4 ms·

> having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one I’m not from the US and have never flown any of the airlines being discussed here. I’ve never heard

> having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one I’m not from the US and have never flown any of the airlines being discussed here. I’ve never heard of this, is there some YouTube videos you can point me to.

Symbiote 6mo ago
I can't find videos. The cabin crew stand at the front of the plane, and either play a recording or make an announcement saying you can buy a lottery scratchcard for €2 or whatever, with some of the money going to charity. They then walk down the plane "scratchards? scratchcards?" They repeat this with a collection for charity (no scratchcard), a promoted drink, and some sort of food. I think this is mostly unique to Ryanair (in Europe), I don't remember Wizz Air, Norwegian or EasyJet doing this. Part of Ryanair's marketing is to make the experience worse than it needs to be, so you know you're saving money.
- thrownthatway 6mo ago
  Haha what! That’s wild.
- rob74 6mo ago
  Yes, Ryanair is the undisputed leader in finding new creative ways to take advantage of their captive audience and saving a few pennies here and there (e.g. I'm not aware of other low-cost carriers that have advertising on the overhead bins or put the safety instructions on seat-back stickers because it's marginally cheaper than using cards for that). Not to mention only flying from airports in the middle of nowhere to save airport fees. ...while other low-cost carriers try to distinguish themselves by not being quite as bad as Ryanair.
  - roryirvine 6mo ago
    They don't have to actually sell a single scratchcard for it to be worthwhile for them - the whole point is to cheapen the experience. They have an entire theory of marketing based on people believing that "if it feels cheap, it is cheap", and so they deliberately build in a bunch of annoyances (scratchcards, arbitrary baggage restrictions, checkout hoop-jumping, endless PR about removing toilets or running standing-only flights) which serve to make their service seem as cheap and nasty as possible. And it works: some people simply ignore the nasty aspects, others are willing to put up with them in order to get a bargain, and yet others actually take pride in wading through the crap - usually expressing it in "I beat the system" terms. And here we are talking about it on a barely-related thread - carrying their marketing message further!
    - abustamam 6mo ago
      It's kinda refreshing to see a company sell the illusion of bargain bin instead of selling the illusion of luxury like many other companies!
      - Symbiote 6mo ago
        You can see it in action on https://x.com/ryanair https://x.com/ryanair
  - virgilp 6mo ago
    I kinda' like Ryanair as lowcost airline? They're fairly efficient (boarding, serving etc), they _actually fly_ the advertised flights (with relatively few exceptions), and the food is reasonably priced. During COVID they would just give your money back, no shenanigans like "they're in our company wallet". Sure they have their quirks but they don't seem to go out of their way to deceive you, they're pretty open about what you pay and what you get. Now Wizzair is "mostly not an airline" for me, because they have all the negative traits I hinted above. E.g. they'll happily advertise flights they have no intention of flying, make refunds hard, are as misleading as they can be about pricing, make it impossible to checkin online a few hours before the flight so that you have to pay their high fees, etc. I wouldn't want the Ryanair experience for long-haul flights; but for short 2-3h ones within Europe, they're fine, I'm always considering them. Not for the perceived cheapness, but for the "I expect them to actually fly AND be on time" part.
    - notahacker 6mo ago
      > During COVID they would just give your money back, no shenanigans like "they're in our company wallet" Generally I agree with your view that Ryanair is decent at what it does, but COVID refunds happened only after the regulator stepped in to threaten them over their original "no refunds" and then "refund in the form of a voucher, with a short expiry date on it" policies actually being unlawful, and even allowing for the scale of its operations it received more complaints to the UK CAA than anyone else about refund handling during COVID.
      - virgilp 6mo ago
