Again these are anecdotes. I've certainly done that too but I've also paid $200+ for a short hop on Ryainair when it was the cheapest option, picked an extra le

Again these are anecdotes. I've certainly done that too but I've also paid $200+ for a short hop on Ryainair when it was the cheapest option, picked an extra legroom seat and checked a bag too. The point is that expensive fares and ancillary fees subsidize cheap loss-leader fares. It's a complex system and you have to consider it as a whole instead of looking just at the subsidized loss-leaders when making a cross-mode comparison. I would consider a fair comparison point to be for a given flight: 1. Sum total spent on airfare by all passengers on a flight - PLUS. 2. Sum total spent on ancillary services by all passengers on a flight. 3. Divided by the number of passengers on a flight. And average it out across all flights between the city pair over a year to eliminate the effects of seasonality and timing. Without having access to Ryanair's revenue management data this is the best we can do.