Ryanair’s latest bag rules make me long for the days of two coats, big pockets and stuffed wheelies

IHAVE flown with Ryanair on seven occasions so far this year – that’s 14 flights, out and back. Three of those trips have been to Leeds Bradford, another was to Manchester, then there was one to Chania in Crete and another two into Venice Treviso. Next month I will be flying back to Chania again, in November I have booked to Fez in Morocco (via Eindhoven going out and London Stansted coming home) and in early December I will be heading back to Venice for a few days.

Like thousands of other people, all over Europe, I use the airline regularly. Why? Because it offers cheap fares, it has a good track record for punctuality and because it sometimes offers direct flights from Dublin to destinations that other airlines don’t feature on their schedules. Like Chania, for instance.

Cattle

And for all those pluses we put up with being treated like herded cattle, or, certainly, like customers for whom the expectation of ‘service’ is simply a step too far. Never forget that it was Michael O’Leary himself who pronounced on The Late Late Show some years ago that ‘the customer is almost always wrong’.

In the past however, even accepting all the negatives, it used to be relatively straightforward to book with Ryanair. Once you’d unticked all the boxes for the things you didn’t want – insurance, a Ryanair cabin bag, car hire, etc – you just booked your flight, stuffed as much as you could get away with into your 10kg wheelie bag, and off you went. It was like boarding a bus.

Then things started to change over the years with the assigning of seats when you booked, the priority option, and then, earlier this year, the two-bags-on-board option – once you’d paid for priority for that particular privilege. Without priority, you would now have your larger bag tagged at the departure gate and put into the hold – for free.

Initially I thought that this was a good idea. Far too often boarding and disembarking was a nightmare because people couldn’t find a space in the overhead compartments for their wheelies. That meant someone in, say, seat 11A, having to carry on walking down the plane until they found an overhead space, maybe right at the back. Then they would have to push their way back up along the aisle through the still-boarding passengers to get to seat 11A. Result? Frayed tempers all round.

But the departure gate tagging hasn’t worked either, because so many people were still choosing that option that loading the bags from the tarmac onto the plane was resulting in more hold-ups. Plus some passengers were removing the tag somewhere between the departure gate and aircraft steps and simply taking their bag onboard with them.

So, just a few weeks ago came the latest baggage ruling. From November 1 either you pay the €6 priority charge to carry two bags on board, or you pay €8 to check in your 10kg wheelie. But bear in mind that only the first 95 priority-paid bags will be admitted onboard. And also bear in mind that if you had already booked a flight from November onwards, then you will have to go back into your booking and make the necessary amendments. If you just turn up at the departure gate with your wheelie after the November deadline you’ll be charged €25 for it to go in the hold.

All of Ryanair’s constantly changing policies and pricing structures (have you seen the differential in the seat prices recently?) have now over-complicated the whole procedure to the point whereby what once made Ryanair so appealing has now been completely lost in complex policy translation.

Queues

Even before last month’s announcement the priority queues were getting longer and longer with people opting to pay the €6 to keep their bag out of the hold.

The kind of rugby-scrum queue that used to be par for the course years ago is now back, this time in the queue that people are actually paying extra money for. So how can a queue be called ‘priority’ when it is far longer than the so-called ‘ordinary’ queue? It’s nonsense.

But fear not, for, according to Ryanair this week, the new €8 fare for checking in a wheelie is proving hugely successful. They’re even going to lose money on it. What? Yes, apparently people are opting to pay the €8 for a 10kg wheelie rather than €25 for a larger 20kg suitcase.

Really? So people who have always travelled with the kitchen sink will now change the habit of a lifetime and start travelling light? Somehow I don’t think so.

What does make sense, of course, is for people who want to bring their wheelie onboard to pay for priority at €6 to carry their two bags on to the plane instead of the €8 fee to check the 10kg bag in.

And what does that mean? That the priority queue will be three times the length of the other queue and the stress levels for people travelling will go through the roof.

Ryanair’s more recent problems – the rostering row last year and this summer’s pilots’ strikes – resulted in thousands of flights being cancelled.

People huffed and puffed all summer as, understandably, they worried about their family holiday actually happening.

Strikes

‘That’s it,’ I heard more than one friend say. ‘I’m never flying with Ryanair again.’ ‘I bet you do,’ I retorted. And yes, they already have.

In fact, despite the strikes, Ryanair flew some 13.3million passengers in the month of August alone, a figure that is 5% up on the same month last year.

Despite their latest propaganda spin about the new baggage policy being a big success which is patently nonsense, it is good news, nonetheless, that Ryanair’s Irish pilots yesterday unanimously voted to accept the proposed deal, thus ending the dispute that led to this summer’s strikes.

So it’s all systems go again. Albeit with additional charges and myriad booking complexities.

So do you pay the €8 to check your wheelie in and then just join the ordinary queue to board? And while doing that, do you also reserve – and pay for – seats so that you can sit together? Or do you take your chances and end up sitting rows away from your companion?

Or, instead, do you pay the €6 for priority so that you can take the 10kg bag on to the plane, deliberate about paying for seats or not, and, either way, scramble to be early in the priority queue (which will inevitably stretch to infinity) to ensure that your bag doesn’t have to be placed in an overhead locker that is half an airplane away from your seat?

God be with the days when it was so much easier. Just a stuffed-to-the-limit wheelie bag, and punters wearing two coats with the pockets bursting with books and toiletries.

Nowadays Ryanair has woven a far too tangled web for itself – and, therefore, for us.

But will it stop us flying with Mr O’Leary? Of course it won’t. And, boy, does he know it.