        In Romania I think they just gave back the money (or maybe it was on a voucher with "if you don't use the voucher by date X, we'll refund the money"). which is in stark contrast with how other low-cost airlines like WizzAir behaved. Perhaps it was regional policy; or perhaps it was due to their previous interactions with UK regulators? But for me, they gained a lot of respect for them back then (whereas WizzAir is on the "only if absolutely no other choice" list - and I think I only used it once, for a business trip where it had a good direct flight AND I didn't care if I actually made it to the destination, or if I got stranded there for a few days - since the company would've been paying)
  - extraduder_ire 6mo ago
    The safety card thing, and lack of seatback pockets is mainly to speed up turnaround after everyone's off the plane. (planes only make money when they're in the air) After they made this change years ago, they said so explicitly in their marketing around continuous improvement.
- RugnirViking 6mo ago
  ive never experienced that on ryanair? I fly it pretty regularly, its just the food cart, and even that feels halfhearted, I see maybe 3% of customers actually getting something, so most of the time they dont even bother asking, just roll right on by unless you go out of your way to ask for something. The only bad upsell they do is in the booking process. Are you sure you don't want a hire car?
  - Symbiote 6mo ago
    They state they sell scratchcards on their own website: https://corporate.ryanair.com/about-us/giving-back/ https://corporate.ryanair.com/about-us/giving-back/ If you search "Ryanair scratchcards" you'll see recent news articles about them. I've used Ryanair once in the previous 5 years, so my experience might be out of date. There was a time my job was taking me to "holiday" destinations for meetings, back then I used Ryanair more often as they often had the only direct route. Maybe the scratchcard sales are more common on those flights.
    - RugnirViking 6mo ago
      googling it it seems like its still a thing. I reckon it must be on certain specific flights, maybe ones that are likely to attract a certain crowd, liverpool to malaga sort of flights maybe. Ive definitely not heard about it, but I do usually fly the same routes so
- altairprime 6mo ago
  Sounds like all US airlines, honestly. No shame, no pushback, just endless pressure to spend.
miki123211 6mo ago
Ryanair (EU) also does this, but the US is indeed pretty obnoxious here. United even has commercials before the safety video; combined with the "if you're watching explicit content on this flight, please mind the children" announcement, those flights onestly honestly felt pretty surreal to me.
- kelnos 6mo ago
  United has gotten worse and worse with this. The ads after (not before) the safety video, and also before each movie you watch (and it's usually the same ads before every movie). A few years ago the ads were skippable, but not anymore. The flight attendant also makes an announcement about the United-branded credit cards near the beginning of the flight. But this is really just an illustration of what the top-poster of this thread said: flying people places doesn't make enough money, so they have to pursue other revenue streams.
  - cozzyd 6mo ago
    The annoying thing is... I already have a United card :) (and being able to board early and bring a normal size carry-on on basic economy is one of the best perks).
  - xattt 6mo ago
    > flying people places doesn't make enough money Does it not make enough money for viability, or does it not make enough money for sociopath types in C-suites? If it’s the latter, there will never be enough money for them and will keep pushing increasingly absurd customer-milking initiatives.
    - jjmarr 6mo ago
      There's not a single major US airline that is profitable on charging passengers for tickets and flying them to destinations. United is the closest, with only a 0.04¢ loss on every seat mile.[1] the other airlines lose 1-2¢/mile. The jets are a loss leader for credit cards. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-airlines-lost-money-flying-193432789.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-airlines-lost-money-flyin... [1] There's two metrics airlines report: Cost per Available Seat Mile and Passenger Revenue per Available Seat Mile. This is the cost/revenue for flying a seat, which may or may not be occupied by a person, to a destination. If the seat is empty it gets $0 in revenue but still costs money. You can calculate the profit made from selling tickets per seat mile by PRASM - CASM.

