> They've never pretended to be anything else other than a budget airline where any extras or conveniences will cost you extra
This part is not objectionable - it's the lack of transparency and attempts to trick you into paying additional fees that are worse than normal. Take booking.com as a comparison. They are very up front about costs and your expected costs for a stay booked via them will normally match up with what you see on the checkout costs and your actual final costs. That isn't the case for Ryanair
Everyone has a first time travelling with Ryanair and some number of them will fall into this trap because they didn't know. This would be fine if people were intentionally making the choice to trade off the inconvenience (?) of checking in online vs at the airport but what % of people paying that fee did that? It would be easy for Ryanair to provide a more transparent customer experience here.
This part is not objectionable - it's the lack of transparency and attempts to trick you into paying additional fees that are worse than normal. Take booking.com as a comparison. They are very up front about costs and your expected costs for a stay booked via them will normally match up with what you see on the checkout costs and your actual final costs. That isn't the case for Ryanair
> The 'not printing a boarding ticket' before you travel and being charged for it at the airport has been around since 2009: https://theguardian.com/money/2009/may/14/ryanair-online-che... so it's hard for people to feign ignorance of it.
Everyone has a first time travelling with Ryanair and some number of them will fall into this trap because they didn't know. This would be fine if people were intentionally making the choice to trade off the inconvenience (?) of checking in online vs at the airport but what % of people paying that fee did that? It would be easy for Ryanair to provide a more transparent customer experience here.