Queue for random seat allocation Ryan air?

[KnottyKnitting]

Anyone travelled with Ryan air in the past few weeks who has chosen random seat allocation ( check in 24 hours before the flight) but not been allowed to print/ download a boarding card so having to get one at the airport? Or being told that they have to get a seat at the gate?

Never bother with paying extra for a seat so have always got random seat allocation. I now see that some people have had problems with downloading a boarding card and have had to queue up at the airport for a printed one.

Was this a random glitch before Christmas or is it now their standard policy? I wouldn't use them but they are soooo much cheaper than other airlines( even with paying for seats and bags- which we never usually do.)

Any recent info would be greatly appreciated.

I have travelled with them three times since Christmas, always random allocation but was able to download boarding passes.

Thanks Foodie- which airport did you fly from and to?

Dublin - Gatwick
Dublin - Edinburgh
Dublin - Salzburg

I thought it was only in Albania that you had to print boarding cards? Rest are digital - I flew to Alicante with them last week with random seat allocated and boarding passes were digital

A friend told me about a problem downloading boarding cards before our recent trip to Dublin. I'm the article she sent me ryanair denied it was a thing. I put it down to people trying to check in before they were allowed, so it seeming like they had to pay.

However, I've only just realised a possible link: there was a woman on our outbound flight who did not seem to have a seat. She had just been given the seat at the airport, but it appeared it was occupied. I don't know how it ended because she and the staff walked away from me but... You've made me think!

It wasn't a random glitch — it was Ryanair being CFs.

The point was that if you didn't pay for the seat, you had to queue up at the check-in counter to get your boarding pass, which they could perfectly well have shown you in the app. This process was free — so, not to be confused with the situation where if you forget to check in altogether you have to go to the desk and pay £50 or whatever for a boarding pass — but it was still a CF move. I think they even told you what your randomly allocated seat number was.

I assume they hoped that if they made it sufficient of a pain to do this (ie, making you queue up), people would say "screw that" and cough up a tenner for a seat.

My guess is that scaring people with "OMG you might get the middle seat" hasn't been working as well for them as it used to, because passengers have worked out that if you choose random allocation 12 hours before the flight leaves, you actually don't get given the middle seat very often. This is because most people (a) travel in pairs and (b) want to sit next to each other, so the most common paid-for seat selection is aisle/middle or middle/window. In fact the seats left for the cheapskates are less likely to be middle ones.

Anyway, from what I can tell, this bit of CFery may have been quietly dropped. The various online travel pages and groups went apeshit about it in the first week of December and no longer seem to be going apeshit.