Ryanair tells some customers no, and fills its planes with the rest

Ryanair has sold the same thing for three decades: a seat from one European airport to another at the lowest fare it can offer, and very little else unless you pay for it. Bags, seat selection and priority boarding cost extra, and many of its airports sit well outside the cities on the timetable. In its financial year to March 2025 it carried a record 200.2 million passengers, the first European airline to pass 200 million in a year, while average fares fell 7%. Ancillary revenue, the money from everything beyond the seat, reached 4.72 billion euros, roughly a third of the total.

The company has never softened the offer in its tone either. When a passenger complained on X in May 2023 that his honeymoon seat had no window, Ryanair’s account replied: “She’s regretting marrying someone who can’t read the fine print.” The same voice runs through its TikTok, where an animated plane with a cartoon face reacts to whatever travellers are joking about. In November 2025 it stopped issuing paper boarding passes altogether, and passengers now need the app.

The premise decides who boards

Every value proposition starts with a premise: the statement of who the offer is for, and just as much who it is not for. The books treat it as a deliberate repellent. A premise that tries to welcome everyone ends up appealing to no one in particular, while one that names its refusals lets the right customer recognise themselves at once.

Ryanair’s premise is unusually explicit. It is for travellers who care about the fare above everything else and will accept the conditions in exchange. Comfort, flexibility and a central airport are its antitheses: values the airline refuses openly, so that the people who want them choose another carrier before they complain. The result is a contract signed with open eyes. A passenger who boards knowing exactly what is missing has very little left to be disappointed by.

A small promise kept completely

Once the premise has done the filtering, the promise can be small, and that is its strength. Ryanair commits to the fare, the departure and the arrival. A promise of that size is easy to verify and possible to keep almost every time, which is where trust is built. Airlines that promise a memorable experience have to deliver it on every flight, through every delay and every crew, and each failure counts against the larger claim.

The premise also changes what it feels like to pay less. Low-cost travel used to suggest you could not afford better. Ryanair’s posture, proud and slightly insolent, turns the same choice into evidence that you are too smart to pay more. In the language of the books, the airline reshaped willingness to pay by making saving something a customer can show off.

Where the premise starts to strain

A premise this strong carries a specific risk: every new fee is read as part of the same contract, until one of them reads as a trap. The extras work while customers feel they chose them. When the cost of a bag or an airport check-in arrives as a surprise at the gate, the premise stops protecting the airline and starts accusing it, because the honesty it rests on has been broken.

The paper boarding pass decision shows the tension. Ryanair presents it as lower airport costs and faster rebooking during disruption, which fits the premise. A Belgian consumer group called it discriminatory toward people without smartphones. Both readings come from the same move, and which one prevails depends on whether the people it filters out were meant to be filtered out.

The sarcasm has a similar edge. It works on passengers who share the joke and wounds those who expected service. As long as the airline is clear about whom it is talking to, the tone does the premise’s work for free.

If your offer tries to please every customer and keeps disappointing some of them, writing the premise that says who it is not for is part of what we do.