I never understood why you'd want to be on the plane early. I don't really find it more comfortable on the plane than at the gate, and it's not like you're gonna take off faster than the last people to board. Almost feels like a trap to get people who don't fly often to pay a little more.
If you get on later, there might not be room in the overhead compartment. That's the only rational reason I can come up with to get on the plane earlier.
In certain airports/flights, where you have to take a bus from the gate to the plane after boarding at the gate counter, 'speedy boarding' can actually work against its intended purpose. This is because you'll end up boarding the bus first, and if you choose to take a seat rather than standing close to the doors, everyone else will leave the bus before you to board the plane. I've seen this happening countless times.
At Berlin airport, boarding (at least in the low-cost terminal) works by checking tickets and moving passengers to a closed area with few or no seats. And they do not open the actual boarding (with the bus) until everyone is in that area. So the so-called "priority" passengers are the first to be in that area, standing and waiting for everyone else to fill that area.
On budget airlines you almost always only get a backpack included which goes under the seats. They usually bundle the small onboard suitcase option with "Priority boarding", usually because people with suitcases board slower and splitting up those with suitcases and those without speeds up boarding. And if you don't have Priority but come in with a suitcase you will 99% of the time be stopped and forced to pay a fee.
IMHO it isn't a terrible policy per se since it allows for savvy, usually younger, and usually poorer travellers to get even cheaper plane tickets and travel more but I do think there needs to be a cap on the price of "Priority" since during busy times the budget airlines, especially WizzAir in my experience, jack up prices substantially. I had to fly in my suit for a wedding once because the "Priority" charge for both ways was 130€.
Not sillier than charging 2 euros for using an effin' toilet. That's probably unlawful in many places, not sure if they actually implemented it but at least serious PR was happening around it few years back. Imagine if you simply don't have cash on you and your cards ain't working for some reason (or wallet stolen etc).
Luckily for us Ryanair practically ignores our closest airport (Geneva), but due to Swiss air being greedy and corrupty, they prevented Easyjet from having their main airport in Zurich, and Geneva it is. So we get all these nice direct flights to most of Europe, North Africa and Middle east that even Swiss airlines don't cover. Prices are usually fine too, if booked long enough in advance and not during top breaks. Ie recently went to Morocco for some paragliding during easter for like 70 USD. Next best flight would be 4x the cost and 3x the time.
The toilet charge is (and it should be obvious) a marketing ploy — it gets the Ryanair boss interviews in the media, and reminds people that Ryanair is so cheap it's not worth checking the competitors.
I like that they do it this way. The bins always had plenty of space when I took the option, and otherwise you travel with a backpack which fits under the seat in front of you for the lowest ticket price.
The boarding and disembarking procidures are also much faster with Ryanair in part thanks to this policy, the other being air stairs boarding from both ends of the plane.
They offer a cheap 10kg hold luggage option in case the overhead bins have been sold out or you need to take a small suitcase with forbidden items.
Given that the overhead bins are usually highly congested, the capitalist playbook clearly says you should be able to solve this space allocation problem by introducing a cost for the space usage.
Except the overhead bins only got cluttered in the first place because capitalists took something that was usually included, a checked bag, and charged $50 for it, so now passenger planes fly with pretty underfilled cargo areas and overstuffed overhead compartments that make it take 2x as long to board and deboard the plane.
So yeah, inventing a problem where there wasn't one and selling a solution IS actually the capitalist playbook.
FYI, the low cost airlines in the US are actually in a business crisis right now, because their cost per seat mile has doubled and none of them are really making a profit, while the legacy carriers are making reasonable profit. So expect some truly offensive bullshit from "low cost" carriers to offset their bad business decisions.
They doubled their fleet size but now each plane is flying fewer hours per day, and wouldn't you know that's bad for an airline, from an economics perspective.
This might be true for low-cost airlines, but is it for the traditional ones?
I recall times where checked luggage was included in the air fare, but people would still fill up the overhead space, as it was simply more convenient (and quicker) to have your luggage with you, instead of having to wait for your checked luggage to show up 10-40 Minutes after leaving the plane.
Oh the good old days of flying in to Tegel (Berlin), time from the Gate to the Taxi? Approximately 3 Minutes.
Nowadays, it seems everything goes extra, as that allows airlines to list first on any of the travel portals where people buy their flights nowadays.
Even if you pay, they may decide that your bag is not suitable for the overhead compartment. I once had a 40-liter backpack thrown on my lap by a flight attendant because it fits under the seat and she didn't have room for someone else's suitcase. Why they limit the underseat bag to a ridiculously small volume is a good question.
