People pick the cheapest flights because price is a simple number they can understand.
How to you qualify the comfort of a seat with 20cm of legroom vs 30cm? Until we have a quality metric for flights that's also a single number we can't.
The price is one of the few things that's always available when choosing between flights. Journey time is the other, and people will pay for a shorter journey or shorter layovers.
Strangely, some of my colleagues have 'paid' (work's money, their time) extra to avoid Ryanair, when Ryanair has the only direct connection. This I find strange.
Given the choice, I've long paid a little more if it means an Airbus plane, as I think the cabin is quieter. However, that's rarely shown on flight booking sites.
Ryanair are notorious for a) nickel-and-diming and b) general nastiness (e.g. charging a big fee to print a boarding pass at the airport, flying to an airport 70km from the city name they advertised, telling the press that they're going to start charging for the toilet). They're one of the few airlines whose reputation is big and extreme enough that it's percolated into the public consciousness.
Yeah, I pretty much prefer to be surprised whenever the flight I’m on is scheduled on an A320neo compared to being surprised whenever a B737-Max is scheduled for my flight. That’s why I avoid flying with the airline that has a Boeing fleet in my country.
How to you qualify the comfort of a seat with 20cm of legroom vs 30cm? Until we have a quality metric for flights that's also a single number we can't.