[neonhomer]

I don't understand the issue with paying to choose your seat on the budget airlines. My wife and I recently flew Spirit to and Southwest from our destination in the US. Even after adding bags and seat (we even paid for their big front seats) it was still cheaper than Southwest.

[tomrod]

Economically, no issue. They are price discriminating to their hearts content and letting people get what they want.

Psychologically, it feels like being taken advantage of. No brand loyalty or other customer value to be had. Expect people to abandon in droves when similarly priced travel comes along.

[mseebach]

> Expect people to abandon in droves when similarly priced travel comes along.

I would expect Ryanair to be fine with that. Their business model is that a very large subset of passengers select their flights based on price, and price alone, that price is the only customer value that matters. They are explicitly not investing in fluffy brand loyalty.

I fly a lot on expensive, flexible tickets on legacy carriers, and have status, so I'm reasonably "loyal", and have fast track and lounge access to show for it, but the BS airlines come up with that is supposed to make non-status holders in economy "feel the brand" (despite the objectively sad quality of the hard product) triggers my gag reflex.

[tomrod]

I agree completely.

[babuskov]

I'm actually very loyal to Ryanair because I know I can book late and still get any seat I want (because most people never book their seats).

The only issue I have with RA is that some airports they use are far outside the cities they "cover", so you sometimes need an hour or more (by a train or bus) to get into the actual city.

[maccard]

My issue with it is that it makes it difficult to compare the cost of a flight with a competitor. If i compare a BA flight with a United flight, I know that I'm going to get _roughly_ the same service. With a Ryanair vs BA comparison, I'm not actually sure what the difference is going to be, or how much it will cost me to make them equal.

[koolba]

> If i compare a BA flight with a United flight ...

Make sure you add $20/seat though. A few months back United switched to "Basic Economy" as their lowest option which again does not include carry-on bags (not just checked bags) or picking a seat. For an apples-to-apples you need to upgrade to at least regular economy to start comparing flights with United.

[gsnedders]

BA short-haul's base fares are hand-luggage only and assigned seat only; I believe they're going to expand this to some of their ex-Gatwick long-haul flights (in competition with Norwegian).

[pif]

Exactly the same issue I have with Ikea. I can never find the price of the exposed combination, e.g. for a wardrobe: I don't care what a door or a shelf cost: I need the price of the ensemble in order to compare with competition, and I expect this total price to be exposed in bold! With no easy comparison, no way I'll buy here!

[nukeop]

This is because you used to be able to sit wherever you liked once you boarded the plane, and only premium passengers could get a reserved place. Now they are reserving you a bad place beforehand, so you can't just sit wherever you like, and if you want to change that, you need to pay. What used to be free, is now being charged for, and there is little reason to do so other than "because they can" because it doesn't raise the operating costs.

[rocqua]

If a company raises prices 'because they can' and people keep paying, that is just how markets work.

In some sense, this leads to a better allocation of seats, as it allows those who desire some seats to pay for them, whilst those who have to preference get a cheaper flight. Now, people who used to be fine with the dice-roll of not paying get a worse experience. But this comes with the upside of those who really wanting the seats having a better chance.

[nukeop]

People keep paying because there's no other choice on certain routes, short of driving or taking a bus.

This isn't an upgrade or anything, people who wanted to pay to reserve seats could already do so. You could have also not paid, and picked whatever was available, switch with your neighbors, and so on. Obviously, since Ryan Air figured out that they can extract some extra bucks out of that, you're now assigned a place and can no longer just pick whatever is available once you board. This is a standard rent-seeking behavior with no advantage for the customers.

[icebraining]

This is a standard rent-seeking behavior with no advantage for the customers.

It does if they use the extra income to reduce the ticket price. Which would sound pie-in-the-sky for most other companies, but considering Ryanair's prices, it wouldn't surprise me.

[Symbiote]

I think there's a clear advantage: boarding is faster, as there's a lot less competition (or even argument) over the nicer seats.

Ryanair are fairly clear about what you must pay for when booking, and there are plenty of routes where they have competition from EasyJet, Norwegian etc.

[dazc]

From my experience, people in the UK see the charge for a designated seat as scam, they don't understand the budget flight business model.

Ryanair (not a UK company btw) have been a pioneer in this area with aggressive discounting of basic level airfares but with lots of 'upgrade' options.

[raverbashing]

Well, BA charges for a designated seat in business class among other "tricks" they play (like selling a connection that makes you switch between LCY and LHR)

[isostatic]

The UK press has spent decades telling people about "rip off Britain". There are usually plenty of choices for people willing to pay.

