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.
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.)
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!
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.