Let no one ever accuse Ryanair of tasteful restraint. The Euro-discounter who refuses to rule out anything in the quest for cost savings and revenue streams has now declared that customers wishing to get a boarding pass for their flight will need to pay for it. No matter what you paid for your ticket, you’ll still have to pay more to actually use it.
Ryanair passengers face a £5 charge per flight to print out their tickets at home as part of moves to abolish check-in desks and increase revenues. The policy replaces Ryanair’s practice of offering free online ticketing and charging anyone who opted for face-to-face check-in £10.
In future, anyone who arrives at the airport without a pre-printed check-in card will have to pay a £40 “boarding card re-issue fee”. In-built restrictions to the online ticketing system mean many customers will be unable to print their tickets when they book, raising the chances for penalty charges from customers who think they have completed the process.
Ryanair says its system won’t allow customers booking more than 15 days before their flight, or within four hours of one, to check in at that time. So those who book farther in advance will have to revisit the website nearer the time of their trip to check in.
Wow.
It’s hard enough when you’re traveling and don’t have a printer nearby. (Yes, many business hotels offer boarding pass printers, but what if you’re on vacation and staying at a rental villa? Not every traveler is printer-equipped.) But now you’ll be charged a fee to do the check-in yourself, even if you have access to a printer? Amazing.
It’s actually laughable, but I’m honestly impressed at the nerve of this. They’ve taken a cost-saving measure and turned it into a source of revenue. They’re ditching check-in counters already, so the revenue from this fee comes on top of personnel and infrastructure savings. Shameless.
I think it’s high time for customers to start charging fees themselves, and submitting invoices to the airlines that nickel-and-dime their customers. Send past-due notices with late fees, while you’re at it. Could be fun. How about an ink and paper fee of fifty cents per page? Send the airline a bill! An online networking fee for the time spent on their site? Send a bill! An airline selection fee, to account for the opportunity cost of not booking with a different carrier? Send a bill!
…But good luck collecting.
(image)
RSS (FeedBurner)
Read with Amazon Kindle
Subscribe by E-mail
Follow on Twitter
December 31st, 1969 at 11:59 pm
@flyingwithfish Mark Ashley’s idea http://is.gd/B3wA Charge Ryanair for use of paper and ink, late arrival fee, remote airport fee, etc
December 31st, 1969 at 11:59 pm
#Travel –
Let no one ever accuse Ryanair of tasteful restraint. The Euro-discounter who refuses to rul.. http://tinyurl.com/qapqyo
December 31st, 1969 at 11:59 pm
great idea! bill ryanair (etc) for printing costs, being late, etc. http://bit.ly/c9Utj
May 15th, 2009 at 1:23 am
Almost the same strategy as TicketMaster.com in the US. In addition to their other magic fees such as convenience charges (ehe?), they also charge you for printing your own ticket at home.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:34 am
I’ve long argued that – since everyone has to pay a surcharge for wheelchairs after Ryanair found out that only charging disabled passengers was illegal – all passengers on Ryanair flights should insist on being wheeled through the airport.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:56 am
Sorry to be contrarian here (again) but I have no problems with Ryanair doing this. I made these same comments on UK sites as well because people always rush to bash Ryanair, but people forget, they run a business – not a charity. Note: you did leave out the part about the £5 one-way fee will not be charged to their special fares which are the ones marked as Free £1 or £5 (http://news.cheapflights.co.uk/flights/2009/05/ryanair-makes-checkin-surcharge-mandatory.htmlt) These tickets make up over 50% of Ryanair’s ticketing.
The point Ryanair is making, is that it costs a lot of money to staff airports – this is no secret. Ryanair is including these fees so people do remember to print their tickets off. Almost like a parent would teach a child not to engage in bad behaviour ($1 in the jar for every swear word Johnny)
I am positive that the airline industry is cheering Ryanair on because the money losing, bankrupt prone legacy carriers are conditioning people to think air travel is still like it “was” in the 1960s – it clearly isn’t. Ryanair has revolutionized the concept of air travel in that, planes are buses that fly – not plush experiences. Their responsibility is to get you from A to B as safely and quickly as possible – and make money at it.
As well, don’t forget that you have always paid for these services (tickets, gates, baggage, taxes, card processing, etc.) it isn’t nickel and diming. It’s just the legacy carriers have always bundled these into a single ticket cost. All Ryanair is doing is line iteming everything for you to see what the true cost of running an airline is. I am all for more exposure.
I love Ryanair. I fly them when it makes sense and have always had a good experience (I flew into Rome for £5 round trip from London – and they fly into Campiano airport rather than Fiumicino which is closer and cheaper to get transport into Rome)
I do go in with wide open eyes, but, again, as a traveller you just need to do your homework. Don’t let these fees turn you off. Ryanair is an efficient and well run airline which doesn’t go running cap in hand to governments when economic times turn tough. Happy travels!