In transport, you can choose between comfort, speed, time, flexibility, reliability, and a few other factors, and make your choice. London to Manchester options on the train have

* Time -- travel by train "offpeak" and save a fortune over peak

* Comfort -- travel by train "peak" and have more space. Travel in First Class and have more space.

* Speed -- travel by London Midland and Northern rather than Virgin and save a fortune

* Flexibility -- book a fixed train and save

In addition to the plethora of options on the train there's also * Fly -- can be faster (depends where you're going, but from west London to West Manchester it's faster), can be cheaper, can be more comfortable (you're guarenteed a seat), tends to be pricey if you want an element of flexibility, not as flexible as the train or car

* Coach - slower, less comfortable, cheaper

* Drive -- very flexible, slower than the train, requires effort, twice the off peak train cost

* Taxi -- not that expensive, especially for a few people

However people complain that "it's too expensive", despite being able to travel from Manchester right now for £20, or in a couple of hours for £12.

[vertex-four]

In practice, however, doing your research is hard - it can take me up to an hour to decide on the best way to travel for a certain event, across multiple booking sites, some of them unknown to the general public (such as TrainSplit). Sometimes it turns out that the best way to travel involves booking three separate journeys, and then I get to worry about delays - nobody will take responsibility for onward travel if you do that, and you may end up stranded in the middle of nowhere. Megabus winds up incredibly pricey - sometimes moreso than the train - on arbitrary days, so I have to keep that in mind. Sometimes flights are actually cheaper than a train, even when booking several weeks in advance, but then there's the worry about public transport at either end properly matching up - and again, a flight delay could cost me the better part of £40 if I booked an advance train ticket rather than a flexible one on the other end.

There's also the fact that long-distance travel in the UK is priced significantly better than short-distance travel. There's been times where I've been able to get to London from a small town for cheaper than it'd cost to get to the nearest city. First class on East Coast used to be priced at a rate where it was cheaper to upgrade (and get food and drinks included) than to get food on the go - on local services, there's often no competition aside from a car, so prices even for standard class can be raised almost arbitrarily, especially if there's any tourist traffic on the line.

Even for long-distance journeys, pick the wrong date or need to be there for the morning, and my options become far, far more limited, and far, far pricier, since we don't have sufficient capacity for peak dates - we barely have capacity for everyday services on some modes of transport - and we have very few overnight services.

Edinburgh to Paris next month - we were stuck with the choices of taking the bus, or flying for 2-3x the price. Train was more expensive than the flight - a remarkably common occurrence, even for travel entirely within the UK. We eventually chose the bus, despite it being a 24 hour journey.

[isostatic]

Yes, putting effort into finding a cheaper method is another option. It's the same with shopping for anything - you could go to 4 different shops and compare them, or you could just take the easy option. You can buy from John Lewis and get a 5 year no quibble guarentee, or you could save 10% and buy online, but have a hassle if it breaks.

Choice is a right pain, but it allows you to choose what's important

Edinburgh to Paris is a long trip - 1360 mile return. That's £600 for a car (HMRC give you 45p per mile, they wouldn't give you that if that was a grossly high amount), plus the cost of the ferry.

I can get a train leaving tomorrow and coming back on Saturday for £400 return, or 30p per mile. I can fly on the same days for £276 return, or 20p per mile. What is a fair price?

Transport is a low margin industry. The fact that some people can travel really cheaply is possible because others are willing to pay more for flexibility. This means those who want flexibility win (London to Edinburgh trains every half hour), and those that want cheap tickets win (12p/mile), and those willing to shop around win (even less than 12p/mile).

What would you change?

[vertex-four]

> What is a fair price?

Given the large amount of people you can place in a large vehicle, one would hope that a private car is significantly more expensive than public transport without having to convince anyone to pay for bizarre things like being able to pick a seat. The fact that it isn't is, in fact, utterly bizarre.

In the case of the dates we have to travel for a conference, the bus is £150 pp, and flights are £300+ pp - with no flexibility whatsoever in either case. Trains come out to £400 pp or more, which is bizarre given the passenger density of long-distance rail.

Anyway, the point was, the cheap option only exists if you know how to look for it - it's really, really not obvious, and the only reason I know how to do it is that public transport is my full-time hobby. And then once you pick the cheap option and suffer a delay - which is almost guaranteed to happen on a regular enough basis to make the cheap option actually more expensive in many cases, given the state of the country's transport infrastructure - you're stuck on your own, because we have no concept of a joined-up multimodal journey in this country, unlike the rest of Europe. Hell, if you go for the cheap option, staff may even treat you with suspicion and assume you're lying about what your ticket allows you to do, and what you're entitled to.

