Ryanair has hit back after a consumer group shared a booking tip claiming travellers could cut the cost of flights by avoiding the airline’s ‘recommended’ fare option.
Kate Lally and Anita McSorley
02:00, 07 Feb 2026
Passengers queuing to board a Ryanair flight (stock)(Image: Adam Klis/Getty Images)
With the Easter holidays just around the corner, many people across Ireland will be getting ready to jet off to sunnier destinations.
However, with the cost of living crisis ongoing, travellers are increasingly looking for clever ways to keep expenses down. One popular money-saving trick is avoiding checked baggage fees by packing everything into a single piece of hand luggage.
Ryanair, one of Ireland’s most popular airlines, allows passengers to bring one small cabin bag free of charge, as long as it fits under the seat in front. But another lesser-known hack could also help holidaymakers save money – ignoring the airline’s so-called ‘recommended’ fare tier.
Consumer champion platform Which? claims its research suggests travellers may be paying more than necessary by automatically selecting Ryanair’s suggested option. According to Which?, families could save more than £100 (€115) on their next Ryanair flight simply by bypassing the airline’s ‘recommended’ fare tier – a claim Ryanair has strongly rejected, branding it “fake news”.
Which? said that when booking a summer trip from London to Alicante for a family of four, Ryanair flagged its ‘Regular’ fare as the ‘ideal’ choice. However, selecting this option would have cost £59 (€68) more than choosing the cheaper ‘Basic’ fare and then manually adding the exact same seats and bags later in the booking process, Which? said.
The article explains: “If our family decided that we could get by with four cabin bags instead of the eight included in Ryanair’s ‘Regular’ fare, then we could reduce the fare by £163 (€188) from Ryanair’s recommendation.” It added: “The ‘Regular’ fare comes with priority boarding, carry-on luggage and free standard seat selection included, but on around 30 checks over the past two years we’ve only once found it cheaper. We looked at 15 flights to a range of locations in February 2026 and only once was the ‘Regular’ ticket cheaper, even if we wanted all those extras.”
Ryanair, however, was clearly unimpressed by Which?’s findings. A spokesperson for the airline told Sky News: “This is more fake news from Which? Thankfully no one reads, or takes any notice of Which’s fake recycled news articles or your spurious ‘advice’, as our traffic growth from 200 million to 208 million passengers in 2025 proves.”
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