And a last, most sneaky one: At checkout if you pay with credit/debit card don't use Ryanair's "guaranteed exhange rate" if the cost of the flight is not in your card's currency (ticket by default, at least two clicks to find and untick it). That's ~6% gap from mid-market exhange rate, the worst cards do better than that.
Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher
91–100 of 207 posts
Re: Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher
#92Leaving this here, as I couldn't leave it on authors blogpost:
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 :)
Re: Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher
#93I understand the frustrations, but...we're all grown adults here right? Who DOESN'T pay for seat selection if you want or need a good one? The insurance item is ridiculous, but...again, for grown adults with families/kids, do you really fly Ryanair?
Re: Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher
#94Using the Ryanair website makes me feel icky. The whole thing feels like you have to be constantly on guard not to get tricked - and I'm relatively wise to these things.
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.
Re: Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher
#95About 1/3 of their revenue is ancillary (the dark patterns are there to cause ancillary revenue). 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 bill…
> £50. A similar flight in the US (DC to Miami, for example) would be easily 5x that, possibly 7-8x.
???
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.
Re: Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
That math is completely off. 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.
Well, I suppose the argument is that Ryanair et al fundamentally changed the European market, and without them the European market would be like the US market, and way more expensive. Which is definitely _plausible_, but kinda counterfactual.
[dead]
Re: Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher
#97And a last, most sneaky one: At checkout if you pay with credit/debit card don't use Ryanair's "guaranteed exhange rate" if the cost of the flight is not in your card's currency (ticket by default, at least two clicks to find and untick it). That's ~6% gap from mid-market exhange rate, the worst cards do better than that.
Yeah but that's general advice, you shouldn't also do that with PayPal, or while paying abroad. ALWAYS pay in the local currency, never in your own.
Re: Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Aer Lingus is a slightly weird case; they have essentially become a budget airline (at least for their European business) to compete with Ryanair, but they haven't yet gotten around to adopting most of the dark patterns.
I don't think it's a weird case to compare two budget airlines to demonstrate why I think one is better than the other.
Aer Lingus is a budget airline? And here I was still thinking that they're the flag carrier of Ireland...
(of course, they can be both at the same time)
Re: Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher
#99When is the EU fining these morons?
Re: Ryanair dark UX patterns summer 2026 refresher
#100No comment about how you must download the app and it is the only way to access your pass? There is not even a QR code or barcode for the pass available any other way?
Yes, great point. Privacy / dark pattern concerns aside, I used to like having a paper pass in case something happened to my device. I wonder what would happen in practice if you printed a screenshot of the app? After all, a screenshot on a phone works fine.
They currently don't check that at the gate. They just look if it's on a phone or not.