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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @05:00AM (1 child)
What idiots are reserving an isle and a window seat and leaving the middle for some random joker? You are probably forgetting groups of people will much prefer to reserve adjacent seats, leaving less middle seats. You would have to know who are reserving the seats, single people, couples, family groups.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 03 2017, @07:49AM
People flying alone will choose a window seat (best view) or aisle seat (easier to get to the toilet or (emergency) exit).
A family of four people will take one window seat, one middle seat and two aisle seats.
Groups of three people will take one of each, but even that won't change the fact that there will be most middle seats left as long as there are even a single booking of any of the above groups.
Only groups of two will leave an aisle or window seat. Unless they choose the two aisle seats next to each other.