Ryanair - New reserved seating structure(s)

irishman86

Bob24 wrote: »

Supply and demand is what I am talking about. I don't think customers have any entitlement but they get to choose not to use the service if they are not happy.

I definitely think they do care about their image it if means losing profit (MOL is more than smart enough to care). Remember 3 or 4 years ago: MOL himself openly said the company was losing business because it was unnecessarily pissing-off custumers and implemented many changes accordingly. Since then profits have gone to the roof.

To me, if they are indeed slitting out passengers who are on the same booking on purpose, it does classify as "unnecessarily pissing-off custumers".

Supply and demand works different to how you think. If 10 people want a flight with only 6 seats then the company uses that to implement ways to make more money, in this case its get fees from people wishing to select there seats together.
Thats how it works the supply curve slopes up for this very reason
MOL knows very well that some will rabble but in the end will still board his planes when he pretty much controls the short euro flights with his prices

grogi

irishman86 wrote: »

Supply and demand works different to how you think. If 10 people want a flight with only 6 seats then the company uses that to implement ways to make more money, in this case its get fees from people wishing to select there seats together.
Thats how it works the supply curve slopes up for this very reason
MOL knows very well that some will rabble but in the end will still board his planes when he pretty much controls the short euro flights with his prices

Ryanair is abusing its dominant position in short euro flights in order to extort additional money. The airline knows that majority of routes it operates it has no competition and even if competition comes in, they can afford the dump the prices on particular routes. People will use them regardless the shenanigans they come up with.

It is not free market. Cost of entry is far to big.

miamee

Allocating a seat is not really a service - you've already paid for a seat by booking the flight. It doesn't cost them any more or less to give you seats together as opposed to seats apart. In fact they have now invested time/resources into changing the process they had from seating together to deliberately separating parties travelling together.

While sitting apart from your travelling buddy whoever it may be is really not that big of a deal, the fact that Ryanair have gone out of their way to make it so for all passengers rankles and is a backwards step in their more recent efforts to keep customers happy in my opinion.

I'll certainly be checking other options in future; naturally if Ryanair are still miles cheaper, I'll probably put up with it (and they know it)

irelandrover

just compare the cost of paying for a seat + the price of a flight to the competitor. THis really isnt something to be annoyed about

Bob24

irishman86 wrote: »

Supply and demand works different to how you think. If 10 people want a flight with only 6 seats then the company uses that to implement ways to make more money, in this case its get fees from people wishing to select there seats together.
Thats how it works the supply curve slopes up for this very reason
MOL knows very well that some will rabble but in the end will still board his planes when he pretty much controls the short euro flights with his prices

Nope, you are forgetting one aspect of it: when the product/service your are selling is not a necessity and/or is subject competition, demand for it is not guaranteed and can drop depending on how customers feel about your product/service.

In the case of an airline, it could be customers deciding not to fly this time because they had a bad experience before which partly made them decide to spend their next holiday in Ireland, or flying with a competing airline which covers the same route.

So to go back to the exemple you give, if today there are 10 customers for 6 seats great you'll be able to have them overbid each other and sell the tickets to whichever ones are offering the highest amount - hence you will increase your profit. But if you piss-off many customers who then tend to avoid flying with you, in a few months time demand on the same route could drop to lets say to 6 customers for the 6 seats you are still offering: you will then have to sell tickets for less money and will make less profit because you have reduced demand for your service but supply is still the same.

Purely from a profit's perspective, the question is: how many customers are these marketing gimmicks driving away and what is the negative impact on the average selling price of a ticket and the total number of tickets sold. If that impact is larger than the money the marketing gimmick is bringing in, it becomes counter-productive. And as I said the more things like this you add, the larger the negative halo becomes and the more the individual impact for each of them becomes negative.

Bob24

irelandrover wrote: »

just compare the cost of paying for a seat + the price of a flight to the competitor. THis really isnt something to be annoyed about

For me it's not the cost, it is more the annoyance of these marketing tactics when they add-up and waste my time or hurt the quality of the service provided (in this case there is a little bit of both as it will make the booking/checkin process a bit longer, and most importantly even if you pay the policy will likely incommode you during boarding and the flight with people who didn't pay but are trying to work around their poor seating arrangement and potentially block/annoy you in the process). To make it clear just this thing is obviously not a deal breaker and won't make me change my mind if there is a large saving compared to another airline, but it is a step in the wrong direction and it is when small things like this add-up which they start being a serious annoyance and repulsing customers. I mentioned it before but I think Ryanair reached that point a few years ago before recognising the problem and largely addressing the issues (I had completely stopped using them at some point and have started again since then). They have to be careful if they don't want to cross the line again.

