It looks like there's something like Black Hat Information Architecture, that is implementing an on purpose bad IA to cheat on your user, and gain some money playing on your user distraction or misunderstanding of the rules.

You probably know Ryan Air a low cost airline operating mainly in Europe, as quite all low cost airlines (depending on the Country they operate/advertise, as in some place now things are changing) they advertise flight at extremely low prices (as low as 0.1 Euro) without putting too much emphasis on the airport/security/fuel surcharge. The resulting fare might rise to tens or hundreds of Euros even if the starting (read advertised) price is just cents. We are no dummy anymore, and already know the trick. That's fine.

Online booking

The fact is the same attitude is used during the online booking process. The Contact page of the whole booking process is where the IA bad practice is deployed. The Passenger Detail part of this page, the first step, is where you should put your name and surname and where you should select how many bags you would like to board. The selection could be made using a combo menu, listed items are:

• 0 Bags - Online Checkin/Priority Boarding
• 1 Bag
• 2 Bags
• 3 Bag
• 4 Bags
• 5 Bags

The fact here is that selecting the first item, 0 Bags - Online Checkin/Priority Boarding, you are requested to pay 6 Euros for the chance to board first, that is pass the passport and boarding control before other travelers just after families with small children. Low fare airlines do not provide numbered seats, travelers are served on a first-come/first-served basis. The point here is, as I'm a used to flight with Ryanair, it's not unusual that even with this priority boarding you pass the check just after other passengers depending on airport personnel attitude. Also you usually have to wait for the shuttle to pick you up and take you at the airplane and then the rush for the seats starts all over from the beginning no matter the priority boarding.

But that's not the point of this post, the point here is there's no easy accessible option to just select 0 bags but no priority boarding. That is, the smart guys at Ryanair didn't put the option on that very same combo menu, they just put it a remove linked text underneath. There are quite some chances the standard user (and this happened to me as well while booking a flight for my girlfriend) won't see that text and pay the 6 Euros for the priority boarding (I'm using the italic for priority boarding to stress the sarcasm) even if she really doesn't care. It's like the smart guys putting Google AdWords has masked part of a text. The following images display the above mentioned page, the second image is bigger and could break this blog layout but this is done to make you read the text.

There's really no need not to have a 0 Bags - No Priority Boarding item on the list, a part obviously to cheat on the user and make her pay for a service she doesn't want.

Play the Ryanair game, spot the remove text

Click the following image for a better, clean view