive of everything (taxes, fees, charges, etc) and the price available to the general product before membership-exclusive pricing.
So if you advertise a product for $100 then any normal person can pay $100 and get it for that.
Want to sell it from cheaper to members of your reward program? Go ahead. But it can't be the most prominent price advertised for it.
You want to sell insurance pre-selected? No problem but again the default advertised price needs to include it. Even if they can opt out for a cheaper price.
There are sure to be edge cases. But the point being is that the price you advertise most prominently needs to be the all-inclusive price any member of the public can get without having to fight to select the correct option.
We don't accept misleading and deceptive practices in other areas, why do we let airlines, hotels and hire car places do it?
Religion and politics.
Their current pattern is more about playing into the fear of what happens without insurance, without selecting your seat, when you don't pay for early check in and forget to do it online on the day before the flight, or what happens if you show up with more or larger luggage than what you booked. Fears they themselves create with high fees for showing up with too much luggage or for checking in at the airport
There is still a bit of praying on people who are in a hurry or are impatient, don't read the screens and just click the most prominent button. The most obvious is the seat selection. But it's no longer the most prominent way they get you
I remember them being crafty, but I have to admit I was surprised by the level of tactics ... that is to say, what they are still allowed to get away with given European / UK consumer law.
Not to mention that a 20kg bag and hand luggage cost me significantly more than the fare itself. They even had upfront "package deals" that would have actually worked out more expensive - bundles of nonsense benefits.
In Australia most of this kind of borderline deceptive selling has been stepped on, to the point that you hardly see it any more.
One of these sites offered the ticket for dozens of Euros cheaper, and allowed me to go through the booking process until the end: I entered my CC, hit "Buy", and the next page was "Oops, the flight is no longer available at this price. The price now is: [the same price as booking with the airline]. Would you like to complete the purchase with this new price anyway?".
Fucking hell, it pissed me off so much that I said no and booked it with the airline after all.
I'd recommend never ever using reseller agents. They frequently mess up tickets, they sell tickets that don't exist at all, and most of them won't forward your contact info to the airline's system, so if there's a problem or delay you'll never receive the notification from the airline. (Including coupons, hotel room offers in case of cancellation and other stuff)
The airlines may be bad but the resellers are worse.
I've never been stranded when I've contacted the hotel directly, via their website or the phone. Sometimes a glitch does happen, but when it does the hotel will call around on your behalf and find you a room.
Save your points and use them on hotels instead, where the experience is just as risky, but at least fails in a less spectacular way when it goes wrong e.g. unless you're booking with an agent in a high demand area where there are NO hotels you usually can leverage a backup plan a lot easier than if you are stuck in an airport.
So I'll typically use a service like Google Flights to find a flight, pick an itinerary, but then go to the airline's web page to book the flight directly.
Same for hotels. Find a hotel on Expedia, then book with the hotel directly.
I've seen too many horror stories of people booking through a reseller, and if something goes wrong, the reseller tells you to talk to the hotel/airline while the hotel/airline tells you to talk to the reseller.
Last time I had close call with a slightly oversized backpack (but not overly full so could easily fit) and they pointed out that some straps we're sticking out through the openings in their thing which I had to push back in...
Yeah most of the EU steps on this but Ireland is deep in the pockets of big tech. Their privacy regulator is really weak for example, on purpose. That's why all the big techs have their HQs there.
I guess this attitude extends to Ryanair too. We have this thing in the EU where companies need to be legislated in only one member state but some like Ireland abuse this privilege for national gain. It's not just Ireland though. Holland facilitates EU tax dodging with them, Malta sells EU passports to rich foreigners etc.
Spain does sometimes still manage to put the thumbscrews on them though. Like banning charging for hand luggage.
After 32 years of Ryanair in its current incarnation nobody can claim naivety. Dance with the devil and he pipes the tune.
It used to be pretty easy going if you just paid up for everything you need. I preferred it over the traditional Airlines because with them you have to suffer first before you build enough points for fast boarding etc. With Ryanair you could just pay and if you did you would be given no hassle by the staff. Even onboard food and drink prices were pretty ok.