Symbiote 6mo ago

I can't find videos. The cabin crew stand at the front of the plane, and either play a recording or make an announcement saying you can buy a lottery scratchcard for €2 or whatever, with some of the money going to charity. They then walk down the plane "scratchards? scratchcards?" They repeat this with a collection for charity (no scratchcard), a promoted drink, and some sort of food. I think this is mostly unique to Ryanair (in Europe), I don't remember Wizz Air, Norwegian or EasyJet doing this. Part of Ryanair's marketing is to make the experience worse than it needs to be, so you know you're saving money.

thrownthatway 6mo ago
Haha what! That’s wild.
rob74 6mo ago
Yes, Ryanair is the undisputed leader in finding new creative ways to take advantage of their captive audience and saving a few pennies here and there (e.g. I'm not aware of other low-cost carriers that have advertising on the overhead bins or put the safety instructions on seat-back stickers because it's marginally cheaper than using cards for that). Not to mention only flying from airports in the middle of nowhere to save airport fees. ...while other low-cost carriers try to distinguish themselves by not being quite as bad as Ryanair.
- roryirvine 6mo ago
  They don't have to actually sell a single scratchcard for it to be worthwhile for them - the whole point is to cheapen the experience. They have an entire theory of marketing based on people believing that "if it feels cheap, it is cheap", and so they deliberately build in a bunch of annoyances (scratchcards, arbitrary baggage restrictions, checkout hoop-jumping, endless PR about removing toilets or running standing-only flights) which serve to make their service seem as cheap and nasty as possible. And it works: some people simply ignore the nasty aspects, others are willing to put up with them in order to get a bargain, and yet others actually take pride in wading through the crap - usually expressing it in "I beat the system" terms. And here we are talking about it on a barely-related thread - carrying their marketing message further!
  - abustamam 6mo ago
    It's kinda refreshing to see a company sell the illusion of bargain bin instead of selling the illusion of luxury like many other companies!
    - Symbiote 6mo ago
      You can see it in action on https://x.com/ryanair https://x.com/ryanair
- virgilp 6mo ago
  I kinda' like Ryanair as lowcost airline? They're fairly efficient (boarding, serving etc), they _actually fly_ the advertised flights (with relatively few exceptions), and the food is reasonably priced. During COVID they would just give your money back, no shenanigans like "they're in our company wallet". Sure they have their quirks but they don't seem to go out of their way to deceive you, they're pretty open about what you pay and what you get. Now Wizzair is "mostly not an airline" for me, because they have all the negative traits I hinted above. E.g. they'll happily advertise flights they have no intention of flying, make refunds hard, are as misleading as they can be about pricing, make it impossible to checkin online a few hours before the flight so that you have to pay their high fees, etc. I wouldn't want the Ryanair experience for long-haul flights; but for short 2-3h ones within Europe, they're fine, I'm always considering them. Not for the perceived cheapness, but for the "I expect them to actually fly AND be on time" part.
  - notahacker 6mo ago
    > During COVID they would just give your money back, no shenanigans like "they're in our company wallet" Generally I agree with your view that Ryanair is decent at what it does, but COVID refunds happened only after the regulator stepped in to threaten them over their original "no refunds" and then "refund in the form of a voucher, with a short expiry date on it" policies actually being unlawful, and even allowing for the scale of its operations it received more complaints to the UK CAA than anyone else about refund handling during COVID.
    - virgilp 6mo ago
      In Romania I think they just gave back the money (or maybe it was on a voucher with "if you don't use the voucher by date X, we'll refund the money"). which is in stark contrast with how other low-cost airlines like WizzAir behaved. Perhaps it was regional policy; or perhaps it was due to their previous interactions with UK regulators? But for me, they gained a lot of respect for them back then (whereas WizzAir is on the "only if absolutely no other choice" list - and I think I only used it once, for a business trip where it had a good direct flight AND I didn't care if I actually made it to the destination, or if I got stranded there for a few days - since the company would've been paying)
- extraduder_ire 6mo ago
  The safety card thing, and lack of seatback pockets is mainly to speed up turnaround after everyone's off the plane. (planes only make money when they're in the air) After they made this change years ago, they said so explicitly in their marketing around continuous improvement.
RugnirViking 6mo ago
ive never experienced that on ryanair? I fly it pretty regularly, its just the food cart, and even that feels halfhearted, I see maybe 3% of customers actually getting something, so most of the time they dont even bother asking, just roll right on by unless you go out of your way to ask for something. The only bad upsell they do is in the booking process. Are you sure you don't want a hire car?
- Symbiote 6mo ago
  They state they sell scratchcards on their own website: https://corporate.ryanair.com/about-us/giving-back/ https://corporate.ryanair.com/about-us/giving-back/ If you search "Ryanair scratchcards" you'll see recent news articles about them. I've used Ryanair once in the previous 5 years, so my experience might be out of date. There was a time my job was taking me to "holiday" destinations for meetings, back then I used Ryanair more often as they often had the only direct route. Maybe the scratchcard sales are more common on those flights.
  - RugnirViking 6mo ago
    googling it it seems like its still a thing. I reckon it must be on certain specific flights, maybe ones that are likely to attract a certain crowd, liverpool to malaga sort of flights maybe. Ive definitely not heard about it, but I do usually fly the same routes so
altairprime 6mo ago
Sounds like all US airlines, honestly. No shame, no pushback, just endless pressure to spend.

miki123211 6mo ago

Ryanair (EU) also does this, but the US is indeed pretty obnoxious here. United even has commercials before the safety video; combined with the "if you're watching explicit content on this flight, please mind the children" announcement, those flights onestly honestly felt pretty surreal to me.

kelnos 6mo ago
United has gotten worse and worse with this. The ads after (not before) the safety video, and also before each movie you watch (and it's usually the same ads before every movie). A few years ago the ads were skippable, but not anymore. The flight attendant also makes an announcement about the United-branded credit cards near the beginning of the flight. But this is really just an illustration of what the top-poster of this thread said: flying people places doesn't make enough money, so they have to pursue other revenue streams.
- cozzyd 6mo ago
  The annoying thing is... I already have a United card :) (and being able to board early and bring a normal size carry-on on basic economy is one of the best perks).
- xattt 6mo ago
  > flying people places doesn't make enough money Does it not make enough money for viability, or does it not make enough money for sociopath types in C-suites? If it’s the latter, there will never be enough money for them and will keep pushing increasingly absurd customer-milking initiatives.
  - jjmarr 6mo ago
    There's not a single major US airline that is profitable on charging passengers for tickets and flying them to destinations. United is the closest, with only a 0.04¢ loss on every seat mile.[1] the other airlines lose 1-2¢/mile. The jets are a loss leader for credit cards. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-airlines-lost-money-flying-193432789.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/big-airlines-lost-money-flyin... [1] There's two metrics airlines report: Cost per Available Seat Mile and Passenger Revenue per Available Seat Mile. This is the cost/revenue for flying a seat, which may or may not be occupied by a person, to a destination. If the seat is empty it gets $0 in revenue but still costs money. You can calculate the profit made from selling tickets per seat mile by PRASM - CASM.