Ryanair to cut cabin baggage allowance to ease boarding delays

Here’s why

Ryanair are cutting their cabin baggage allowance and reducing fees for checked bags in order to ease boarding delays.

The budget airline is changing the rules on hand luggage on its planes. From November only passengers with priority boarding will be able to bring on two carry-on bags into the cabin.

Non-priority customers will only be allowed to bring one smaller carry-on bag on board and their second bigger bag will be placed in the hold free of charge at the boarding gate.

The company said that there was simply not enough overhead space in the cabin for the volume of carry-on bags customers are bringing on board,  with highs loads of 97 per cent in August,  which are causing boarding and flight delays.

The airline aims to encourage more passengers to check their bags to avoid delays at the boarding gate as too many customers are ‘abusing’ the new two free carry-on bags service.

To do this they will be increasing the allowance for checked-in baggage from 15kg to 20kg for all bags and will cut the standard fee to £25 from £35 for checking the bigger bag.

Ryanair’s chief marketing officer, Kenny Jacobs, said: “These bag policy changes will cost Ryanair over €50m p.a. in reduced checked bag fees.

“However, we believe offering bigger bags at reduced fees will encourage more customers to consider checking-in a bag, which will reduce the high volume of customers we have with two carry-on bags at the boarding gates, which is causing flight delays due to large numbers of gate bag and cabin bag offloads.”

The lower bag fees and increased bag size allowances will come take effect for all bookings for travel after 1 November 2017.