But recently they've reduced the carryon bag to unusable proportions and their staff is ever ruder and pushy.
Look, we hate Ryanair, everybody does. The seats are cramped. They keep piping stupid announcements. Dark patterns. Etc. But if we want to see family, it’s Ryanair or another airline. With a family of 3, it’s either 400€ or 900€, so we put up with it.
You’re being unfair.
Personally I wouldn’t do business with someone who is constantly trying to scam me.
It’s definitely why some stuff is regulated (ie: loan interest)
- [1] https://youtu.be/Id-zzOGnN6A (Website part at 1:42 calling out the insurance example).
If anything, RyanAir's strategy is to overexplain things, in hopes that people are unwilling to read what's on the screen and just click the first thing that advances the process
It’s a polarizing idea, but frankly it’s what the world moves too and seem to work on the market. Some people are lazy or don’t have time and pay more money and some people have less time and dig through dark patterns, collect coupons or utilize ramp up subsidizing.
All those people that actually "work" through it will have less of a prime as if these patterns wouldn’t exist.
The question still remains would the world be a better place without these patterns,as it wastes time and acts against user intent.
It’s just a fascinating question to me, because a lot of things are not as simple as they seem of the first glance.
Of course these other carriers bundle it in at a premium too.
I never understand the hate RyanAir gets, for splitting off services like this as a paid option.
We were one of the 10 people on the flight...including some of our friends who didn't select seats, but sat on the same row.....
Clicking "Try now" in fact just signs you up for Uber One. So I suppose you are, technically, trying it. For money.
Dirty. I'm Australian and I'm sure that wouldn't be legal.
I had "Uber One" for a month then cancelled just before renewal around Christmas. :D
We talked and turns out the driver can earn as little as 1/3 of the price you paid. I asked if tips are also "taxed" like that and apparently no, so I just left a 100% tip.
I'm getting a normal taxi next time.
After studying the website we decided it was best
to pay priority boarding so we'd sit three abreast
(three abreast, that's the best)
And of course we'd all have luggage, so that's an extra cost
And then we paid insurance in case our cases might get lostThe website reflects their corporate attitude, which i think is okay.
They are offering a cheap seat which may even be below their cost if you avoid all the add-ons.
The consumer who skips all these add-ons feels smart. They feel like someone else is subsidizing their flight.
Perhaps we can even call this booking process a game where the customer comes out at the end feeling like they beat the level.
If any of you have seen Ryanair’s social media marketing you’ll know exactly what I mean. They make jokes about how cheap they are, like this one:
Stories from this thread mean I'd never fly them (admittedly, I'll probably never have the opportunity):
Not checking into a flight, because you wont onto an entirely different website, to complete an entirely different form isn't the airline....
Services for wheelchair are handled by the airport, not the airline, again, I don't see anything in this comment where they sorted out the services that are required prior.
2. Having utilised wheelchairs at airports you need to go very early. The airports don't have enough staff and they basically have to assign you someone for an hour to get you through security and on to the plane. The times I've done it, it's always airport staff and nothing to do with the airline.
Unfortunately, they're often the only option from Dublin->wherever with reasonable times; unless I want to go at five in the morning or something I am stuck with them.
Unfortunately there are many instances of no competition - which then leads to abuse.
Yes, there are instances where travel insurance makes sense or may be practically a requirement. Health and/or evacuation insurance for foreign travel and/or cruising may be practically a necessity. You don’t want to be paying tens of thousands of dollars when you need a helicopter to take you off your cruise ship to a hospital.
But if your primary reason for purchasing insurance is insuring yourself against a trip that has to be skipped or modified last minute, you can probably skip it.
The way I insure against these sort of things:
- Buying hotel rooms that are not prepaid and refundable up until the day before check-in
- Paying attention to airline policies. Sure, my United airlines fare isn’t refundable, but if I cancel the flights I get all the money back in flight credits I can use within 6 months.
- Rental cars, same deal as hotels. They’re easy to book with no payment up front.
- Use a good travel credit card with its own trip insurance perks (usually not as comprehensive)
Do I pay more to book flexible like this? Yeah, but I can also keep my money gaining interest until the day of the trip. And the thing about travel insurance is that you still have to deal with the claims process if you need to use it.
