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Comment by lxgr | Hacker News Reader

I once flew from London on Ryanair when the airport's passenger Wi-Fi was completely down, and 4G was completely overloaded as a result as well.

Things were indeed pretty chaotic. I can't remember if they did print paper boarding passes in the end.

> it seems like the small fraction of people using a paper boarding pass can't be adding much extra cost

You're looking at this from the wrong angle: This is Ryanair. Actual cost does not matter, only the opportunity to extract more revenue. Presumably app users are that much more valuable to Ryanair (as they can be upsold various things there, and potentially because it also acts as a filter for a generally less profitable customer segment).

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It's also a marketing channel for future flights. The app almost certainly asks for notification permissions, and most people will say yes -- they're useful for knowing if your flight is delayed or there's a gate change.

Now they have a channel where they can let you know about deals, etc. I'm sure they've modeled exactly how much this is worth, and I'd be willing to bet it's a lot.

Re notifications: I have seen important apps not working unless you allow notifications.

This might be the case here as well.

You wanna fly? Allow notifications!

Isn't that against App Store guidelines? (Not that Apple could afford to kick out Ryanair, but I think they have other options, such as blocking updates until it's been remedied etc.)

The upsell opportunity isn't worth anywhere near $50 though. I suspect it acts as a price discrimination filter. You make people jump through hoops (ie. installing an app) to save some money, with the expectation that people who are willing to jump through hoops are more price sensitive, and would also be willing to switch to another airline.

They already charge that and more if you have to check-in at the airport for any reason. And you cannot check-in online without making an account with them. Ryanair is grift squared.

That said I never had problems boarding with a PDF displayed on the phone screen. Unfortunate that they're going away.

Stupid question here, because I haven't flown with Ryanair in like almost 10 years, but I've recently flown with WizzAir and after checking-in online (the night before) it generated a .pdf boarding pass which I saved on my phone. I was then able to get onto the plane by presenting the QR code from said .pdf, i.e. while I was at the gate, no need for internet access. Does Ryanair do things differently?

These byzantine arguments and justifications and profit motivation and incentive tea readings are so ridiculous at a certain point, I'm surprised so many people wont even consider socializing airlines.

What a cold comfort to a grandma struggling to use an upsell-focused dark patterns app when the wifi is poor at some airport to get home to see her grandkids stuck at some airport to say, "Well, this maximized shareholder revenue."

I feel like I'm in the last stages of 'anything goes' capitalism. The ridiculousness here has hit such levels, especially in the USA, that there must be pushback sooner than later. I dunno how the Irish feel about this considering this is their airline (HQ at least), or their experiences, but on this side of the pond, this has all has reached new levels of absurdity that would make even Kafka blush.

I just randomly checked Dublin to Rome route, for early December. The first 3 cheapest options are Ryanair, the 4th option (Air Lingus) is almost triple the price of the cheapest one, $262 vs $90

That’s your answer. People vote with their wallet.

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