To put people who may not know Ryanair in context: is a low-cost Irish airline that operates in Europe. You can get round trip flights starting at EUR 0.01. His CEO is a very controversial person who has been on the press for suggesting aggressive measures to make air travel even cheaper, like run flights where passengers stand during the journey, removing toilets from aircrafts and the most recent one, providing paid porn movies on board. Once, I travel Madrid-Paris with them for less than 20 euros. Most of their fleet are Boeing 737-800.<p>Wikipedia entry: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair</a>
For those who haven't read the Ryanair story, it's pretty remarkable. The Ryan family had a small commuter flight business in Ireland (what is Ryanair today) and a large, profitable business leasing planes to airlines in the opposite hemisphere during peak demand. When the latter business was ready to IPO, it went really, really badly and the Ryan family had taken out massive loans throwing their entire fortune into question. They appointed a family friend, Michael O'Leary, as CEO of Ryanair and made a deal with him to give him 10% (I think) of all profits. O'Leary came to the US, studied what Southwest was doing, and took it to the extreme. He went on to become one of the most successful CEOs in Europe.<p>Knowing the story, my reaction to this headline is: wow, through testing, they figured out that people buy the ticket rather than wanting to fill out the CAPTCHA.<p>Great read: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ryanair-Story-Controversial-Low-Cost-Airline/dp/1845132939/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Ryanair-Story-Controversial-Low-Cost-A...</a>
Looks like Ryanair is trying very hard to get customers to use their website, instead of meta searchers that scrape their website. I think however, that they realize the complete opposite. Their website is now even more unusable and meta searchers still include Ryanair tickets.
Though this is pretty minor in the scheme of things, I'm constantly surprised at how horrible they can purposefully make the experience and still have people clicking to them. Myself included. From every interview I've seen with MD you get the impression he <i>despises</i> his customers. But they still make money. I guess until someone comes along who can compete and at least pretend they give a damn then it'll continue to work. I wont pretend I know how they could do it but the moment I have another option, Ryanair have lost me for ever.
They don't like scrapers, they don't even allow links <i>to</i> their website without permission.<p>From their TOS:<p>"5. Links to this website. You may not establish and/or operate links to this website without the prior written consent of Ryanair."
I am the biggest Ryanair supporter, they are the best airline in Europe: they are cheap and their planes are just as comfortable as city buses but they're always on-time and cheap if you know how to book. They're actually the most punctual airline in Europe.<p>This said, I just gave up booking a ticket with them after the third captcha. They'll scrap that stuff as soon as they notice the drop in sales.
They have gone completely and utterly insane. The ONLY way they get custom is through their web site - and now they are trying to put people off.<p>No matter what the problem was this is the wrong solution.
Amazing to throw away more and more usability in their platform and still retain customers because their price scheme is cheap.<p>I guess their budget is not good enough to hire a good programer. I wonder if the CEO hire his nephew, the one with some frontpage/dreamweaver skills for the job.
The entire Ryanair experience is painful: airports far out of the city center, baggage fees, a crew / staff that cuts you zero slack and now the website.<p>They know their business, people will put up with a lot if it saves them money and that's what Ryanair is good at.
This reminded me to finish a post I drafted a while back:<p><a href="http://www.alexmuir.com/2011/12/stupid-is-the-new-business-class/" rel="nofollow">http://www.alexmuir.com/2011/12/stupid-is-the-new-business-c...</a>
That's almost as good as Amtrak. You have to confirm your email address every time you buy a ticket, even after you've logged in to your account. And the form blocks paste, so you get to type it out each time.