That's a whole new can of worms though. Their scams can be a lot more expensive, and are usually after the fact (although they'll try them at the pickup counter too).
It's one of those things I will specifically always arrange through a third party that covers insurance as well, which is really an insurance against the rental companies scams.
I do realize that this may not be available in countries that properly regulate credit cards so that they don’t create a caste system of rewards card benefits.
They wouldn't be able to turn a profit even if they squeezed you hard enough.
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Can we stop with all this Newspeak, already? Words should flow with the conversationalists, not political spindoctor lexicologists.
I grew accustomed to these choices, so would navigate through them on autopilot. Once I was quick enough to get "We noticed suspicious activity indicating that you're a bot"; had to retry everything from beginning and hesitate when clicking :)
Every time I'm on a Ryanair flight to Spain, it's very family-heavy. Like, why wouldn't families go on Ryanair? If nothing else, they have a near-monopoly on certain routes.
I dread to think how much of their revenue is generated from people buying stuff they don't want or need.
I will always pay more to not use Ryanair, given the choice. Unfortunately I don't always have a choice.
In Europe, it is pretty common to continue onwards to your actual destination by train!
They also send _constant_ emails about car rental (I assume it must be a profit centre for them). Yes, Ryanair, I will definitely want to rent a car for my weekend trip to notoriously-car-friendly _London_.
Things like this:
> Don’t click “Upgrade to Priority & 2 Cabin Bags”. This one is particularly sneaky as it doesn’t have a “No” option, you must dismiss the window.
It is still impressive for me they managing to be this good in being nefarious at same time they have to worry about executing the service in such a complex industry.
The cherry on top is their social media, successfully bringing humour to alleviate and to make all of this acceptable, as it was just part of a bigger joke.
After many hours spent fruitlessly fighting the Ryanair customer disservice desk, I decided to enlist the help of my local ECC [0]. I paid Ryanair a 120€ name change fee and had the ECC claim it back for me.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Consumer_Centres_Netw...
It doesn't sound like this caused your issue. But it is a genuine challenge for large companies like Ryanair and for users who might have registered using an old email they no longer own.
MFA and getting a reset confirmation via your mobile as an example can help people from resetting the password and logging in to see personal information which isn't theirs.
Companies need a way of recycling this accounts and letting people re-register, ideally not having to call a support line.
It's worth avoiding Ryanair just to avoid that scenario.
I think a lot of the 'attitude' you see is when people complain publicly about things that are entirely their fault. e.g. "They charged me to print my boarding pass, I didn't know I had to do it digitally" - probably because you ignored the multiple emails they sent you over the last month warning you. Or "my bag was fine on the way over and now they say it's too big" - you never bothered to check the size and got lucky on the way over. All of these types of rules have been in place for decades now and it's always the seem people holding everyone up because they think the rules don't apply to them.
The worst experience I've had with booking _ever_ was recently and it wasn't Ryanair. Whizzair rejected my cards (all of them) and then said the only option was a bank transfer. No fucking way am I doing that. Then my partner tried on her app. Every time she went from the payment screen to her banking app to approve the transaction, she'd go back and the entire app had lost state.
I feel sad when I think about people who can not afford to do that, and must tolerate being pissed in the face, repeatedly, every time they travel with ryanair.
I do hope they disappear from the planet. The planet and the human race would be better off.
This should be punishable by law.
I've found that not selecting a seat often works out best for me and my family. Regardless of when I check in. The algorithms for seat selection seem to always auto allocate you and your party together.
If you have young kids they are obligated for them to be seated with their parents. Same for people with disabilities I would guess - although I'm not sure if this would be flagged online. This could be sorted at the check-in counter.
If your kids are older they are probably quite happy not sitting next to you anyway!
For years I've not selected seating and it's worked out well. On our last trip with BA we actually ended up with premium seats with extra leg room.
Nine times out of ten we've been all together. Plus if you really want to sit together. People are often happy to swap like for like seats.
P.S I tried to post this on the blog comments but kept getting blocked by capture. Saying I need to solve correctly. I tried about five times. Looks to be an issue