Effective as of Monday, January 15, 2018, a new bag policy is being implemented by Ryanair — touting “lower bag fees, bigger check-in bags and fewer boarding delays”…
Is the New Ryanair Bag Policy Improved? Not For Me
…and the new bag policy — which “will cost Ryanair up to €50m pa”, according to Kenny Jacobs of Ryanair — is as follows:
- Fees to check your bag will decrease from 35 euros or pounds to 25 euros or per bag
- The weight allowance to check a bag will increase from 15 kilograms to 20 kilograms
- Customers can continue to carry aboard two bags — but customers who have not purchased tickets for priority boarding will be required to put the larger of the two bags in the hold — free of charge — at the boarding gate to avoid boarding delays or baggage offloads
How Much Extra For Priority Boarding?
I decided to see how much is the difference in price for a random one-way ticket from Budapest to Dublin on Friday, February 23, 2018.
The lowest fare would be roughly be the equivalent of $85.45; whereas the Plus fare — which includes priority boarding and carrying two bags aboard the airplane — is approximately $123.77.
In other words, I would be paying an extra $38.32 to carry two bags aboard the airplane with me, which equates to an increase in price of almost 45 percent.
One might argue that I am getting more value for my money — but I had no major issues with my first flight and my second flight which were operated by Ryanair; and I had both aforementioned bags with me. I did not need to check in for the flight 60 days in advance — nor did I have any use for checking a bag; and I was just fine with not reserving a seat.
Reason For the New Bag Policy
Jacobs said that all customers of Ryanair “will still be free to bring 2 free carry-on bags but because of our heavily booked flights (94% load factors), we don’t have space on board for this many wheelie bags so we will ask non-priority customers to put their bigger bag in the hold — free of charge — from Monday 15 Jan in order to eliminate boarding delays and improve our industry leading on-time departures.”
Bag fees were decreased by Ryanair in June of 2016 by as much as 50 percent for 92 percent of its customers; as well as a reduction from 108 different baggage fees to a mere six.
Summary
If you check bags when you fly as a passenger aboard airplanes operated by Ryanair, you will definitely benefit from the new policy…
…but for me, this is essentially a fare increase, as I never check any bags which travel with me — and if I carry two bags, the larger one holds such items as a laptop computer, my clothes and toiletries; while the smaller one is simply a camera bag. I do not want to check either bag.
This means that if I want to carry both bags aboard an airplane operated by Ryanair with me, I will have to pay extra for a ticket which includes priority boarding — even though my larger bag is nowhere near the size or weight of a “wheelie” bag. In fact, I can fit both bags under the seat in front of me if necessary, as that is how little room they occupy.
I do not have any intention of flying as a passenger aboard any airplane operated by Ryanair anytime soon; but I do wonder if there is a chance that an employee of the airline would permit a person with two smaller bags to board an airplane with both of them anyway…
Photograph ©2014 by Brian Cohen.
