Airline Cutting Baggage Fees? Ryanair thinks so..

Ryanair is to reduce its charges for extra baggage and for reprinting boarding passes in its biggest move yet to shake off a reputation for bad customer service.

The measures aim to address some of the most frequent complaints against the airline, which was voted the worst of the 100 biggest brands serving the British market by readers of consumer magazine Which?

The budget airline, Europe's largest, will also allow passengers to bring a second small carry-on bag on board at no extra charge and correct minor errors in bookings within 24 hours, it said in a statement on Friday.

"These are the first in a series of customer service improvements which Ryanair is actively working on to make our low fare services easier to access and even more enjoyable for our millions of customers," said Caroline Green, Ryanair's director of customer service.

Management has admitted Ryanair must improve if it is to meet its ambitious target of boosting passenger numbers to 110 million from 80 million over the next 5 years following the order of 175 Boeing 737s.
The fee for reprinting boarding passes of passengers who have checked-in online will be cut from USD$96.5 to USD$22, while the standard baggage fee will be cut to USD$42 from USD$70, the statement said.

All of the changes will be introduced during the coming six months, the statement said.

They really charge that much to reprint your boarding pass? What if your printer broke and you have to get a new pass at the airport? IMO that is insane.

My assumption - not truth, mind you, just the way I've thought about it is this. European airports have a lot of "common use" stations - a Ryanair check-in station can be used for EasyJet a couple hours later, depending on who is flying and when. I believe that in Spain, Aena staffs all the ticket counters as well, not the airline directly. Other countries may or may not have something similar. Either way, that station costs money - not necessarily the $.10 boarding pass, but the space rented from the airport to print the pass and the manpower to run it. RyanAir hates that. They try to be as no-frills as possible. If it's cheaper for them for a customer to show up, completely ignore the ticket counter, and have their only interaction with a human being staff be scanning their boarding pass before they get on the plane (and I'm sure they're looking for a way to get rid of *that*).

By charging an insane amount for printing a boarding pass at the airport, it totally changes the passengers' line of thinking. They don't want to pay those fees. Their hostel probably has a computer for public use, so they'll gladly sit at that for 15 minutes to save enough money to stay somewhere for a few days. Which is exactly what Ryanair prefers. Then, since their ticket counter is practically deserted, they can reduce the number of "stalls" they have significantly, and they just saved a good chunk of change.

Oh, and one other thing. Unlike airlines around here, Ryanair allows you to check in 2 weeks in advance.