If you go to the National Rail Enquiries site today and ask for a ticket from London to Manchester tomorrow, you'll be sold a completely non-flexible ticket totalling about £100 if it matches up with your schedule, or up to £169 otherwise. Compare this to e.g. Switzerland, well-known for having an exceptionally high cost of living - where I can book a train from Zurich to Geneva for £54 tomorrow with nothing but a quick google search for "trains zurich to geneva", or £24 if I want to travel in a couple of days. (And on much more comfortable trains, I might add.) There's no need to worry about booking weeks in advance or poring over whether the bus or the plane will be cheaper or whether there's a split ticket that works - the infrastructure exists to allow fast, cheap, somewhat flexible travel on comfortable services.

[isostatic]

The problem is the marginal cost of transporting is very low. The train industry is there to extract the maximum amount of money from those willing to pay, while allowing those not willing to pay the chance to travel.

A walk up simple London to Manchester ticket is £86 return, unless you're travelling before 9:30am. Those willing to buy from https://trainsplit.com/ can get a return for £47, or buy the tickets manually and it drops to £39. That's just like those who know going to Aldi will be cheaper than shopping at harrods.

That "slow train" which costs £20 each way, in the peak, and is still quicker than a car.

The money made from open tickets is pumped back into the rail industry to subsidise rural branches in Cornwall. It also subsdises the frequency, where trains are running with say 20 people per carriage (with 80 seats), but are running every 20 minutes. Some people are willing to pay a lot for that frequency - hence the reason they sell £500 returns.

I would like to see thetrainline shut down, but they advertise their inferior product heavily and people use it.

[dazc]

I often hire a car to travel long distance in the UK since trains are so expensive and with flights you really need to book very far ahead to get a decent price. With flights also I never find a convenient outward and return trip that will not involve staying overnight.

[isostatic]

And that's a great choice. They're door-to-door (if you have the car dropped off at home), and costs are easily understood too - cost of hiring the car and cost of the petrol. This can be as low as 10p/mile, plus say £60 for the car for the day

The downsides of hiring the car

- time isn't very useful while you're driving (compared to on a train/plane where you can work, or read, or watch netflix)

- usually slower - especially with city centre to city centre

- parking stress

- Driving is tiring, and more dangerous. A 3 hour drive, then an 8 hour day, then another 3 hour drive.

Choice is wonderful.

Ideally I'd have something that costs 5p per mile, runs every 5 minutes, is is door to door, and I travel on my own sofa with 300mbit wifi, power, and waiter service.

However as that's not possible I, as a consumer, can choose what's important for me for a given journey. Sometimes that's the train, sometimes it's the plane, sometimes it's a coach, sometimes I'll drive

[mehrdadn]

> they don't understand the budget flight business model.

Does letting you choose your seat increase their costs? If not, then I can see why people see it as a scam.

[kgwgk]

You have the choice between a cheaper (no seat-choosing) flight and a more expensive (seat-choosing) flight. If everyone could choose the price would be somewhere in between and at least some people would be worse off (those who really didn’t care about choosing and would be paying more now and those who would be paying less to choose but now would have less choices).

[nathcun]

they may be offsetting a cost elsewhere by doing this. If they wanted to make the same money but allow people to choose their seats they could raise ticket prices for everybody (which wouldn't be fair on those who really don't care about their seat allocation).

[mehrdadn]

Yeah I get what they're doing (and I'm sure other people do too); I'm just saying I see why people feel it's a rip-off nonetheless.

[rusk]

No but it's a possible source of additional revenue.

[dazc]

The cheapest price tickets are often subsidized by the extra charges that some people are willing to pay. I don't see this as a scam.

[xab9]

The issue is that it's entirely possible to pay more for the seats than for the flight itself. I myself find this an issue, but ymmv.

[nathcun]

I'm the same. I feel like they're going to make this money some way, at least this way I have an option in paying it.

[rusk]

Southwest is an interesting comparison actually.

Aren't they a budget airline that prides themselves on being friendly as well?

[ryan-c]

Southwest (I fly with them a lot) isn't a "budget" airline in the sense that Allegiant or Spirit are.

They don't do assigned seating at all - you pick an available seat when you board. Boarding position is generally assigned based on when you check in, though you can pay extra to board earlier. They include two checked bags per person and standard carry-on allowances in the price of the ticket. No "gotcha" fees.

One similarity is that there are a lot of larger airports that they don't service, instead using other nearby airports.

They're inexpensive if you book well in advance, but last minute fares can be very expensive.

[mseebach]

EasyJet and especially Norwegian are "premium Ryanair" products. They are rarely as cheap as Ryanair, but still cheaper than legacy. The hard product is pretty comparable, but the whole experience feels a bit more toned down and less hysterical (and a lot less yellow).