For better or for worse, there are always people who look for ways to get around some of the fees airlines have established in recent years. And if it saves them some money, even better. Unfortunately, sometimes these people get caught and may have to pay some big consequences. We’ve written about them before:
- Man banned from airline after posting how to not pay for a carry-on bag
- Airlines becoming wise to the hack to pay less for checked bags
Another moneymaker most airlines use nowadays is charging for seat choice. However, a guy named Jorden Tually figured out a way to beat Ryanair’s algorithm at its own game, and get assigned a window or aisle seat without having to pay for it.
“This travel hack has saved me from MANY a middle seat over the years. It’s actually never failed me and has a 100% perfect record when done correctly,” he captioned a video post on his Instagram.
In his post, Tually showed himself checking into a Ryanair flight from Bologna to Barcelona. But, as he explained, he didn’t want to pay the extra $9 to choose his seat.
“The flight that I’m about to check into still has a lot of middle seats available, so here is how I make sure I avoid them,” he said in the video.
When looking at the seats on his flight that were still empty, Tually showed there were still plenty of unassigned middle seats.
So rather than just checking in like normal, Tually went to the Ryanair website on his computer and made a dummy reservation for as many people as there were empty middle seats.
After that, Tually explained that the website would, “ask for every passenger’s name so just slam a bunch of letters in there and continue on.”
“Next up, go to seat selection and select all the middle seats or all the seats that you definitely do not want to be sitting in,” Tually said in the video. “Then click continue.” This will “hold” the middle seats for these fake people.
He further explained the Ryanair website will hold these seats for about 10 minutes. During that time, he said you could check in with your actual ticket. And since there now weren’t any middle seats available for assignment, if you chose “random seat allocation,” the system would automatically assign you an aisle or window seat.
Here’s the video:
The system admittedly wouldn’t work for every airline. I didn’t try for Spirit, Frontier, etc. because it’s a shady thing to do (just because we write about it doesn’t mean we necessarily condone it. We’d rather try this technique, which is much more on the up and up, since it works within the confines of the airline’s system, instead of trying to trick them).
And it’s questionable if it will even work for Ryanair for long. As one commenter to his video said, “I’m a product owner working for Ryanair and I just created a ticket to prevent such behaviour. Thanks for reporting!” But no one knows for sure.
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2 comments
This is an excellent way to get banned. How much is this guy saving for his effort? Like $20/hour? Maybe he should try getting a job instead.
He has a job…he’s an (checking my notes) “influencer.” LOLOL! Would def serve him right if they banned him.