RYANAIR CEO Michael O'Leary has told passengers to 'stop whinging' following complaints about their airline's seat allocation policy.
When booking a flight, passengers have the option to pay extra to reserve seats or be allocated a random seat for free.
Over recent weeks, the airline has faced criticism from passengers that allege the algorithm used by the airline to allocate the random seats is not random and instead deliberately allocates passengers flying under the same booking reference away from each other in an effort to force passengers to pay the extra to sit together.
But the airline boss highly refutes this, saying the algorithm hasn't changed, the demand for reserved seats has.
Mr O'Leary said: "When we started selling reserved seats, in the first year around 10 per cent of passengers started buying reserved seats so there was 90 per cent of seats available for random allocation.
"What's happening now, is more than 50 per cent of the seats are taken up by passengers paying from €2 for reserved seats so there are fewer and fewer random seats.
Responding to passengers who alleged seeing many vacant seats across their flight at the point of online check in, Mr O'Leary said: "There aren't vacant seats nearby, what you're seeing is passengers who go in to book their random seat - which you can do four days before travel - there appears to be lots of seats available.
"There isn't lots of seats available because many of those seats have already been reserved but the passenger hasn't come back in yet to take up their reserved seat. "
"If you don't want to pay a fee of €2 and choose a random seat, you get it for free. If you want to sit beside somebody you can do that from €2.
"Frankly, if you're not happy to pay €2 to sit beside someone else, stop complaining. If you have chosen a random seat, you're getting a random seat so stop whinging.
"If you want to sit beside somebody else, pay the €2 like more than 50 per cent or 65million of our customers do and sit wherever you like."
Responding to a caller who said she had a booked a flight back in February who did not pay to book a seat, Mr O'Leary said: "More than 50 per cent of the passengers who booked in February clicked to book their seat.
"It's a bit rich for you to come back in five months later whinging because you didn't take up the option in February, it's your choice.
"If you've made the choice, stop whinging afterwards."
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