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If You Think That Airlines in the United States Charge Crazy Fees...

Monday June 1, 2009

...then check out Ryanair! About's own Guide to Spain Travel has taken issue with Ryanair and their nickel-and-diming, punitive fees. Especially at risk are passengers who don't pay for their checked luggage online or who can't print a boarding pass before they arrive at the airport.

Imagine paying more than $50 for a boarding pass to be printed at the airport because you don't have a printer at home or the hotel you are staying at doesn't have one. Sounds like an unlikely scenario, unless you are traveling with Ryanair. Damian Corrigan, Guide to Spain Travel asked Why is Ryanair's Boarding Card Reprint Fee so Expensive? The reply from Ryanair included "...while we must encourage passengers to bring their boarding card we do not wish to be so harsh as to prevent passengers from travelling so we have introduced a purposely high fee of €40 to ensure that the estimated 0.1% of passengers who do present without their boarding card do not continue to ignore this important condition of travel."

Equally stunning is that this question needed to be asked by Damian - Why Do Ryanair Charge Multiple Credit Card Fees for a Single Transaction?. Part of the response included "Ryanair allows all passengers the facility to avoid credit card fees altogether by opting to pay for their flights with Visa Electron, which is widely available throughout Europe." To which Damian pointed out "It also appears that many banks don't issue Visa Electron Cards - in the UK Nationwide and Lloyds have stopped issuing them and Barclay's only offers them to teenagers."

Granted, Ryanair is a cheap, no-frills airline, but all these extra charges really do add up. If you're new to traveling on Ryanair, Damian Corrigan's series of questions with responses from Ryanair constitute what I would absolutely consider essential reading. Kind of makes the checked luggage fees charged by many airlines pale in comparison.

Luggage Fees - Legacy Airlines in the US
Luggage Fees - Low Cost Airlines in the US
Luggage Fees - Non-US, International Airlines