May 15th, 2009 at 4:05 am
What else do you expect from Ryanair? The few times I’ve concidered going somewhere that Ryanair flies to, by the time I factored in all the fees they charged and the cost of getting to and from the airports they fly to made it more affordable to use a legacy carrier.
May 15th, 2009 at 9:08 am
[...] Chutzpah: Ryanair to charge £5 (and up) for boarding passes | Upgrade: Travel Better. [...]
May 15th, 2009 at 9:38 am
I actually wonder if this will pass muster with the EU. No one can get on the plane without a boarding pass, so having a boarding pass is a necessary condition of travel, and by implication a mandatory fee. The EU requires airlines to advertise the mandatory fees with the base fare. So it baffles me how the £5 self-printed boarding pass fee wouldn’t fall into that category.
What’s next, a fee to receive an e-mail confirmation?
May 15th, 2009 at 10:00 am
It’s actually quite simple — vote with your feet. We flew easyJet a couple of times a few years back, and that was bad enough. I see no reason to ever fly Ryanair, Air Jamaica (your last post), or similar airlines. Ever.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:43 am
@Mike,
You raise some good points, but you’ve given Ryanair way too much credit. Yes, I’m all for transparency, too, but let’s not confuse transparency for money-grubbing. I hear nothing in this article (nor have I seen mention of it anywhere else) that says that Ryanair charges this fee, but makes a corresponding decrease in their ticket prices. Until they do that, Ryanair is not doing us a favor by increasing exposure, they’ve simply jumped on the slimy charge-customers-for-anything-they-possibly-can bandwagon. It’s deplorable.
May 15th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I actually saw a news report on this yesterday on the BBC (i live in the UK) and the Ryanair spokesman does claim that the end game for this fee is to eventually drive the fares lower by getting rid of the infrastructure fees charged at airports.
The way for Ryanair to get to the lower fees is through the tough love approach. Yes the punishment is tough for not printing your ticket, but as they said on the report, “if you forget your ticket and have to pay £40, you’ll never forget again”. It is a conditioning exercise for the traveling public.
With the EU, their issues are with hidden, last minute “surprise” charges (like travel insurance). I think it is fair to say that Ryanair is being incredibly upfront about this charge as it is on the news everywhere over here and they are giving advance notice. It would be hard to classify this as a hidden charge.
May 15th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
“Being upfront” about the charge still doesn’t make it right. It’s like the “resort fee” charged by some hotels. You can’t avoid the fee, so why not put it into the rate?
And, the penalty rate for “forgetting” to print a boarding pass — that makes big assumptions about the behavior of the customer. Not everyone is in arm’s reach of a printer. Will they be offering scannable mobile phone boarding passes?
May 15th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
As much as I want to blame RyanAir for this, how about the morons who fly them? Flying buses?
The mentality that “things have changed” fosters such garbage notions as “globalization means nations are obsolete” and “isolationism no longer works”.
I will continue gladly paying higher airfare to fly a real airline and not a flying prison.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
And must I remind anyone… airline travel cannot logically be made less luxurious (as though that’s possible) without increasing speed of flight. The airline industry is a joke because it completely forgets this rule:
If comfort = C and speed = S, and C+S = 1, then
(C-x) + (S+x) = 1 where x is a decrease in overall comfort and an increase in overall speed.
The industry has been ignoring this rule to their peril. Airliners travel at best 50 knots faster than they did at their inception (a 10% increase) and yet the level of comfort and service has dropped by well over 50%, if you measure it by number of amenities, passenger space, and attitude toward customers.
Once again, I blame it on cheap, stupid customers who ruin the whole thing for the more discerning ones who are sadly in the minority.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Note the following re: EU regulation of airline advertising:
May 16th, 2009 at 7:12 am
To the Mind of J – the reason i like commenting on Mark’s board is that people express their thoughts and opinions without bringing it down to school yard conversations- like “how about the morons who fly them? Flying buses?” or “Once again, I blame it on cheap, stupid customers who ruin the whole thing for the more discerning ones who are sadly in the minority.”
If you are referring to me, I am a card carrying platinum medallion member on Skyteam and premier executive on Star Alliance – i travel a lot. And i believe a KLM 737-800 is just as much of a flying bus than Ryanair’s 737-800.
At the end of the day, i do see the legacy carriers enacting these same types of fees. My guess is, because airlines are beginning to break down their P&L statements, they are starting to line item every cost center and figuring out how to make it profitable. If the company was Walmart, we would say it was brilliant supply chain management. But since it’s an airline, no one can admit, that airlines are supposed to be profit generating businesses.
