Ryanair: pay £5 for priority boarding to carry on wheelie bags

Ryanair customers will have to pay £5 for priority boarding from 1 November if they want to carry a wheelie bag on board, as the airline attempts to reduce boarding and flight delays caused by a shortage of overhead cabin space.

Priority boarders will still be able to carry on two bags, but all other passengers will be allowed to take only one smaller bag on board the aircraft. A second, larger, wheelie bag will have to be placed in the hold free of charge at the boarding gate, to be collected at baggage reclaim on arrival.

Ryanair is also lowering checked bag fees – a move that will cost the airline €50m (£46m) a year – and increasing the weight allowance to encourage more customers to check in luggage.

From 1 November, the check-in bag allowance will increase from 15kg to 20kg, while the fee for luggage in the hold will be reduced from £35 to £25.

Kenny Jacobs, the airline’s chief marketing officer, said the changes to its baggage policy still mean passengers will be able to travel with two bags for free, but under the current rules too many passengers were taking two bags on board busy flights, resulting in insufficient overhead space and causing delays.

He said that on a typically busy flight, about 186 seats of a total of 189 will be occupied, with space for about 90 bags in the overhead lockers. But some people were bending the rules by bringing on board a wheelie bag and a large rucksack that will not fit underneath the seat.

“We’re making these changes because our flights are so much busier,” he said. “A number of people will have two very large bags, taking up someone else’s space. They’ll hope they’ll get away with it and generally they have, but we don’t want to go back to policing bags at the gate.”

When the second bag allowance was introduced in late 2013, average Ryanair flights were 82% full, Jacobs said. That rose to 97% in August, when a record 12.7 million passengers flew with the airline.

“These bag policy changes will cost Ryanair more than €50m a year in reduced checked bag fees. However, we believe offering bigger bags at reduced fees will encourage more customers to consider checking in a bag,” he said.

“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 carry-on bags.”

Priority boarding costs £5 at the time of booking. It can be added to a booking for £6 up to one hour before scheduled departure.

The changes will mean more passengers will have to collect their luggage from the baggage reclaim carousel at the arrival airport, potentially holding up passengers at their destination.

However, Jacobs said bags were often available as soon as passengers had cleared security, partly because security checks were taking longer. “More than 90% of the time your bag will be on the carousel when you get there,” he added.