Ryanair now presents you with a Recaptcha every time you search for a flight
ryanair.com
ryanair.com
Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair
That's hilarious (epic?)
On the internet, we call it 'trolling'.
In the case of RyanAir, they've turned trolling into a marketing strategy.
They often advertise flights for €0.01 but then charge ~€10 for various other things, so the actual price is usually about €15. However, it is possible to get a 1 cent flight, although it is rare.
Knowing the story, my reaction to this headline is: wow, through testing, they figured out that people buy the ticket rather than wanting to fill out the CAPTCHA.
Great read: http://www.amazon.com/Ryanair-Story-Controversial-Low-Cost-A...
But they hold on strongly to some basic principles on their flights. For example, they are unbeatable when it comes to arriving on time. Incomparably better than any other european carrier.
And of course, they have routes that are not operated by anybody else that won't ask you like 4 times more money for the flight.
At the moment they don't operate the route I use the most. I find myself using a regular carrier. After picking the dates carefully I'm still spending roughly three times more than I used to. sure the service is a bit fancier but still, it's a huge difference.
In essence, they are cheap.
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."
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.
(Seems like different airlines are the most punctual depending on how you measure it…)
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.
No matter what the problem was this is the wrong solution.
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" route that will likely make RA a bit more money. Most customers won't think (or know) about the competition, RA has a very strong brand, so the chances that they'll just give up and go elsewhere are fairly slim, especially after having invested all that time going through captchas.
Captchas are very unfriendly towards older and less computer-literate people, but those segments are more likely to go through phone or agencies anyway.
(Not that I care, I stopped using RA years ago.)
Having said that, the Ryanair website is pure evil - the fact that the option to not buy insurance is half way down the list of countries is an example of just how devious they can be.
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!
I guess their budget is not good enough to hire a good programer. I wonder if the CEO hire his nephew, the one with some frontpage/dreamweaver skills for the job.
They know their business, people will put up with a lot if it saves them money and that's what Ryanair is good at.
http://www.alexmuir.com/2011/12/stupid-is-the-new-business-c...
The ads (1) open in a new window, (2) Ryanair knows that no one is going to beat them on price, and (3) Ryanair can block any company that they think is a threat from showing ads.
Some governments would be served well by cutting costs to the absolute bare minimum and increasing non-tax revenue streams.