Ryanair new checkin policy warning

[decho]

I've just noticed that Ryanairs new checkin policy is that if you don't book seats you can only checkin 7 days before  you fly rather than 15. This is a real pain in the neck if you are going away for 2 weeks and is obviously a deliberate ploy to get passengers to pay the extra for booked seats.
I've always been a supporter of Ryanair until now but if this is MIchaels way of improving customer relationships, its a funny way of going about it!
You will now need to pay for seat bookings or find a printer out there to print your return boarding passes.

[Deso]

You get 30 days with Easyjet, which gives you much more leeway. 

[zedzedeleven]

Yes, I agree with Decho, it`s moving FR even further away from it`s "boarding a bus" policy. I recently booked two EJ flights to Bilbao and although I had pay to book seats they were only a couple of quid each. FR didn`t have a good year, perhaps they are trying to claw back some lost revenue. The wrong way if you ask me. They seem to be getting further and further away from their original model. Overall the budget airlines are progressively moving away from their roots, things like complicated cabin baggage rules and forcing customers to book seats are not the way to go. Perhaps saint michael isn`t as much in charge as he used to be, more`s the pity. They seem to be advertising on the television as well.

[bycroft]

What is the cheapest seat booking fee with Ryanair, not much I suspect may be 3-5 Euros. I know I would rather pay that than go back to the old "Running for it " days. Not so long ago peeps were asking the budgets to start pre bookable seats to make life less stressful at the airport.
Suppose you can only satisfy some people some of the time but not ALL the people all of the time.......just remember the Good Old Days when if we got a flight for under £300 each we thought we had done well !!....... If you do need to print out passes here in Fuerte there are plenty of places you can do it .

[Deso]

One thing that does annoy me about Ryanair's pricing for baggage, seats etc, is the fact that the price is the same in Pound's as it is in Euro's.

Surely this is discriminatory against those of us in the UK?

[decho]

 Actually it's £10 - £15 each way from Edinburgh. That adds 30% to the average fare I pay. Don't get me wrong they are still the cheapest and by far the best airline for me to travel - I was simply posting this as a warning it others and commenting on the fact that it was a strange way to improve customer relationships..

[bedouin]

One thing that does annoy me about Ryanair's pricing for baggage, seats etc, is the fact that the price is the same in Pound's as it is in Euro's.

Surely this is discriminatory against those of us in the UK?

Not at all, they can charge what they like in different currencies.

[bedouin]

You get 30 days with Easyjet, which gives you much more leeway. 

You get 30 days with Ryanair too, as long as you reserve a seat.

[skin]

pre booked seats from Birmingham on Ryanair are £30 return or if like me you are disabled its free plus if you have a carer they don't pay for a pre booked seat its something to do with eu rules

[KWC]

I printed off our boarding passes for our flight with Monarch a couple of weeks before the flight, and didn't print the return leg passes. Never noticed if they actually gave you the opportunity? and if I'm being honest I forgot all about the return boarding passes.

Until the day before we were to fly home when the wife said " do you have the boarding passes " Not wanting to panic her with horror stories of RA and TC charging silly money for the privilege of issuing them, I read up the conditions on the invoice and it said that " you can print off or they can be issued at the airport" 

Thank feck for that I thought, with cold beads of sweat running down my face.

Got to the Airport and they produced them with no problem whatsoever and with a nice smiley attitude about her.

Take note TC/RA on how to appease your valuable commodity   -  Your customers!!

[Ernie]

Alternatively, please keep costs as low as possible for those customers more organised. There's always another side of the coin ...

[Elite of the forum]

Ryan Air boarding passes printed off for May im well appeased 

should this be in the thread "LOADS OF MONEY" 

[Neilclarke]

We are flying from East Midlands in June. The front 5 Rows are £10 each way but from Row 6 onwards they are only £5 each way. I will gladly pay an extra £10 each for my Wife and I to avoid the stress of trying to get two seats together in the old free for all. Ryanair are still much cheaper than Thompson and Jet 2 that also fly fro East Mids.

