Ryanair today, as part of its “Always Getting Better” programme announced new reduced checked bag fees (and increased check-in bag sizes) to encourage more customers to check in bags and reduce the number of customers with 2 bags at the boarding gates. As too many customers are availing of Ryanair’s improved 2 free carry-on bags service, and with high load factors (97% in August) there is not enough overhead cabin space for this volume of carry-on bags, which is causing boarding/flight delays.
To encourage more customers to check-in some bags and reduce the volume of carry-on bags, Ryanair will introduce the following bag policy changes on all flights from 1stNovember next:
- The check-in bag allowance will increase from 15kgs to 20kgs for all bags
- The standard check-in bag fee will be cut from €/£35 to €/£25 for this 20kg bag
- Only Priority Boarding customers (including Plus, Flexi Plus & Family Plus) will be allowed to bring two carry-on bags on the aircraft*
- All other (i.e. non-priority) customers will only be allowed to bring one smaller carry-on bag on board the aircraft, while their second (bigger) wheelie bag must be placed in the hold (free of charge) at the boarding gate.
Ryanair’s Kenny Jacobs said:
These bag policy changes will cost Ryanair over €50m p.a. in reduced checked bag fees. However, we believe offering bigger bags at reduced fees will encourage more customers to consider checking-in a bag, which will reduce the high volume of customers we have with 2 carry-on bags at the boarding gates, which is causing flight delays due to large numbers of gate bag and cabin bag offloads.
We hope that by restricting non-priority customers to one small carry-on bag – their wheelie bag must be placed in the hold, free of charge at the boarding gate – this will speed up the boarding of flights and eliminate flight delays being caused by not having sufficient overhead cabin space on busy flights to accommodate over 360 (182 customers x 2 bags) carry-on bags. These lower bag fees and increased bag size allowances will come into play for all bookings for travel after 1stNovember, and we hope our customers will enjoy the savings of our new simplified bag policy.”
* Priority Boarding can be purchased for just €/£5 at the time of booking or added to a booking for €/£6 and is available up to one hour prior to scheduled departure.