"In the US this can be common and the staff low key make everyone anxious about it. Like "uh oh guys, room is running out in the overhead" "might have to check your bag". It's not the end of the world, but it's an easy thing to ham up from the framework of annoyance and unfairness. You don't get the convenience because the guy in front of you got there first, and now you're waiting +30 minutes for the bag to be released from the cargo compartment. And maybe he brought 3 bags, over the limit, and you have just one smaller bag. You know what unfairness and anxiety like this generates? Sales and an arms race to board ever earlier with ever more bags at an ever higher price. If this trend continues eventually it will just be one guy with 1000 bags who pays $50,000 to board first and filling up all the bins at once. "
Yeah that makes sense I guess. Though that hasn't happened to me yet (couple of hundred flights in total I'd guess). I would probably have been nervous about this kind of stuff before my days as a relatively frequent flyer.
Sounds like an airline problem, not a customer problem. The airline should ensure enough storage space instead of having customers compete for storage space. Ryan Air looks like a bad experience to me based on people saying you have to board early to get storage space.
Well it's not a problem for Ryanair if it means they can charge extra to give you a better chance of getting storage.
Ryanair isn't a good experience, but it isn't terrible either. I fly with them most of the time from the UK to other European countries, and I don't pay for any extras - usually I just pack light and only take cabin luggage that can fit under the seat. Mentally I, guess I treat it like it's a bus ride - it's not going to be fancy, comfortable, or fast, there's going to be a lot of waiting around. It gets me from A to B safely and cheaply, as long as I don't fall for any of their dark patterns.
I've never actually flown Ryan Air, but I'm pretty sure this is a perennial issue on Delta. They wind up checking people's luggage for free when it doesn't fit.
There is enough guaranteed storage underneath the seat that the lowest tier ticket guarantees, overhead sized luggage has become an extra fee for the last ~7 years.
I been on flights where they just go to the people in the back of the line and says "sorry, your bag must be checked in because we dont have enough room in the overheads". Kind of sucks when you just got carry on (because now they will throw your luggage among the checked in bags and they might damage it and you have to wait in the airport for your bag)
TLDR; People don't trust airline and airport with their carry on.
It's all about being sure your carry on luggage will be in the plane with you and not have to be checked in.
People don't want to pay for that and don't trust the airport to get the luggage to their destination.
Also if you do multi flight with different airlines that don't have code share you'd have to go take your luggage and checked in it again, do security etc ... (Depends on the airport).
Because some companies sell more than places in the plane and there are places that same sit is given to more than one person and there are situations when last on the line can not get on the place since all places are occupied. It happened for friends of us.
Don't think this works at least in Europe due to regulations. Due to some kind of error, I was bumped from from a flight a year ago, which meant I a) got a free flight the next day b) got the cost of food and a hotel for the night back from the airline, and c) around 80€ flat.
So unless you absolutely have to be there the day of your flight, it is even a pretty good deal to stay.
The cash compensation in Europe if they bump you is 250 - 600 EUR per flight and person, depending on distance. That even applies for significant delays.
To be fair, it can be a hassle to get it. But sometimes, if the airline is clearly at fault not.
And for the record: Every airline overbooks. But usually they find enough volounteers to make it work.
I think this is more an American phenomenon; Ryanair does not systematically do it as far as I know. The EU's passenger rights reg would make this extremely expensive for the airline.
Ryanair absolutely does this. I've been on a flight in the last 3 months that was +2 oversold. Everyone else had checked in online earlier than me and gotten a seat assignment, so I was held at the gate, unable to pass, until the gate was ready to close and they had confirmed they had a seat for me.
The 'rules' state that they're supposed to ask for volunteers, but in this instance, they didn't. I was just withheld from boarding until they confirmed they had a seat for me.
But you can't even get to the gate if you haven't checked in, at which point you get an assigned seat. If you somehow managed to get past the entry point and security without checking in then something went wrong at the airport, not with RyanAir.
I don’t think this is true — every airline that I know of supports “seat assignment at gate” to handle exactly this kind of overbooking.
(How it happens can vary: your PNR might not have a seat assigned, or the seat might have been double booked. Either way, at check-in they’ll typically notify you and let you through regardless, since you have a perfectly valid ticket.)
Same as the sibling comment already stated, I was able to check in, and instead of being assigned seat 24B (or something of that calibre), my boarding pass said “seat assigned at gate”.
I still had a valid boarding pass. Nothing went wrong at the airport, besides Ryanair failing to follow correct overbooking procedure. Fortunately in that instance, had they refused boarding on me, I would have suffered zero inconvenience, and have received 350 euros compensation and a flight the next day. In a way, I wish they had refused me that day.
