Changes to Ryanair baggage policy

therecklessone

From www.ryanair.com

What is my checked baggage allowance?

A Baggage Fee is charged for the carriage of each item of Checked Baggage. The Baggage Fee may be prepaid at the current discounted rate of £2.50/€3.50 (€4.50/£3.50 from 1st September 2006 onwards) per item of baggage/per one way flight when making your reservation on www.ryanair.com, or through a Ryanair call centre (up to 4 hours prior to scheduled flight departure time - subject to opening hours). If the Baggage Fee is paid at the airport, the full rate of £5/€7 (£7/€10 from the 1st September 2006 onwards) per item of baggage/per one way flight is charged. Baby buggies, wheelchairs, scooters and walking frames are carried free of charge.

The Checked Baggage allowance is 20kg per person (15kg per person for all passengers travelling from the 1st November 2006 onwards). Please note - there is no baggage allowance for infants, although a pram/buggy will be carried free of charge. Each Passenger may check-in up to five items of checked baggage, up to the checked baggage allowance per person (a Baggage Fee is charged for each item of checked baggage).

For health and safety reasons Ryanair will not accept any individual item exceeding 32 kilos and with combined dimensions of more than 81cms height, 119cms wide and 119cms depth. This weight limit does not apply to mobility equipment.

That means from 1 Sept 2006, the fees for checked baggage are:

1. Prepaid - €4.50/£3.50 per checked bag per one way flight.
2. Paid @ airport - €10/£7 pre checked bag per one way flight.

From 1 Nov 2006, the checked baggage allowance will be 15kg (down from
20kg)

Passengers may not use the unused checked baggage allowance of other passengers. No pooling/sharing of the checked baggage allowance is permitted, even within a party travelling on the same Confirmation Number.

That is not mentioned in the FAQs but is on the booking page and the T&Cs acknowledged on the booking page.

What is my cabin baggage allowance?

Ryanair allows each passenger (excluding infants) to carry one small piece of hand baggage on board free of charge. The hand baggage must not weigh more than 10kg and be less than 55cm x 40cm x 20cm, in dimensions. For the safety and convenience of all passengers, hand baggage must fit underneath the seat or in the overhead compartment.

Chris_533976

hmmm Ryanair are pushing it too far.... they're getting to the stage where its unfeasible for a family (say) to have that little baggage and for it to cost that much..... people will start moving to other airlines if they continue.

parsi

You'd be surprised how little a family can bring - the five of us went to Paris last year (3 nights) and coming back our total baggage was 22kilo. That was with Disney souvenirs and stuff...

zeusnero

i'm a big fan of ryanair but i've got to agree that they're beginning to push their luck a little too far - granted, since they introduced the charge on checking in baggage i've only brought hand baggage but now they're putting it up even further to €4.50... sounds to me like a 'stealth tax' - instead of charging for the increasing cost of petrol, they're charging for miscellaneous items...

they're still the cheapest airline around though (and probably have the most european destinations of any airline, which is nice)...

A Dub in Glasgo

Just booked my wife and 2 kids onto a Ryanair fight from Prestwick to Dublin for an 8 day trip in August. The total for 3 was £92.95 made up of

PAYMENT DETAILS
*********5.94 GBP Adult
********66.13 GBP Taxes,Fees & Charges
********20.88 GBP Aviation / WCHR Levy
*********0.00 GBP Car Rental
*********0.00 GBP Insurance
********92.95 GBP Total Paid

The fees they charge for credit cards are vey high (in comparison to what they incur). I used a debit card which cost me about £2.50

I pre-paid 2 bags at £5 each then I forgot about the buggy (another £5). I think I will fit 20kg worth of stuff in one bag and the rest can fit into hand luggage (at 10kg each!) and use the buggy as 1 pre-paid bag.

Edit just spotted that buggies are free! Hurray!

If Ryanair were over £100, I would have probably booked with Aer Lingus (who were £122 all in including paying with a cc). The return flight with Ryanair was at a better time than the late flight from Aer Lingus though.

jank

OF course if you pay at the airport you will have to pay via credit card even though I rang and said one can pay cash......Sooner or later people are going to go else where for their flights.

parsi

Now if they start charging for/weighing buggies then there would be war I'd expect !

r3nu4l

parsi wrote:

Now if they start charging for/weighing buggies then there would be war I'd expect !

The only reason they are not doing this is probably because the 'Meeja' would love to moan about it and they get enough bad publicity without being accused of or being sued for child discrimination policies.

Considering that there are usually only about three buggies or less on any of the 28 flights I've been on (Dublin-Stanstead route) in the last two years I doubt it would be worth their while charging given all of the negative publicity it would generate. The majority of people on Ryanair flights I've been on don't have kids with them.

