Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs • Hacker News Board

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#181

Post by AndrewKemendo » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

Stevvo wrote: post #118

hs586 wrote: post #57

I have found myself to be the only person in many conversations defending Ryanair. People complain about legroom, everything being a paid add-ons, you name it. The key is to treat it like a bus that takes you from A to B, sometimes cheaper than a bus, not some sort of luxury experience. The times when flying was luxury is over. And I benefitted from it greatly as a student, so have many shown by Ryanair's passenger n…

A bus is generally a far more pleasant experience. When taking bus you are not herded like cattle into pens based on priority queue status. When a bus has technical issue, they don't hold you hostage on-board for hours to avoid paying compensation. in Europe, a long-distance bus has the comfort of a business class airplane seat.

The infrastructure for air travel requires all that for safe travel

As a pilot myself I know why all the holds exist and while not perfect, the majority of complaints aren’t random bullshit they are flight safety issues

The fact that people demand luxury because it went from veblen good to commodity is the problem

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#182

Post by Tenoke » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

hs586 wrote: post #180

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My one and only experience with Ryanair was that they were rude and hostile even in places where they weren't trying to fleece you. From in-your face rude signs (official, corporate designed ones, not something printed from Word by a random employee), to a UI where you needed to concatenate strings in order to craft a valid input (something like "enter your credit card number, followed by #, followed by the MMYY vali…

When was this? I have zero recollection of ever doing credit card number formatting anywhere.

Yes, this sounds made-up/not Ryanair. I've used them for over a decade, paid with many different cards and have never encountered this with them (nor anywhere ever really).

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#183

Post by gs17 » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 5:48 PM UTC

harrybr wrote: post #147

arethuza wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryanair used to do some things that were quite remarkably devious - the option to not by travel insurance was in the middle of drop-down list of countries! To make sure I had remembered that correctly I looked it up and here is a description of it: https://www.insurancetimes.co.uk/ryanair-to-change-hidden-tr... NB I've travelled with Ryanair quite a lot and actually don't mind the actual flights but it is wise to man…

I have this example archived. Screenshots and explanation here: https://old.deceptive.design/trick_questions/ Conference video showing this example from 2010: https://youtu.be/zaubGV2OG5U?si=8PkLWhxHFSGQWuWw&t=597

It's not quite as bad as I expected (still bad), since it does at least clearly tell you how to not buy it, in normal size type even. Except then they decided to make it out of place alphabetically (and it seems to have moved at least once, since the other article says it was "between Denmark and Finland" because it was sorted under "don't").

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#184

Post by nutjob2 » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 5:50 PM UTC

quokwok wrote: post #5

This is an odd story. Ryanair doesn't pay commission, so these resellers make money by charging extra fees to unsuspecting customers. I don't know why Ryanair wants to stamp out this practice (which doesn't cost them anything and brings extra sales), but I don't see why they should be prevented from stamping it out.

> so these resellers make money by charging extra fees to unsuspecting customers

I don't think thats correct, people who use travel agents do so because they like the service or are unable to book for themselves, it's not wrong to offer a service and be paid for it and there isn't any broad evidence that travel agents misrepresent anything.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#185

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 5:51 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #119

RankingMember wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really pisses me off is that this stuff is annoying and sometimes fools us , tech savvy people on a hacker forum. I can't imagine how many elderly/non-techie people are being fleeced out of their money because of these kind of dark patterns.

Yup I can never remember which option should I pick. And to be really honest I don't remember if I tried to see if it matched my bank's rate or not

Whenever I travel out of the country I always re-read my credit card policies on foreign currency conversion. Some cards are quite reasonable, some are ripoffs.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#186

Post by scottyah » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 5:51 PM UTC

vosper wrote: post #148

blell wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just the fact that people can’t talk on the phone whilst on a plane makes it infinitely better than a bus.

Starlink on flights could put an end to this

hooray for technology!

Multiple lifetimes of thousands of the most brilliant engineers collaborating, sharing algorithms, protocols, mining, smelting, developing tooling to create tiny rocks that can think and blasting them to hover over the earth just so we can slightly annoy the person next to us with a conversation about the weird stuff growing between our toes.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#187

Post by dehrmann » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 5:54 PM UTC

notahacker wrote: post #7

quokwok wrote: post #5

This is an odd story. Ryanair doesn't pay commission, so these resellers make money by charging extra fees to unsuspecting customers. I don't know why Ryanair wants to stamp out this practice (which doesn't cost them anything and brings extra sales), but I don't see why they should be prevented from stamping it out.

Ryanair (and to an extent other LCCs) generally doesn't like ticket sales through resellers because a substantial part of its profit margin comes from upsell of add-ons and partner services during the booking/reservation process

There's also the issue that you're making apples-to-pears comparison if Ryanair shows up in results. While Air France and British Airways have largely equivalent products, Ryanair's is...different.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#188

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 5:55 PM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #165

doikor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't anything new though. Been like that for the last 15 years at least. Always pay in the local currency (your bank/visa/mastercard will give you a better rate then the merchant)

Very true, but the other half is to ensure you don’t use a card with a foreign transaction fee, which will cost you 3-4%. There are free cards like the Amazon Prime Visa that don’t have it, but that fee is very common. The other thing I hate to see is people using the currency conversion desks at airports, or buying foreign currency from their banks in advance of trips. They give you awful rates. Assuming you’re trav…

What is this "cash" you speak of?

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#189

Post by nutjob2 » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 5:56 PM UTC

quokwok wrote: post #36

notahacker wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryanair (and to an extent other LCCs) generally doesn't like ticket sales through resellers because a substantial part of its profit margin comes from upsell of add-ons and partner services during the booking/reservation process

Thanks, that makes sense. Why isn't Ryanair allowed to prohibit use of their website by resellers?

It's a restraint of trade issue. You're not allowed to restrain other's people's ability to run a business or earn an income, beyond some reasonable cases.

Like running the only gas station in town and then refusing to sell fuel to a competitor who is trying to build a gas station that wants to compete with you.

Re: Ryanair fined €256M over ‘abusive strategy’ to limit ticket sales by OTAs

#190

Post by scottyah » Tue, Dec 23, 2025, 5:56 PM UTC

hs586 wrote: post #57

I have found myself to be the only person in many conversations defending Ryanair. People complain about legroom, everything being a paid add-ons, you name it. The key is to treat it like a bus that takes you from A to B, sometimes cheaper than a bus, not some sort of luxury experience. The times when flying was luxury is over. And I benefitted from it greatly as a student, so have many shown by Ryanair's passenger n…

It is something odd about their branding or something, because people's perceptions do not match the reality. Somehow everyone knows Temu is going to be highly likely to sell you very cheap stuff, and it's ok because the expectations are managed. Lots of people still expect Ryanair to not be a cheap airline. I don't get it.