Originally Posted by Independent

He went on say that, while the airline did withhold window and aisle seats from “random-seat” customers, they were still able to allocate the remaining seats for them at random.

“Some random seat passengers are confused by the appearance of empty seats beside them when they check-in up to four days prior to departure,” he said. “The reason they can’t have these window or aisle seats is that these are more likely to be selected by reserved seat passengers many of whom only check-in 24 hours prior to departure.

“Since our current load factor is 97 per cent, we have to keep these window and aisle seats free to facilitate those customers who are willing to pay (from £2) for them.”

Still confused? Us too.“This is entirely a matter of customer choice,” Jacobs explained. “We are very happy to facilitate any customer who wants a free of charge random seat but we are also going to do our best to facilitate customers who are willing to pay for a reserved seat (usually window or aisle) which start from £2.”

In what has, in many ways, become a battle of semantics, Rogers puts it this way. “I don’t think they do allocate seats randomly,” she told Telegraph Travel. “Ryanair have said that they save the window and aisle seats. I think the rows will be randomly allocated, but you will be given a middle seat and then they fill up from there.”