Ryanair giveth, and Ryanair taketh away...
Iused to be a great fan of Ryanair, constantly defending them from all-comers and using their services to fly all over the place. Back in the day when they had far fewer destinations out of Dublin than they have now, my husband and I frequently booked flights to London Stansted, and then, from there to wherever we were headed. Rome, I remember, was one such destination we accessed that way a number of times back in the late Nineties.
It was all so simple then. If you weren’t checking in a suitcase then you knew exactly what you were dealing with – stick everything into your 55x40x20cm carryon bag (including your handbag and any duty-free purchases), squeeze it shut, make sure it doesn’t weigh more than 10kg, and on you go. No additional charges. No complications.
Then things started to change, with their assigning of seats when you booked, and, more recently, with the introduction of the two-bag system – as long as you have coughed up for priority boarding, of course. If you haven’t, then they remove the larger of your two bags – or your only one if it is larger than handbag size – at the boarding gate, tag it, and put it into the hold.
Yes, I know, at least you no longer pay for the privilege of a second bag like you did back in the day, and yes, I also acknowledge that they are definitely not as aggressive with their scrutiny tactics and bag-weighing as was once the case. But, and it’s a big but, the new Ryanair set-up is now overcomplex and, quite frankly, turning into a total pain for travellers.
When the two-bag/priority system was introduced, at first I thought that it was working well. It definitely seemed to speed up boarding and there was less of a scramble for overhead space, with people having to over-shoot their seat to find a slot, and then pushing back again to their seat through, as it were, the still oncoming traffic as passengers continued to board.
So far this year I have flown with Ryaand nair six times – twice to Leeds Bradford, once to Manchester, twice to Venice Treviso and once to Chania in Crete. I am also booked to fly with them on another two occasions (industrial action permitting) before the end of the year – to Chania in Crete in early October and to Venice, again, in December. And possibly, although not yet booked, to Fez (via Stansted, like in the old days) in November.
When the two-bag policy came into force it was fine at first. There were a few more people in the priority queue but, in my experience, the majority of travellers were still eschewing the priority payment handing their bags over to be removed at the departure gate. On the Chania flight in June, for example, it wasn’t a problem because so many people were travelling for a couple of weeks holiday and so had checked their bags in anyway.
That, however, has not been my more recent experience. More and more people are now paying priority to bring two bags on board – which is, of course, precisely what Michael O’Leary and Ryanair were hoping for when they changed the rules. Did we really think it was to facilitate us, the passengers, that the whole idea was to make our lives easier? Of course not. It was to make Ryanair more money and that is precisely what is now happening. On a Saturday flight home from Leeds Bradford in the middle of July the priority queue was twice the length of the regular one. And the problem was compounded that evening because one of the staff, assuming that all priority passengers had turned up, lifted the rope and told the ‘ordinary’ passengers to join the end of the priority queue. Even though the time on the clock was still a couple of minutes off the time that the announcement board was saying that the gate number would even be displayed.
So, two minutes later, having obviously been waiting upstairs until the gate number appeared, up turned a priority passenger and his young son, only to be told they had to join the end of the whole queue. Total inefficiency, and so, understandably, chaos ensued.
It was so much simpler before. Now, new policies and complicated pricing structures have taken away what once made Ryanair so appealing. We put up with being treated like cattle then because, well, that was what we were paying for. And it was all very equitable.
Not anymore. In over-complicating its modus operandi, Ryanair isn’t ‘getting better’ as it would have us believe. It’s getting worse. So why are we paying more?