Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher(blog.osull.com) |
Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher(blog.osull.com) |
So this has nothing to do with where the code is, but that getting access to it at all requires the malware.
It’s definitely why some stuff is regulated (ie: loan interest)
Personally I wouldn’t do business with someone who is constantly trying to scam me.
In Europe, it is pretty common to continue onwards to your actual destination by train!
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 :)
I don't think this is a mistake, but something malicous clearly thought through.
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.
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
Wonder if that could be a YouTube Channel
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.)
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.
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.
I think they may actually have gotten in trouble for that one; they've stopped doing it (as noted in the article it was from eight years ago).
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?
I 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...
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Can we stop with all this Newspeak, already? Words should flow with the conversationalists, not political spindoctor lexicologists.
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.
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 :)
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
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.
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.....
They wouldn't be able to turn a profit even if they squeezed you hard enough.
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.
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 ;)
No.
I'd gladly pay more and do. However, Ryanair (piss be upon them) have a virtual monopoly on routes I need.
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.
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 lostUnfortunately, 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.
The 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):
- [1] https://youtu.be/Id-zzOGnN6A (Website part at 1:42 calling out the insurance example).
And I’ve saved thousands of pounds in flights around Europe over the years so can’t really complain
???
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…
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.
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
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.
[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.
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.
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...
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.
Religion and politics.
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.
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?
(of course, they can be both at the same time)
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.
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.
(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....