I just flew from Bournemouth to Alicante on Ryanair for £50. A similar flight in the US (DC to Miami, for example) would be easily 5x that, possibly 7-8x. The dark patterns took me about 10min to click through. Doing the math, that means my time would have to be worth $1500/hr which is higher than the take-home (not billable) of senior partners at law firms.

Ryanair has severely improved my life, especially for my fellow sun-deprived Northern Europeans.

[1] https://investor.ryanair.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ryan...

Wonder if that could be a YouTube Channel

You go through what seems the entire check-in process, you get what seems like a summary at the end, with a link to a UK government site where you need to go next to get a travel authorization, I spend an hour doing that, finally finish that, I show up to the airport the next morning to be told I'm not checked in, having to pay a hefty fee to do a late check-in for each of my five passengers. The staff at the airport isn't really Ryanair's, so recourse there. (As if having real Ryanair staff would have made a difference.)

Same trip, coming back, we wait in the central terminal building until our gate is published. We go over to the gate, one of our passengers being in a wheelchair, needing an elevator, which are out of service. Friendly airport staff help us with the long detour to get to our gate. By now the doors are closed, we missed our flight. Again, having to pay a hefty fee to rebook for each of my five passengers. This is Ryanair staff, still no recourse. (But plenty of contempt.)

I admit defeat, but my wife is still motivated to talk to customer support. This is months ago, I don't think that went anywhere either. They're mostly impenetrable.

I don't mind their baggage policies, it's a known thing that there's upsales every step of the way, that's baked in by now (pretty much across the industry). But there's still plenty deep-dark patterns left.

Thank goodness that we can vote with our feet, right, and just don't buy from them anymore. But guess what, we booked another flight for next month :)

And I’ve saved thousands of pounds in flights around Europe over the years so can’t really complain

If regular lines would care to offer similar connections, I would gladly pay a bit more.

I don't think this is a mistake, but something malicous clearly thought through.

From where I stand, it’s not fair to charge the hell out of people who fall for these tricks while giving steep discounts to the ones who don’t. Maybe there’s a “fool me once” aspect to Ryanair’s shenanigans, so at least their impact might be limited somehow.

- [1] https://youtu.be/Id-zzOGnN6A (Website part at 1:42 calling out the insurance example).

https://unhook.app/

It’s a polarizing idea, but frankly it’s what the world moves too and seem to work on the market. Some people are lazy or don’t have time and pay more money and some people have less time and dig through dark patterns, collect coupons or utilize ramp up subsidizing.

All those people that actually "work" through it will have less of a prime as if these patterns wouldn’t exist.

The question still remains would the world be a better place without these patterns,as it wastes time and acts against user intent.

It’s just a fascinating question to me, because a lot of things are not as simple as they seem of the first glance.

Clicking "Try now" in fact just signs you up for Uber One. So I suppose you are, technically, trying it. For money.

Dirty. I'm Australian and I'm sure that wouldn't be legal.

    After studying the website we decided it was best
    to pay priority boarding so we'd sit three abreast
    (three abreast, that's the best)
    And of course we'd all have luggage, so that's an extra cost
    And then we paid insurance in case our cases might get lost

The website reflects their corporate attitude, which i think is okay.

Unfortunately, they're often the only option from Dublin->wherever with reasonable times; unless I want to go at five in the morning or something I am stuck with them.

Yes, there are instances where travel insurance makes sense or may be practically a requirement. Health and/or evacuation insurance for foreign travel and/or cruising may be practically a necessity. You don’t want to be paying tens of thousands of dollars when you need a helicopter to take you off your cruise ship to a hospital.

But if your primary reason for purchasing insurance is insuring yourself against a trip that has to be skipped or modified last minute, you can probably skip it.

The way I insure against these sort of things:

- Buying hotel rooms that are not prepaid and refundable up until the day before check-in

- Paying attention to airline policies. Sure, my United airlines fare isn’t refundable, but if I cancel the flights I get all the money back in flight credits I can use within 6 months.

- Rental cars, same deal as hotels. They’re easy to book with no payment up front.

- Use a good travel credit card with its own trip insurance perks (usually not as comprehensive)

Do I pay more to book flexible like this? Yeah, but I can also keep my money gaining interest until the day of the trip. And the thing about travel insurance is that you still have to deal with the claims process if you need to use it.