has anyone flown with Ryanair since they introduced alloacted seating?

[Hersetta]

I am a regular ryanair flyer - my Mum lives in Spain and we go to visit 3 or 4 times a year and have in the past have always purchased priority boarding. However ,we have our first trip this week since allocated seating has been introduced.

I have just printed off my boarding cards and paid extra to reserve specific seats but notice that my boarding cards say other Q.

Do people keep to their seat allocations - or might I find people sitting in our seats - I am travelling alone with a 6 yr old and a 2 yr old so we don't get anywhere particularly quickly hence always purchasing priority boarding and am getting stressed about being towards the back of the Queue and then finding someone in our seats.

thanks

I'm ryanair crew and the allocating seating IMO is amazing, hope this makes sense the cabin is now split into 3 sections
1-rows 1-5
2-rows 6-28
3-rows 29-33
The crew don't handle priority etc but as I understand it section 1&2 are automatically priority along with rows 16/17 (emergence exits.)
In my experience if someone is sat in your seat the crew will sort in out, normally someone not properly looking at the seat numbers.
It really does work! Hope that makes sense!

Sorry about the spelling mistakes.

I flew with Ryanair in Feb and yes, people kept to their allocated seats. It was all quite civilised!

Just checked the terms and conditions and unfortunately it's not the whole of section 3 which automatically receive priority boarding just the last 2 rows

Lovely so relieved to hear that - we have reserved row 30 both ways.

Sounds like the priority Q should be much smaller than previously which is good. Glad to hear that people kept to their allocations.

I've just tried to check in for a flight and found that there is now free allocated seating - great. The only trouble is you can only choose the free option if you check in 7 days or less before your flight, meaning that I can't check in for my return flight (in 2 weeks) without paying for seat allocation! I've never paid for this and don't intend to start now, but I'm really annoyed at the enforced inconvenience of having to check in whilst on holiday. Has anyone else experienced this?

I saw that when I checked in but as I have paid to reserve a seat i can check in 30 days in advance. I think if I was going away for longer than a week I would shell out for a seat reservation to avoid this issue - but where we usually holiday, there would be no chance of getting anything printed. Unfortunately, if you choose not to pay that is the drawback.

I do choose not to pay, not least because I think it's Ryanair's insidious way of trying to force people into paying for something they would otherwise choose not to! As you say, clearly there are people who can't print things off while they're away and will have no other choice. Ryanair would seem to be exploiting this.

surely there are internet cafes (with printers) pretty much everywhere these days?

Well maybe, maybe not - if I was in deepest rural France I'm not sure I would feel that confident, and I can't think of anything more dull than being somewhere unfamiliar and having to hunt out an internet cafe just to print out a bloody boarding pass! But anyway, I've just heard back from our hotel that it's no problem at all to print our passes so up yours Ryanair, I won't be paying your extra charges!

It wouldn't need to be dull though - could be combined with a trip somewhere interesting! If you're away for more than 7 days anywhere, however rural, surely you wouldn't just stay in one place all the time?

Looking for internet cafes on holiday is a massive hassle, especially these days now that so many people have WiFi-enabled phones/tablets/laptops, so internet cafes are harder to find away from big cities.

If you google 'internet cafe' plus your destination it gives you a list of places ranked by distance with a link to google's directions to them - how much of a hassle can that be?

If you're self-catering then you're most likely going to be shopping somewhere big enough to have one, & if you're in a hotel then as Indiestarr found they can do it for you

The later you leave it the less choice of seat you'll have anyway & the seat charge is a lot less than eg baggage.

yes I saw that- so if you DONT pay you have to bloody print off boarding passes when on holiday FFS

so question: if you JUST do online check in, will a parenht and kids get seated togeher or randonly spread over the plane???

thanks

I do prefer this new system, despite the further fleecing of passengers - but both times I've flown with Ryanair in allocated seating mode the flight was late to depart because it takes so much longer to board people. Instead of getting on and just sitting down wherever is closest, people are traipsing up and down looking for seat 33C, and of course you can't get past someone in an aisle while you're still holding your cabin baggage - it wasn't good.

When we did it back in April for the first time since the new system started, it allocated us a group of three - just what we wanted.

Our return was one week later but it immediately moved us to the online check-in for that flight and I was able to print all the boarding passes off in one go, even though the return flight wasn't (at that point) for another three weeks.