Selecting a seat when booking a flight has become a total habit of mine. Whenever I’m presented with the seat map, I go ahead and pick where I want to sit. Luckily my frequent flyer status with British Airways means it’s usually free.
When I fly Aer Lingus or Ryanair I also select a seat, which means paying for it. Recently I made a flight booking with Ryanair and was going to select a seat when I realised how silly that would be.
Why Is That Silly?
Quite frankly, it was going to be a complete waste of money. I booked a ticket on the new service from Kerry to Dublin and when presented with the seat map, I started looking at where I might like to sit.
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- This is the seat map I was presented with.
After a minute, it struck me that paying between €4 and as much as €20 for a seat was a total waste of money. The flight cost €19.99 and really, how many people are going to be on this flight? I decided to move along without selecting a seat.
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- Uh oh!
Of course, that prompted the Ryanair website to throw up a number of warnings. You can’t check-in online until 24 hours before the flight without selecting a seat but I’ll cope. Since Ryanair usually assign middle seats to cheapskates who don’t pay for a seat, I’m ready for it. However since the flight will be lightly loaded, I’m certain I will be moving to a window.
Overall Thoughts
It’s very weird for me not to have a seat assigned well in advance of a flight. In this case, it’s totally silly to spend the extra cash on this, and so I have not.
What happened on the actual flight itself? Did they allocate me a middle seat on an empty plane or did I get a normal seat for the flight? You can find out right here in the review.
What do you think of Ryanair’s seat prices? Do you pay or not? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.
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Featured image via Ryanair.
With that many seats open, a wise choice. Having said that…when I fly Southwest in the US I always buy the Early Bird check-in as I like to have a real choice with their open seating. Then again, most times I’m flying WN on a connection for at least a 3-4 hour itinerary. But in May flying STL-MKE-STL (1 hour plus each way) I opted for the Early Bird anyway which was a wise choice as my return MKE-STL was continuing on to Phoenix (major hotspot) and it was quite a full flight. I sat near the back to let… Read more »
Very true, you usually only hear about the people who are not courteous. You know, I’ve never flown with Southwest. They do a fantastic job and have loads of fans, but you never really hear about them. They just do what they do, do it well and get on with it. And make money! I think that’s a very good thing indeed.
I’ve flown I think at least 20 times on Ryanair and never paid for a seat since I figure most Ryanair flights are less than 2 hours so I’m ready for anything. I can’t recall ever being stuck in a middle seat either.
That’s good to know! I remember people reporting that if they didn’t buy I seat, they got sat in a middle seat all the time. I’ll see when it comes time for my flight and report back. Thanks for that!
As if there are no tall people in the world. Seat selection is needed for tall people. The random seat will never go to the seat with additional space. So keep your “silly” for yourself and think again.
Of course the random seat won’t go to the ones with additional space. Some tall people don’t even choose those seats… the point is, with 171 of 189 seats being identical, why would you pay for any of those? That would be silly.