There isn't even any 'war' now that most people are having their baggage limits whittled away every couple of months.

galah

This is a joke, and one more reason for me to boykott Ryanair...First they increase the baggage limit, and introduce charges, now they increase the charges and lower the baggage limit again? WTF?

I'm sorry, but as a regular flyer who uses Ryanair to get home (and use cheaper prices abroad to do an awful lot of shopping, maxing out the limit every time), this is not acceptable - from now on, I'll rather pay more and use Aerlingus instead. The difference is not all that big after all, and since I have to go to Dublin anyway (as Ryanair closed down "convenient" flights from Shannon to Luebeck to fly to Poland instead), I might as well fly to a "proper" airport...

carrotcake

galah wrote:

.First they increase the baggage limit, and introduce charges, now they increase the charges and lower the baggage limit again? WTF?

that's just what i was thinking. it didn't take them long

FillSpectre

Chris_533976 wrote:

hmmm Ryanair are pushing it too far.... they're getting to the stage where its unfeasible for a family (say) to have that little baggage and for it to cost that much..... people will start moving to other airlines if they continue.

Well as somebody who doesn't have a family why should I subsidise your needs?

If I want to be able to get cheap flights were I can get on and off quickly why shouldn't I. If you don't like Ryanair and the cost is unfeasable then don't use them. I don't get why people get so angry about this stuff. A new choice is avilable and you still have the old choice of the more traditional airlines. No frills is that so why complain about the barebone nature of it? Everything is clear

daveg

I flew into and out of Stansted weekend before last. Luckly I had prepaid checking 1 bag. I met a women in the queue for check in from Dublin when flying home. She told me she had not pre-paid her checkin bag and had to queue in Dublin airport to pay for her baggage. She said the queue was massive and they only just made their flight. They had left 3 hours for check in.

Make sure you prepay your baggage.

On another note I feckin hate Ryanair at times too but remember flights now are 6 times cheaper than they were 10 years ago to the UK. Whatever you say about Ryanair they have made the market much more competative.

Capt'n Midnight

parsi wrote:

Now if they start charging for/weighing buggies then there would be war I'd expect !

Look what happened when they started to charge wheelchair users. In the end they just charged everyone.

Ryanair like skimming. The more charges they can break your bill down into a the more they can skim on the rounding up of each one. Or adding about €2.50? (was on the radio this am) to Dublin airport fees.

The other trick is a minimum charge for each thing. Like about a tenner to use your credit card and about the same if you want to claim back airport/government tax on a missed/cancelled flight.

If you book early the flights are free, the add ons are what you pay for and skimming on the add ons is how they make profit on normal flights. this is the company who had a half price sale where they dropped the price from 99p to 49p per flight, whereas in reality it was a 50p off sale.

Loved the way they used to charge for baggage handling even if you carried on the bags yourself.

And I'd imagine much of the profit is on late seats and other gotcha charges.

If you know the rules they are cheap, if you are traveling poing to point that's fine too.


Would be worth carrying a bag that you can put your bags into so only one item. - or use a roll of McGuiver tape

robinph

Most of the time I'd only be taking carry on bags with me, but when I do have something to check in it's usually close to the limit on the weight so I was happy enough when they upped the limit back to 20kg even though you had to pay for it now. Didn't realise that they were reducing it back down to just 15kg again though, but I guess they were no longer making enough money on the 'excess' baggage anymore.

whippet

I do a lot of flying .. I use Ryainair quite a bit dublin - uk, grant it most times I only have hand luggage and I find them fine most of the time. On time, cheap and do go to the airports I want to use.

But it is a totally different thing now if I have luggage, I will use them as a last resort. Travelling is a hassle at the best of times and I don't need the additional hassle of worrying about bags, queuing for a check-in desk only to be told to queue else where to pay for a bag and then back to the queue for check-in etc..

I don't mind paying the extra 20 quid or so to travel BMI, AerLingus etc.

Since O'Leary adopted the low cost model .. he has been targeting Price sensitive flyers, which is a huge market. I personally am not that price sensitive, I can put a cost on inconvienence but there are a huge number who don't and will continue to avail of the cheapest flights possible.

Tazz T

Interestingly enough, I flew to Germany with Ryanair a couple of weeks ago and because I didn't know whether I'd have one or two bags to check-in didn't do it online.

When I got to actually checking in at the airport, I wasn't charged at all for the baggage altho others had paid online.

Aren't they charging all the time/

Mr O' Leary is a clever man. He'll make sure when all charges are taken into account, the total fare is still less than any other competitor on the route. It's like Ikea - they charge differently in each country they operate depending on their competitor's pricing. It s just business. You choose whether you want the cheap product or the name brand.

mobpd

This looks like Ryanair's way to cope with rising fuel costs...the airline that protesteth so much that they never ever will impose fuel surcharges (and constantly berates those that do) but then covertly increase their baggage charges as well as lowering the baggage limits...methinks it wont be long before they adjust them again if fuel charges keep going up.