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Ryanair scraps check-in desks as it charges passengers £10 to print tickets at home (and a £40 fine if you forget)
John Doe wrote:
wildrose1723 wrote: wow - that's a bold move for Ryanair. But at the same time should we be surprised? They are notorious for cutting costs wherever they can This isn't cutting costs. It is raising fares without raising fares. Basically allows Ryannair tro advertise 1£ fares that end up to be £100 once you have left the aircraft at destination. How long before they put a toll booth at the base of airstairs to get passengers to pay for the cost of moving the airstairs to the aircraft ? Obviously enough passengers look at the total ticket price and even with the fees are still finding Ryanair to be a good deal. Their web site does show all the fees and a total price in addition to the base price that no one really pays attention to anymore on _any_ airline except perhaps Southwest. Ryanair is still cheaper, generally by 40% or more, than an airline like Easyjet for similar routes. You have to look at the big picture. It's like people complaining about the annual fee at Costco, stating confidently, 'I'm not stupid enough to pay to shop at a store,' when in reality the annual fee is lost in the noise when you consider how much money you save over the course of a year, and you can often get the entire fee back, and more, with the 2% rebate for Executive Members. The real savings for an airline is not when half the passengers don't need a check-in agent, because you still have so much of the fixed overhead costs. You have to get _all_ passengers weaned off of expecting service for things that cost the airline money. OTOH, sometimes I wonder how well the airline itself evaluates the payback on these fees. The last two flights I took on Continental, the departures were delayed by about 30 minutes each time because of the extra time it takes to load the plane when virtually every passenger has a carry-on rollerboard suitcase. Eventually the flight attendants have to gate-check some of the rollerboards, at no cost, because there isn't room in the overhead bins for all those suitcases. Passengers that board earlier in the process pay no attention to "put your smaller carry-on under the seat in front of you," or "don't put your coat in the overhead bin" and the bins fill up quickly, and the attitude is "hey, if you didn't nickel and dime us we wouldn't be carrying such a ridiculous amount of stuff onto the plane in the first place, so you deal with it." Delaying flights has a ripple effect on the system. Eventually they start building longer load times into the schedule, and they get less use of the equipment, and the airport raises fees because they can handle less airplanes. |
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Ryanair scraps check-in desks as it charges passengers £10 to print tickets at home (and a £40 fine if you forget)
SMS wrote:
Obviously enough passengers look at the total ticket price and even with the fees are still finding Ryanair to be a good deal. But when you buy the ticket, can the airline really show you the total price ? At that point in time, it doesn't know how you intend to check-in, so it cannot charge you the appropriate fee. The real savings for an airline is not when half the passengers don't need a check-in agent, because you still have so much of the fixed overhead costs. You have to get _all_ passengers weaned off of expecting service for things that cost the airline money. Charging £10 for web check-in isn't exactly encouragement to avoid checking in at airport. They could have jacked the base fee by £10, and then charged £30 for airport check-in. (instead of charging £10 for web check-in and £40 for airport check in). If they really want to save costs, why not eliminate check-in alltogether and just scan the bar codes on tickets as people board ? OTOH, sometimes I wonder how well the airline itself evaluates the payback on these fees. The last two flights I took on Continental, the departures were delayed by about 30 minutes each time because of the extra time it takes to load the plane when virtually every passenger has a carry-on rollerboard suitcase. Many bonehead decisions are designed to please Wall Street Casino Analysts instead of actually being smart and generating profits. Legacy carriers tend to have higher costs per passenger-mile, and they can't seem to lower those to compete against the new guys on the block. So they try to delay price increases by removing services that used to be included in the price of the ticket (meals, luggage etc). This has the side effect of adding value to their premium cabin products since those still get luggage allowance, meals etc etc. |
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Ryanair scraps check-in desks as it charges passengers £10 to print tickets at home (and a £40 fine if you forget)
Obviously enough passengers look at the total ticket price and even with
the fees are still finding Ryanair to be a good deal. But when you buy the ticket, can the airline really show you the total price ? At that point in time, it doesn't know how you intend to check-in, so it cannot charge you the appropriate fee. Twelve seconds of research going through the Ryanair ticket buying process reveals that they ask you when you buy the ticket how much luggage you'll be checking and how you'll be checking in, and they set the price accordingly. If you guess wrong and show up without having checked in or with too much luggage, the price at the airport is considerably higher. Ryanair goes out of their way to be the most annoying airline in the world. Even with all of the add-on fees, they're still really cheap, e.g., a flight I'm taking from Dublin to Edinburgh next week where the nominal price was 1 euro turned out actually to cost 25 euros by the time I added in all the extras. But that's still an incredibly cheap fare for that route, less than the lowest train+ferry fare for a trip that takes all day. I wish they'd just quote the real fare and be done with it, since I doubt anyone is still fooled by their fake teaser prices any more. R's, John |
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Ryanair scraps check-in desks as it charges passengers £10 to print tickets at home (and a £40 fine if you forget)
In message SMS
was claimed to have wrote: You have to look at the big picture. It's like people complaining about the annual fee at Costco, stating confidently, 'I'm not stupid enough to pay to shop at a store,' when in reality the annual fee is lost in the noise when you consider how much money you save over the course of a year, and you can often get the entire fee back, and more, with the 2% rebate for Executive Members. Please, don't try to help these people... Costco is busy enough already, the last thing we need is people too stupid to do basic math wandering around Costco. |
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Ryanair scraps check-in desks as it charges passengers £10 to print tickets at home (and a £40 fine if you forget)
DevilsPGD wrote:
Please, don't try to help these people... Costco is busy enough already, the last thing we need is people too stupid to do basic math wandering around Costco. Did you see the movie "Idiocracy?" Costco is the only store left in 2505 and it's so big that there's a train to take you between departments. "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8zNsUTWsOc" One of my friends constantly makes snide comments about Costco, until she needs someone to take her there to buy something like tires, a gas grill, a TV, or other big ticket item where she just can't bear to pay the prices at other stores. |
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