Passengers have more chance of winning the National Lottery jackpot than being allocated middle seats at random on a Ryanair flight, according to new Oxford University analysis.
In recent weeks Ryanair have faced mounting customer criticism, with some accusing the airline of splitting up groups and families, who do not pay an additional charge for reserved seating. These claims have been rejected by the airline which says that customers who do not wish to pay for their preferred seat are randomly allocated one, free of charge.
Last night, the BBC Consumer affairs programme, Watchdog, ran its own investigation to test how random the airline's seating algorithm is.
As part of their tests, groups of four people were sent on four separate Ryanair flights. In each instance every single person was allocated a middle seat. Dr Jennifer Rogers, Director of the new Oxford University Statistical Consultancy was then invited to analyse the data, to work-out the chances of every person getting a middle seat allocated randomly.
By looking at the amount of window, aisle and middle seating available on each flight, at the time of check-in, Dr Rogers, calculated the chances of all four people being randomly given middle seats on each of the flights, to be around 1:540,000,000. The chances of winning the National Lottery jackpot are 1:45,000,000. (This means that you are 10 times more likely to win the lottery than be in a group who are all randomly allocated middle seats.)
Source: Oxford University
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday July 02 2017, @09:33PM (1 child)
It is the same sort of way hotel rooms get allocated. Buy the cheapest one or get one through a discount service (Expedia, Priceline, etc.), you get a room facing the street, wall, whatever is less desirable in that location. Pay more, you get the oceanfront, higher floors, whatever constitutes good in that location. Except in hotels they usually try to sell you an upgrade at check in.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday July 03 2017, @04:34AM
Or one with a dumpster fire below the window. Literally. Made for quite an exciting first night in SFO.