Ryanair passengers face an automatic £5 charge to print out tickets at home as the budget airline moves to abolish traditional check-in desks, it has been revealed.
That means an ordinary round-trip ticket will carry a mandatory £10 surcharge.
And anyone who turns up at the airport without a pre-printed check-in card will have to pay £40 'boarding card re-issue fee'.
The new policy replaces Ryanair's previous practice of offering free online ticketing and charging £10 for anyone who opted for face-to-face check-in.
The old system discriminated against passport-holders from outside the European Economic Area, who were barred from checking in via Ryanair's website.
Ryanair's Stephen McNamara said the new system, to be introduced from next Wednesday, will further lower the airline's costs which will in turn allow it to drop prices for passengers by next winter.
'Passengers travelling without checked-in bags have already embraced our online check-in service and the extension of this service to all passengers, including those with hold luggage and those travelling with infants, will allow all passengers to forever avoid check-in queues,' he said.
'Ryanair's web check-in service allows passenger to check-in from 15 days to four hours before, and print, or re-print, their boarding card up to 40 minutes prior to their scheduled departure time. '
The new online check-in and 'bag-drop' system will be phased in at the 146 airports used by Ryanair by October 1.
The airline also announced it will no longer accept bookings for unaccompanied passengers under the age of 16 years from today.
All new bookings will require passengers - including infants and domestic flight passengers - to hold a valid passport or valid national identity card.
Mr McNamara said the new charges only apply to non-promotional flights and stressed 50 per cent of flights are offered on a promotional basis.
'We want to condition people to get into the habit of bringing their tickets with them to the airport, just as they would their passport,' Mr McNamara told Mail Online.
'It's a kind of a carrot and stick approach, and the stick is that people will get charged £40 if they forget their ticket. But if it happens once, they are sure not to forget it again.'
In-built restrictions on Ryanair's on-line ticketing system mean that many customers will be unable to print out their tickets at the time of booking, raising the chances for penalty charges from customers who think they've completed the process.
Ryanair says its computer 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 people booking farther in advance - common since Ryanair's cheapest deals often are offered months ahead and snapped up quickly - will have to get in the habit of revisiting the website again nearer the time of their trip.
European Union litigation has forced Ryanair to change the way it lists the costs of its tickets to include taxes and some - but not all - fees up front.
Advertised 'free' tickets can still end up costing £20 to £80.
For example, Ryanair adds £10 or more to each round-trip ticket per passenger if it's purchased with normal credit or debit cards, making the charge virtually impossible to avoid.
Nonetheless, this cost is omitted from the initial price. The airline defends this practice because it offers the option of free booking for holders of a restrictive, ill-marketed Visa Electron card that is not available in major countries.
Ryanair increasingly celebrates its penchant for imposing hard-to-avoid fees.
Chief Executive Michael O'Leary in recent months has alternately baffled, inflamed and amused press conferences with claims - now conceded to be sharp exercises in fanning free publicity - that he might introduce charges to use aircraft toilets and make Ryanair's fattest passengers pay extra.
He also has floated the idea of selling branded toilet paper with his own face on each sheet.
Source: DailyMail
No comments:
Post a Comment