[cdm82]

I agree I do like the new allocated seating arrangements as it does take the stress out of dashing for seats, however as I have to fly during school holidays and the cost of pre paying allocated seats is a minimum of £10 per head this then adds a further £80 onto the ticket price, if it was even half this I probably wouldnt mind however £80 on top of premium prices is alot of money Also i believe only the first 90 bags are guaranteed to go into the aircraft (unless you pay premium) so that would be 120 quid. I would prefer having all boarding cards printed before travelling so I dont think we should be restricted to only 7 day check in unless you pay as alot of people do have 14 day holidays but I will just have to find somewhere to print off when in Fuerte. Roll on not having to go in school hols then I will probably pay the extra. Count down to next holiday though 

[zedzedeleven]

I`m not sure what stress was involved in the old system. You just needed to be alert , watch the boards for the gate announcement, be at the gate as soon as it is announced and why is it important to sit next to your travelling companions? you are going to spend the next fortnight living in each others pockets. I just think the airlines are playing on people`s irrational fears and taking advantage. Hopefully cracks will soon start to appear and all this self indulgent cosseting will once again become the province of the luxury carriers where the timid and tearful can pay through the nose for their indulgences. Along with sweets to suck on take off, hot towels, television screens and tilting seats. The stewardesses did have perter bottoms though, and there were none of those nancy boy stewards like you get nowadays.

[SheilaW]

What's the situation with smartphone boarding cards? It's been a while since I last flew (as that involves leaving the island ), but that's surely the way to go. Do Ryanair and the other low-cost airlines let you do that to avoid having to access a printer? I know you can get the booking sheet in PDF form, so I always have that on my smartphone, but I don't know how the scanning bit works. Do you have to have one of those newer phones that you can pay with in some shops?

[charlatanefc]

What's the situation with smartphone boarding cards? It's been a while since I last flew (as that involves leaving the island ), but that's surely the way to go. Do Ryanair and the other low-cost airlines let you do that to avoid having to access a printer? I know you can get the booking sheet in PDF form, so I always have that on my smartphone, but I don't know how the scanning bit works. Do you have to have one of those newer phones that you can pay with in some shops?

I know Easyjet were trialling it, but don't know if it's got any further on, as it was only at certain airports

[Deso]

You can now use it at all UK airports that Easyjet fly from but not Fuerte as yet.

You download your boarding pass to your iphone or android smart phone and you scan it in at the airport and show it to the flight crew when you board the aircraft.

http://www.easyjet.com/en/mobile

I'll give it a whirl in June, but will have a paper copy just in case. 

[zedzedeleven]

We are flying from East Midlands in June. The front 5 Rows are £10 each way but from Row 6 onwards they are only £5 each way. I will gladly pay an extra £10 each for my Wife and I to avoid the stress of trying to get two seats together in the old free for all. Ryanair are still much cheaper than Thompson and Jet 2 that also fly fro East Mids.

Are you sure about that? on the FR website it states that the fee for a standard seat during high season (starts 1st. June) is ten quid.

[Neilclarke]

They may have changed it then, but i booked 3 months ago and only paid £5 for my seat

[bridlife]

Seats are £10 and £15 in June.

By the way some friends of ours came out today, and even trying to print their boarding passes 6 days before, for their outward journey, they were not allowed. They ended up paying for their seats as a last resort.

[zedzedeleven]

Well I`m not going to pay for a seat, I think it`s just plain daft. As someone else said , a few quid isn`t too bad but ten? and then it drops to five in the low season? why? it`s still the same seat, and on flights that are invariably full in either season how is it justified? This is beginning to have all the hallmarks of the "old" Ryanair, remember the debit card scam? first you needed a Mastercard, then it had to be Visa, then it had to be the Ryanair card. You could of course pay cash but no one ever found a way to do it !  I just wish I could find an alternative  morning flight from the north west, there only seems to be Ryanair from Speke in September, the others, (EJ, Mon, J2, TC) only have afternoon flights. Monarch came up cheaper on Skyscanner as well.  And this check in malarkey, just plain nastiness, a "punishment" for not paying extortionate seat fees . When other airlines can offer thirty days and Ryanair themselves used to offer fifteen days shortening it by so much just to make it as awkward as possible isn`t going to win him any friends and is certainly going to lose him a few. Anyway, I v`e done it twice, once in the Orange precinct and the second time in Maitland`s (Whereabouts). Not a problem really once you find your way round the Spanish keyboard.

