I wonder what effect this will have on ryanair ticket prices? As I understand it the tickets themselves are not profitable, it's the extras.
When I booked flights to Dublin recently, I felt being cheated on even though I checked everything twice and googled some. The insurance trick is among the worst practices I had to encounter personally.
I'd prefer to have the official prices being hones even if they are somewhat higher. Their business model of offering only the minimal thing should work nevertheless and laws like that does not forbid them to offer extras which many people would choose nevertheless.
Why on earth would you do business with a company that makes you "<feel> cheated"? RyanAir ran off all of the other airlines? They had the only flight to Dublin to see your poor, sick mother? Flights so cheap that you're willing to put up with the bullshit? It's an honest question, and I've heard some answer it with "they're so cheap, I'm willing to put up with dealing with weasels." But it sounds like the whole weasel-dealing thing isn't for you.
One of the reasons I fly SouthWest, even when they're not the cheapest or most convenient, is because I don't feel like I need to watch my back when dealing with them.
Yes.
I've taken ~100 Ryanair flights. It's a bus service. Buses are crap too. Ryanair, like busses, are cheap.
Because everyone bitches about them but everyone still uses them, since after all, they are the cheapest. They just like to hurl rocks from the top of the mountain without actually doing anything productive about it - i.e. taking their money elsewhere.
That's why I never fly with them. Too much BS to waddle through.
You can see their fee schedule at: http://www.ryanair.com/en/fees/ — yes, they charge a fee to even assign you a seat.
(Anecdote: I had a printed boarding pass all crumpled up at the bottom of my bag (they let you check in weeks before your flight, so it had to survive for a while) and my poorly kept pass was basically unreadable by their scanners. The baggage check rep printed a new boarding pass for free (without even asking, since she couldn't exactly scan my home printed and crumpled paper)).
Everyone does that now. Delta, BA, AA, Virgin, etc. I can think of very few airlines that give you free seat selection before check-in.
I don't agree with it, but it is the way things have gone for all airlines. Just like baggage fees on local flights (even though that causes mass delays during boarding since now everyone is trying to show too much into cramp overhead lockers).
That's not an extra, that a "you should have printed the PDF at home" charge.
Just remember that with Ryanair, simple is not an option unless you pay and pay and pay and pay.
Example: Printing boarding passes a few days ahead: not possible. Oh, unless you pay for reserved seats. Otherwise feel free to wait until a few days ahead of departure, remember to check in, or you'll be hit with another charge at checkin.
Source: Traveled w/Ryanair this summer with my family. The whole process was so annoying that I made it a priority not to give them a single € extra, even if that meant spending more than an hour at a slow internet café somewhere to print boarding passes for our flight home.
I've flown with Ryanair plenty of times and, if you are able to ignore the constant bugging with booze/parfums/car rentals onboard and can stand the small seats, they are the probably the best thing that there is.
In any case, I take Aer Lingus for flights between London and Dublin now. They're not considerably more expensive, but they are 100x better, and I don't feel like I'm giving money to a shower of utter bastards.
Prices will go up. No question about it. Since they are making less profit elsewhere they have to make it up.
It's like how when the US passed the Credit CARD Act prices went up on credit cards, and it was harder to get low cost cards for those people who were already able to avoid the add-on fees.