Edit: and a link to MOL's stance I was referring to: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/10322959/Ryanair-to-reform-abrupt-culture-says-Michael-OLeary.html

Amongst other things, his statement I was referring to was given at a shareholder's meeting where he said "We should try to eliminate things that unnecessarily piss people off.

dohouch

The MOL gang could state clearly on website
"Dear valued customer, to ensure that you will be seated next to your travelling companion you MUST reserve the adjacent seat"
lots of xxxs
the MOL gang

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

EverythingGood

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

Would probably end up like Seat Wave! More expensive than the original!!

sibersha

Are all flights affected?

If I check-in and myself and partner are given random seats, is there an option to upgrade/purchase allocated seating?

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

irishman86

grogi wrote: »

Ryanair is abusing its dominant position in short euro flights in order to extort additional money. The airline knows that majority of routes it operates it has no competition and even if competition comes in, they can afford the dump the prices on particular routes. People will use them regardless the shenanigans they come up with.

It is not free market. Cost of entry is far to big.

Every company in that situation does this, its just doesnt affect you as you arent buying there goods. There is no such thing as a free market though thats a myth. There will always be someone competing with you.
Take Lidl/Aldi they can easily under cut local shops.
People use Lidl/Ryanair as it leaves them with more money in the pocket which at the end of the day is better for them

irishman86

miamee wrote: »

Allocating a seat is not really a service - you've already paid for a seat by booking the flight. It doesn't cost them any more or less to give you seats together as opposed to seats apart. In fact they have now invested time/resources into changing the process they had from seating together to deliberately separating parties travelling together.

While sitting apart from your travelling buddy whoever it may be is really not that big of a deal, the fact that Ryanair have gone out of their way to make it so for all passengers rankles and is a backwards step in their more recent efforts to keep customers happy in my opinion.

I'll certainly be checking other options in future; naturally if Ryanair are still miles cheaper, I'll probably put up with it (and they know it)

You paid for a seat, unless you pick a seat though thats all you paid for the same way with bus travel
They havent really gone out of the way, more they implemented something thats really been apart of there service for a long time
Off course you should be checking out other options, financially it makes sense, if Aer Lingus have a cheaper flight I will jump on it, at the end of the day go with who ever is cheapest unless its Luthfansa those guys are dicks :pac:
ps I would still fly if they were even a euro cheaper

irishman86

Bob24 wrote: »

Nope, you are forgetting one aspect of it: when the product/service your are selling is not a necessity and/or is subject competition, demand for it is not guaranteed and can drop depending on how customers feel about your product/service.

In the case of an airline, it could be customers deciding not to fly this time because they had a bad experience before which partly made them decide to spend their next holiday in Ireland, or flying with a competing airline which covers the same route.

So to go back to the exemple you give, if today there are 10 customers for 6 seats great you'll be able to have them overbid each other and sell the tickets to whichever ones are offering the highest amount - hence you will increase your profit. But if you piss-off many customers who then tend to avoid flying with you, in a few months time demand on the same route could drop to lets say to 6 customers for the 6 seats you are still offering: you will then have to sell tickets for less money and will make less profit because you have reduced demand for your service but supply is still the same.

Purely from a profit's perspective, the question is: how many customers are these marketing gimmicks driving away and what is the negative impact on the average selling price of a ticket and the total number of tickets sold. If that impact is larger than the money the marketing gimmick is bringing in, it becomes counter-productive. And as I said the more things like this you add, the larger the negative halo becomes and the more the individual impact for each of them becomes negative.

You are thinking in a stone age way my friend, to many people travel is as much a necessity as anything not food/shelter/clothing these days.
The aul financial basket has changed since the 80s
Lets put it this way, all these people in here complaining 99% are still going to fly Ryanair rather than pay 100 euros more with someone else.
Your supply and demand is incorrect on the basis that Ryanair dont really have a rival in the cheap flights section and your view that demand is limited
Its the same as Microsoft it doesnt matter what they do because well they own 80% of the market

cruhoortwunk

Bob24 wrote: »

Is that very last minute check-in?

Doing in on purpose even if neighbouring seats are available would really be going a step too far.

No this is 2 days before the flight, well in advance. Going by their twitter its a new thing and people are not happy. Fairly scummy

cruhoortwunk

posy2010 wrote: »

Just so you know if you go into print boarding passes it will say oh you are sitting miles from each other, want to change? I said yes to see and the seat next to my pre allocated one was empty so only had to pay a fiver for the 1 seat. May be worth a go day before flight!