[Digger Dave]

Just checked in for hand luggage only for Brum to Fuerte next Friday.Refused to pay for a seat so they allocated me the window seat I would have chosen anyway.Just waiting til Mon to get return seats.(Only having long weekend)

[zedzedeleven]

Way to go Dave, be interesting to know how many seats are unallocated at check in time, what chances there are of couples and families  who have n`t  paid to select seats getting to sit next to each other.

[decho]

Well I've done the return journey  twice now since the new allocated seats policy and both times the 'others' queue(which I use) is still very long.
Both times we have had seats together and got our bags on the plane no problem, even though the flights have been full.

[Deso]

Way to go Dave, be interesting to know how many seats are unallocated at check in time, what chances there are of couples and families  who have n`t  paid to select seats getting to sit next to each other.

With Easyjet, you can go through the motions of booking, or manage your booking, and go to the add seats section which will show you which seats have been booked and which are still available.

I think it should work for Ryanair as well but I have just tried and the website seems to be having problems, not able to book a flight. 

[zedzedeleven]

Way to go Dave, be interesting to know how many seats are unallocated at check in time, what chances there are of couples and families  who have n`t  paid to select seats getting to sit next to each other.

With Easyjet, you can go through the motions of booking, or manage your booking, and go to the add seats section which will show you which seats have been booked and which are still available.

I think it should work for Ryanair as well but I have just tried and the website seems to be having problems, not able to book a flight. 

Aye, I did that to look at flights with FR in September and obviously, as it`s a few months away, there were only a handful of seats reserved. Interesting that the  seats that were reserved were the premium priced seats.  One of my observations has been that most people in the extra legroom seats have been of medium height and leg length so don`t really need to sit in these seats. So why do they pay through the nose to sit there? It really is such a con, if you don`t select a seat for yourself (and pay to do so ) they select one for you and do it for nowt. Trading on people`s fears?  For what it`s worth, I have never had an uncomfortable seat  anywhere on FR, or any other airline come to think of it.

[Villan]

Just to clarify. If you do not wish to pay for allocated seats you cannot check in until 7 days before. When you are able to check in are you allocated random seats by Ryanair? If that is the case what are peoples experience of this? Have they been allocated together or have they been split up?

[zedzedeleven]

I have just booked a flight to Fuerte with FR for September, I didn`t buy an allocated seat. On the itinerary it states " you can check in on line from 30 days up to 2 hours prior to your scheduled flight departure" so I don`t know who is correct now, it may be that the information Decho read is correct and up to date and that my itinerary is out of date or it could be another policy change, we can only wait and see. We need some posts from  forumites that have flown with FR recently.

[decho]

I have just booked a flight to Fuerte with FR for September, I didn`t buy an allocated seat. On the itinerary it states " you can check in on line from 30 days up to 2 hours prior to your scheduled flight departure" so I don`t know who is correct now, it may be that the information Decho read is correct and up to date and that my itinerary is out of date or it could be another policy change, we can only wait and see. We need some posts from  forumites that have flown with FR recently.

It was out friends who are out in our place just now that alerted us to this new policy. They are there for 2 weeks and tried to checkin for the outward and return flights before they left. Could checkin for outward flight but not return, so they ended up paying for allocated seats on the return flight to save them having to find a printer when they we out there.
Yes you can checkin 30 days beforehand but ONLY if you pay for seats.
I think this new policy came into effect at the beginning of April.
It's  annoying but I think Ryanair is still by far the best option for me so I will just take my chances, might even buy a cheap printer out there so that I can print passes.