It's just a cat and mouse game. Some intern comes up with a brilliant way to shaft people, a VP takes that idea and forces devs to work overtime on it, it generates a lot of revenue (and fat bonus for the VP), then the lawyers on both sides to get to spend a lot of time slowly arguing with each other while taking money from the company and taxpayers. By the time it gets to this point, the company already has five other schemes in the works.
Yes, especially for a short flight I do not have high expectations. I don't want to be charged an extra $10 so I can get a "free" half sized water bottle or tea hat's been brewing since the late 90s. I don't need extra baggage, legroom, or any of the other add-ons that other airlines try to provide and charge for.
I don't love the dark patterns, but believe the CEO when he says they are basically traps that enable the low prices for the people that don't fall for them.
> I don't love the dark patterns, but believe the CEO when he says they are basically traps that enable the low prices for the people that don't fall for them.
I don't know what to respond to this. Are you saying you're fine with other people falling for the dark patterns if that allows for a cheaper ticket for you?
Yes, they've always had a model of "people in the know" being subsidized by others.
Didn't pre-print out your ticket? 100 euro fine. Your bag is too large at the gate? Same thing.
It's the airline of Compound Interest- "He who understands it, earns it... he who doesn't... pays it"
An airline that isn't purely catered to the rich, but to those who are intelligent, knowledgeable, and don't mind the lack of frills. It's like an airline crafted for grad students.
Did they eliminate the competition because people chose them over the other providers, or are they the only option because no other airline chose to offer that flight segment?
It’s not that simple. I’ve seen several routes where ultra low cost carriers simply lost against normal airlines. Especially when there are multiple airports in a given city, they often loose at usable airports. For example in Brussels.
This is the true advantage of a competitive marketplace, your parent commenter votes yes to dark patterns where the person who can dodge them wins, and you vote for honest, open checkouts for a higher price. Luckily, you two don't have to agree and as long as there enough of you, both will coexist.
Imagine if you had to agree and compromise on a single airline?
We already live in a world where we don't let companies behave in the most abject ways possible. You just want to force your own values on everyone, and we've already seen that people are at odds with them. You replied to someone who demonstrated their liking to that method, yet you STILL think only your way is right.
It is something odd about their branding or something, because people's perceptions do not match the reality. Somehow everyone knows Temu is going to be highly likely to sell you very cheap stuff, and it's ok because the expectations are managed. Lots of people still expect Ryanair to not be a cheap airline. I don't get it.
Multiple lifetimes of thousands of the most brilliant engineers collaborating, sharing algorithms, protocols, mining, smelting, developing tooling to create tiny rocks that can think and blasting them to hover over the earth just so we can slightly annoy the person next to us with a conversation about the weird stuff growing between our toes.
If I had money, I'd start to set up free after-school tutoring/play areas.
I'd love to open a new business of a dog park that sells coffee in the morning, and beer in the afternoon/evening. A small amount of nice workstations for people to get some work/studying done.
If I never got into tech- well I was going to be a Materials Engineer, but if I were a tradesman I'd probably be an electrician because of my superiority complex, lack of craftsman-level hand-eye coordination, and I like expensive tools.
True, I think these things are hard because they don't scale easy. You really need some passionate "boots on the ground" for it to work, you can't just send money over and have it work out most of the time. Finding the people who could run it well, and convincing them to do it is the hard part. These types of people are usually also not the best when "bad" people come around to bend the purpose to their desires.
It is my dream to do some of it in the developing world too, if I were to visit someplace often to help out more. A church I used to attend was big on surfing and would take trips to a small town in Mexico. They build an orphanage, some living spaces for single mothers, drastically improved some schools amongst other things and I think that was an awesome way to do charity. There were a couple run-ins with smalltime cartel-ish activity (as they saw it as a power grab) but because everything was from church to church, most donations came in the form of infrastructure and supplies (no money to take), and the pastor was a bit crazy (he visits prisons often and can deal with the thug mindset) they allowed it continue.
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