Quoted ?13 for the privilege

Wheety

tina1040 wrote: »

I like the restaurant example!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It only really works if it is known that this restaurant charges you to pick a seat if you pick one in advance. Or you could just turn up on the night hoping to get seats together.

Bob24

irishman86 wrote: »

You are thinking in a stone age way my friend, to many people travel is as much a necessity as anything not food/shelter/clothing these days.
The aul financial basket has changed since the 80s
Lets put it this way, all these people in here complaining 99% are still going to fly Ryanair rather than pay 100 euros more with someone else.
Your supply and demand is incorrect on the basis that Ryanair dont really have a rival in the cheap flights section and your view that demand is limited
Its the same as Microsoft it doesnt matter what they do because well they own 80% of the market

Again, from what I have read Michael O'Leray doesn't see it that way his line is more the one I described.

Another interesting quote of his from an FT piece on top of the one I had provided before which was going the same direction:

"If I had known that being nicer to our customers was going to result in higher load factors [a measure of how full its aircraft are], I would have been nicer years ago,” Mr O’Leary said. “No one is going to be nicer to our customers now than me."

What he is saying here is pretty much the same I was explaining: if you are nicer to your customers you get more of them, if you have more customers yours planes are fuller, and if your planes are fuller you make more money both because you are selling more tickets and because due to increased demand and constrain on supply the average ticket price is increasing.

When you say "all these people in here complaining 99% are still going to fly Ryanair rather than pay 100 euros more with someone else" I think you are making 2 mistakes:
1. It is not that frequent for Ryanair to undercut Aer Lingus by 100 euros for the same route.
2. You are partially right in that many people will complain but still use Ryanair (though I doubt you would be right in thinking 99% of those who complain will not reduce their use of Ryanair). But what about the customers who won't complain because they have better things to do and will just move on to another airline which doesn't give them any crap? i.e. those slightly more premium customers who tend to drive Ryanair's profit because while they like good value bottom low prices are not their top concern if it starts hurting their customer experience too much.

And Microsoft was in trouble before Satya Nadella can into the picture and put the focus on customer relationship and online services/inovation: they had actually become complacent with the way they were treating their customers due to their market dominance and were at best wasting their growth potential and at worst declining. If you look at the share price since the 2000s it reflects that view from investors with a decline/stagnation in the 2000s before soaring after Nadella's policy changes came into action.

cruhoortwunk

They have undone a lot of the recent good work here. I wouldn't be surprised if they change it back, but not until after a bumper summer of add-on charges.

cruhoortwunk

irishman86 wrote: »

You are thinking in a stone age way my friend, to many people travel is as much a necessity as anything not food/shelter/clothing these days.
The aul financial basket has changed since the 80s
Lets put it this way, all these people in here complaining 99% are still going to fly Ryanair rather than pay 100 euros more with someone else.
Your supply and demand is incorrect on the basis that Ryanair dont really have a rival in the cheap flights section and your view that demand is limited
Its the same as Microsoft it doesnt matter what they do because well they own 80% of the market

Ryanair are rarely much cheaper than the competition these days. I'll be happy enough to pay the ?20 or ?30 extra for Aer Lingus

daisy123

What is people's obsession with sitting together????

I really don't understand it at all!

They are short flights. If it means that much, just pay the price, or fly with a different airline.

C'mon folks, be a bit independent here!

Bob24

cruhoortwunk wrote: »

They have undone a lot of the recent good work here. I wouldn't be surprised if they change it back, but not until after a bumper summer of add-on charges.

That's what I think as well. It is a trial to see how it goes and get a few extra bucks.

degsie

daisy123 wrote: »

What is people's obsession with sitting together????

I really don't understand it at all!

They are short flights. If it means that much, just pay the price, or fly with a different airline.

C'mon folks, be a bit independent here!

Not an obsession, just social norm. If you go to a restaurant do you sit together? Or on a ferry? Or when travelling in the same car?

Jayop

degsie wrote: »

Not an obsession, just social norm. If you go to a restaurant do you sit together? Or on a ferry? Or when travelling in the same car?

Exactly. It's not the end of the world or any major issue, but when I'm flying maybe a 4 hour flight to Lanzerote I'd much prefer to sit beside someone who I'm going on holidays with than some other pleb.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

cobham

I travel a fair bit with Ryanair on my own. I take whatever seat allocated, usually checking in quite late and usually get a decent seat. I might be in row 6 with several rows empty in front of me. Once the seatbelt sign is off there is no problem in changing your seat if you prefer another that is unoccupied.

bikeman1

This new policy is really starting to annoy us regular Ryanair passengers.

