Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Thursday the 27th of March.

I'm in a bit of a howling gale in Toulouse in southwest France with our good friend Rob Burgess, founder of Head 4 Points.

We're actually walking past the outskirts of Iroscopia Park for Fallen Aircraft. Lots the military jets. We're also in search of a Concord.

But while we're walking up here, Rob, the fascinating loyalty issue that has literally never happened before came out this week with Ryanair saying they are going to have a loyalty scheme.

Tell me all about it.

Is it a loyalty scheme? I mean, it's called Ryanair Prime, but the prime name may ring a bell

with some of you on various other retailers. Fundamentally, Ryanair wants you to pay £79,

or if you claim you live in Europe, 79 euros, so you can see the first dodgy UK rip-off there.

For fundamentally not a lot, you get three

seat selection in a limited range of seats for 12, no more than 12 Ryanair flights in a year.

Right, hang on, but this is already sounding good value. If I want one of the upfront seats or

an emergency exit row on Ryanair, I'll be paying a lot more than what seven pounds per flight it's definitely not

it's not clear exactly which seats are going to be included but the rules talk about being able to

buy up to more expensive seats so I think we have to assume that you're only going to get at best

the very lowest cheapest seat or offer what so sort of down the back by the loon?

That could well be it, yes, unfortunately.

In some ways it's a bit of a coupon book, almost.

If you're doing 12 one-way Ryanair flights a year

and you're spending more than 79 euros

paying for seat selection on those flights,

then this will work out well for you.

If you're not, there's literally no reason to sign up for Ryanair Prime. They promise you a few occasional discounts, but they're not saying how big V's will be, what routes they're on, what sort of timeframe they'll be over. And that's it, but there's no discounts on checked baggage. There's kind of a bit of travel insurance thrown in, but the medical stuff, the terms very bad, the flight delay coverage.

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