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Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight

ryanair.com

41–50 of 52 posts

Re: Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight

#41
post #22
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I don't think that'll happen. Who flies with Ryanair ? People trying to save money. If their website is too easy to use, these people will peruse it for hours, trying to find out the cheaper combination of flights to go from "somewhere near Madrid" to "somewhere near Berlin". If RA raises the bar a little bit, these people will probably give up one or two queries earlier, hence picking some more "natural" r…

A lot of airports they fly to are in main airports for large cities, including capitals like Madrid, Dublin, possibly others.

As well as Dublin & Madrid, they also fly direct (ish) to: Nice, London (ish. Gatwick is a big London airport), Birmingham. etc.

However they do sometimes take the piss. Until recently you couldn't fly near Barcelona. Paris is still Paris (Beauvaus (sp?)). Rome, Brussles likewise.

I think they once advertised flights to Copehagen, the capital of Denmark, but the flight landed in Sweden!

Re: Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight

#42
post #2

They have gone completely and utterly insane. The ONLY way they get custom is through their web site - and now they are trying to put people off. No matter what the problem was this is the wrong solution.

Ryanair have always been the first to change things radically. From scrapping travel agents, scrapping in flight meals, requiring you to pay extra for checked in luggage. Each of these could be seen as "too far", and yet they have grown by leaps and bounds each time. Why would this be an different?

Re: Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight

#43
post #30
post #7

To put people who may not know Ryanair in context: is a low-cost Irish airline that operates in Europe. You can get round trip flights starting at EUR 0.01. His CEO is a very controversial person who has been on the press for suggesting aggressive measures to make air travel even cheaper, like run flights where passengers stand during the journey, removing toilets from aircrafts and the most recent one, providing pai…

Well, .01 EUR plus 'fees' (more fees than I've ever seen in my life - http://www.ryanair.com/en/terms-and-conditions#regulations-t... ) including a minimum 6 EUR "Admin Fee" for the privilege of buying a ticket and a 40 EUR fee if you lose or don't print a boarding pass...

The fees are atrocious, but during promotions they sometimes sell tickets with taxes and fees included. I once bought a roundtrip Oslo-Edinburgh and the total charge was £1.98. The airport bus ended up being 20 times more expensive than the actual flight.

Re: Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight

#44
post #18

I am the biggest Ryanair supporter, they are the best airline in Europe: they are cheap and their planes are just as comfortable as city buses but they're always on-time and cheap if you know how to book. They're actually the most punctual airline in Europe. This said, I just gave up booking a ticket with them after the third captcha. They'll scrap that stuff as soon as they notice the drop in sales.

Doesn’t also SAS and Lufthansa claim to be the most punctual airline? (Seems like different airlines are the most punctual depending on how you measure it…)

I believe Ryanair are more likely to cancel a flight if it's delayed (e.g. by snow). This may or may not be a good way to ensure that "number of flights that arrive late" is low.

Re: Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight

#45
post #18

I am the biggest Ryanair supporter, they are the best airline in Europe: they are cheap and their planes are just as comfortable as city buses but they're always on-time and cheap if you know how to book. They're actually the most punctual airline in Europe. This said, I just gave up booking a ticket with them after the third captcha. They'll scrap that stuff as soon as they notice the drop in sales.

Exactly. Ryanair are a bus. They are as cheap as a bus, and as good quality as a bus. That's what I use them for.

Re: Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight

#46
post #18

I am the biggest Ryanair supporter, they are the best airline in Europe: they are cheap and their planes are just as comfortable as city buses but they're always on-time and cheap if you know how to book. They're actually the most punctual airline in Europe. This said, I just gave up booking a ticket with them after the third captcha. They'll scrap that stuff as soon as they notice the drop in sales.

Ryanair is good for on time travel (advertising 90%+ on time flights last year, which, according to them beats all other carriers) but nothing more.

Their staff will give you bullshit for anything over the limit, be it size or weight, no matter how minor. They actually walk around the line with carton boxes and put bags in to see if they fit. Their up-sale tactics are ugly too, if you forget your earphones during the flights - be prepared to listen to advertisements which start while you're still on the ground and continue every couple of minutes.

The planes - Boeing 737-800 are shit compared to, for example Airbus A320 (which another cheap flight firm operates, called wizzair). Massive difference in cabin noise and air pressure support - you don't feel a thing in your ears when landing with A320, head exploding every time I take the 737. Please note this is not a comparison of plane manufacturers, I believe these two plane models are fairly different in their age and technologies used to manufacture - I'm merely stating that Ryanair uses worse planes than other cheap flight firms.

Re: Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight

#47
post #35

That's almost as good as Amtrak. You have to confirm your email address every time you buy a ticket, even after you've logged in to your account. And the form blocks paste, so you get to type it out each time.

I've never run into this issue and have booked many tickets (on the northeast line).

Re: Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight

#48
post #30
post #7

To put people who may not know Ryanair in context: is a low-cost Irish airline that operates in Europe. You can get round trip flights starting at EUR 0.01. His CEO is a very controversial person who has been on the press for suggesting aggressive measures to make air travel even cheaper, like run flights where passengers stand during the journey, removing toilets from aircrafts and the most recent one, providing pai…

Well, .01 EUR plus 'fees' (more fees than I've ever seen in my life - http://www.ryanair.com/en/terms-and-conditions#regulations-t... ) including a minimum 6 EUR "Admin Fee" for the privilege of buying a ticket and a 40 EUR fee if you lose or don't print a boarding pass...

I didn't downvote you but I find it a little amusing that people in Europe can get worked up over an $8 ticketing fee on a $0.02 ticket. In the US, it can cost as much as $500 one-way to fly from Pittsburgh, PA to Philadelphia, PA. $79 one-way Chicago-Atlanta is considered so spectacularly cheap that the offer consumes most of the above-the-fold real estate on Southwest Airlines' website.

Re: Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight

#49
post #9

They don't like scrapers, they don't even allow links to their website without permission. From their TOS: "5. Links to this website. You may not establish and/or operate links to this website without the prior written consent of Ryanair."

The entire web is based off linking. If they don't want linking, then they shouldn't use HTML and HTTP. "HT" stands for Hypertext https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext
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