There are plenty of us with disposable income who can pick and choose what airline to take or where we want to go for a weekend break. In fact recently I've swayed towards Ryanair because they have generally better fares, not always, allow at least a big bag and allocated seats together for free when travelling with friends, family or the other half.

I've had two trips recently and both times, they allocated our bookings for flights to opposite ends of the plane. It didn't matter so much for the first trip but it would have been "nice" we would have bought a cup of tea and chatted etc. Instead we sat at opposite ends and bemoaned how there was plenty of seats, but that we HAD to sit at our allocated seats. I was trying to show the family member how Ryanair had improved, but was left wanting.

Last weekend I was away with the other half. A nice romantic trip etc etc. Anyway I was allocated row 2 and him 31, then him row 2 and I 17. Both of us knowing Ryanair well, declined to offer them €16 to sit together for our 1hour 30 minute flights to sit on the same aircraft and I got "emergency" rows both ways anyway.

On board of course there were spare seats beside both of us going both ways. He came to me after takeoff on the outbound and me to him on the return. On the return flight it was like musical chairs, mothers reuniting with their adult children. Friends linking up. Husband and wives swapping to sit beside their loved ones. Everyone moaning that the system had completely u necessarily so allocated them at opposite ends despite booking together.

This as someone said isn't a deal breaker for me, but it is going back to how can I piss you off, you annoying worthless passenger. However I didn't mind then, I was paying €1 to the UK or €20 to Italy. Now it's a lot more.

Also anecdotally at least their flights are not as punctual as before. Not unheard for 30 minute delay to most of my recent flights. This new seat allocation is only going to slow down boarding as evidenced by me on Tuesday.

irishman86

cruhoortwunk wrote: »

Ryanair are rarely much cheaper than the competition these days. I'll be happy enough to pay the ?20 or ?30 extra for Aer Lingus

You would be one of the few looking at eachs european profits. If Ryanair had a transatlantic flight they would bankrupt Aerlingus

irishman86

Bob24 wrote: »

Again, from what I have read Michael O'Leray doesn't see it that way his line is more the one I described.

Another interesting quote of his from an FT piece on top of the one I had provided before which was going the same direction:

"If I had known that being nicer to our customers was going to result in higher load factors [a measure of how full its aircraft are], I would have been nicer years ago,? Mr O?Leary said. ?No one is going to be nicer to our customers now than me."

What he is saying here is pretty much the same I was explaining: if you are nicer to your customers you get more of them, if you have more customers yours planes are fuller, and if your planes are fuller you make more money both because you are selling more tickets and because due to increased demand and constrain on supply the average ticket price is increasing.

When you say "all these people in here complaining 99% are still going to fly Ryanair rather than pay 100 euros more with someone else" I think you are making 2 mistakes:
1. It is not that frequent for Ryanair to undercut Aer Lingus by 100 euros for the same route.
2. You are partially right in that many people will complain but still use Ryanair (though I doubt you would be right in thinking 99% of those who complain will not reduce their use of Ryanair). But what about the customers who won't complain because they have better things to do and will just move on to another airline which doesn't give them any crap? i.e. those slightly more premium customers who tend to drive Ryanair's profit because while they like good value bottom low prices are not their top concern if it starts hurting their customer experience too much.

And Microsoft was in trouble before Satya Nadella can into the picture and put the focus on customer relationship and online services/inovation: they had actually become complacent with the way they were treating their customers due to their market dominance and were at best wasting their growth potential and at worst declining. If you look at the share price since the 2000s it reflects that view from investors with a decline/stagnation in the 2000s before soaring after Nadella's policy changes came into action.

Do you really take what a person says in public about his company that much into account.
I dont hes hardly going to say hes going to be bad to them
Didnt he say something along the lines of any publicity is good publicity before
I dont think I made any mistakes off course not every flight is 100 euros but 50 euros 30 euros is still a difference
The guys regularly flying will continue to fly with Ryanair the guys who drive profit as lets say they fly 50 times a year saving 50 euros thats 2500 now lets continue with those customers lets say they do want to spend the tenner to sit beside there partner as you said money wasnt the issue and now sitting beside there partner isnt a issue either voila

irishman86

degsie wrote: »

Not an obsession, just social norm. If you go to a restaurant do you sit together? Or on a ferry? Or when travelling in the same car?

Because these arent in any way the same. In a ferry its first come first serve, the restaurant one has already been proven just stupid (You reserved a table) and the car one well I didnt think you get a worse example than restaurant but you did well done