The post is a 2026 refresh of Ryanair’s long-running bag of checkout tricks. It shows where the airline still nudges or confuses people into buying extras, from seat selection and baggage bundles to insurance, app-only boarding passes, and a bad in-house exchange rate. People broadly agreed the old “Don’t insure me” country-picker example may be dated, but the basic playbook is alive and well. It has shifted from hiding the opt-out in bizarre places to exhausting people with warnings, forced detours, modal dismissals, and penalties that make every mistake expensive.
What came through most clearly is that Ryanair’s design is not just about upsell. It is about converting anxiety and time pressure into
ancillary revenue. Commenters kept pointing to fees around airport check-in, bag sizing, boarding passes, and seat choice that make the booking flow feel like a trap you must clear perfectly. Several said the cheap base fare stops being a real advantage once you travel with family, need a checked bag, want seats together, or hit one of the airline’s many edge-case fees. Others still defended the model. They see the dark patterns as annoying but survivable friction in exchange for very low fares, especially on routes where Ryanair is effectively the only viable option.
The strongest practical consensus was narrower than the outrage. First, never book through resellers if you can avoid it. Multiple aviation and frequent-travel commenters said third parties create worse failures than airlines do, especially during delays or cancellations, because the airline cannot fix your trip directly and may not even have your contact details. Second, always pay in the merchant’s local currency and reject Ryanair’s “guaranteed exchange rate,” which commenters pegged at roughly a 6 percent haircut. Third, the real competitive problem is not that Ryanair is uniquely evil. It is that price comparison funnels reward whoever can advertise the lowest incomplete fare, and service quality or honest design do not show up until after the click. That leaves better-behaved competitors little room to win, especially where Ryanair already dominates airport pairs and schedules.