Sounds like he was contradicting himself a bit there?Asked a Ryanair pilot about this before and he just laughed. Said it has nothing to do with balance or safety of an aircraft.
...
He said only very very rarely does seating of passengers become an issue on certain planes
Planes have been designed to fly with any distribution of people. What next with Ryanair - weighing people, and keeping the heavier people on the flight evenly distributed?
Yeah. That happened the time I took an Aer Arann flight from Inverin to the Arann Islands a few years back. It was a small c. 8-10 seater (Cessna?) plane. And they had to arrange the bags carefully too and even send some on a later flight.You should try flying to the Aran Islands. They weigh you before you board to get the balance right! I know it's a small plane for 5 passengers but I guess it's the same reason.
Yeah - I'm sure that serving the customer by having flights take off and land on time has nothing to do with it and that every other airline grounds plans when the weather is a bit inclement...it prob has somethign to do with saving fuel - u know the way ryanair are. i would never again travel with them i dont care how cheap they are . i dont like their service, i hate the way they start saying last call for a flight when its not leaving for another hour and their pilots will take off and land during any kind of weather just to get their on time bonus. never again
Last weekend on the way back from Lubeck with Ryanair we were not allowed to sit in the first six rows nor the last four rows of the plane due to "balance" issues. This has been Ryanair's excuse for practically every flight that I have flown with them. However on this occassion there was a problem with the plane and after about an hour we had to disembark because the pilot was having a problem with the hydraulics. Eventually the problem with the hydrolics was sorted and we were allowed back on the plane after about an hour. However as we were boarding we were told to sit anywhere on the plane so that we could take off as soon as possible. How come there was a problem with "balance" when we first boarded the plane but no problem when we boarded the second time?
I've been told (by someone i believe actually does know the truth) that The reason they do it is indeed profiteering. Ryanair have been chargeing for seat selection, but cant get enough people to take it up to make as much as they would like. By making the number of available seats as low as they can on a flight, they make it more likely that families and couples will have to split up into different seats when they get on the flight.
This in turn "encourages" these customers and people who are watching them, to pay extra to select their seats the next time in order to make sure they can sit together. Therefore making Ryanair more money.
Uh minion, Ryanair do not do pre-boarding seat selection... I think you might be thinking of Aer Lingus and FlyBe and several other operators flights with empty front rows because they charge extra for the privilege of sitting there.
If a flight is underbooked, Ryanair can close off a number of rows and boost their occupancy percentage & keep investors happy.
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