May 16th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Since it’s a mandatory fee, it should be included in the advertised price. I give it a fee months (the EU isn’t always fast) until they are forced to reverse course.
And I’d think anyone who ever gets hit with the 40 pound airport checkin fee will likely be a lost customer for the future.
May 16th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Mind of J – apologies in belaboring this, but i was rereading your equation, as i think it is a valuable tool, and your assertions. However a quick search on airline speed does meet your initial 50 knot assertion.
1) 1930s-1950s DC-3 – Credited with beginning commercial airline travel in the US. Cruise speed = 130kn, Range = 1,025 miles
2) 1950s-1970s DC-6 – Cruise speed = 264kn, Range = 3,010 miles
3) 1960-1970s Boeing 707 – Credited with ushering in the Jet Age Cruise speed = 540kn, Range = 4,235 miles
4) 1980s-Today Boeing 737 – Cruise speed = 447kn, Range = 4,500 miles
(all stats above were found within http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline)
So looking at your assertion above, if inception is the 1950s, airline speed has increased 320kn, but if you say it’s the start of the jet age, then the cruising speed has actually come down 93kn. So to come back to your point, you are right in your equation and that airlines have been significantly slowing down their planes, but i think it pays to back up your facts with data rather than guessing.
Thus to make an assertion on the number of amenities to have dropped 50% is a bit speculative, don’t you think? Do you have any data to support the decrease in “number of amenities, passenger space, and attitude toward customers”?
For me, I think the most important fact is that average fare per passenger mile has been falling steadily from $0.22 a mile in 1975 to $0.13 a mile in 1993 adjusted for inflation ((http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jCfkJUL8oV0C&pg=PA13&lpg=PA13&dq=average+plane+ticket+price+1975&source=bl&ots=5DZCI_x77o&sig=QFLKUwH8u0-vjroFBnT-rpm85kg&hl=en&ei=2OsOSsj6H8HOjAf4zfHkCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9#PPA11,M1).
Since 1993, another study suggests that from 1995-2004, fare prices have dropped a further 20% when adjusted for inflation. (http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=iber/cpc)
So now you have to deal with a business with slower planes and lower revenues, when inflation is taken into account, so yes amenities will likely go. So to come back to your overall argument, your equation is spot on – but please back it up with documentation.
However, going to back to my original argument, can you see why airlines are now “nickle and diming” you? You have a cut throat competitive industry, with bloated infrastructure costs, the inability to raise prices in line with inflation and a customer base which expects 5 star treatment. If you put your business hat on – what would you do?
May 18th, 2009 at 5:52 am
At least Ryanair won´t introduce the”FAT TAX – viz http://blog.flylowcostairlines.org/2009/05/08/ryanair-will-not-introduce-fat-tax/. It is really too much…I don´t think O´Leary has the best strategy he could have voted.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Why would anyone bother flying with an airline who treats customers as the enemies. Thank christ they aren’t in Australia yet, although those frauds at Virgin Blue seem to mimic everything the low-cost European carriers do. I’d rather fly full fare and at least be treated with dignity. I hope they go out of business.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Why would anyone bother flying with an airline who treats customers as the enemies. Thank christ they aren’t in Australia yet, although those frauds at Virgin Blue seem to mimic everything the low-cost European carriers do. I’d rather fly full fare and at least be treated with dignity. I hope they go out of business.
May 24th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I think that after all, paying all those extra fees like getting to the remote airports that Ryanair fly’s from Etc.. we end up paying the same price as a regular ticket.. But the good thing is we still get the thrill that we got a flight for 20 euro. How would you call it…living the first class life at coach prices…!
May 27th, 2009 at 2:19 pm
As I’ve mentioned over on my blog recently, I’m fine with whatever funny pricing games that Ryanair wants to play. But I think they cross the line when they charge you for items that are -required- to actually board. Like checking in. Absolutely ludicrous.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:31 pm
I blame the passengers for buying tickets on bad airlines. Instead of complaining to the airlines, stop flying Ryanair. I’m complaining to all of you who are supporting their poor service. I don’t plan to fly Ryanair, but don’t want the other airlines to follow suite as a result of passengers making their management style profitable.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:47 am
[...] in a discussion of Ryanair’s latest fee (a charge to generate a boarding pass), reader Mike offered this challenge for anyone criticizing the airlines for “nickel and diming” their passengers: You have [...]
June 25th, 2009 at 12:47 am
[...] Chutzpah: Ryanair to charge £5 (and up) for boarding passes (upgradetravelbetter.com) [...]