> but will instead need to use the digital boarding pass generated in their “myRyanair” app during check-in to board their Ryanair flight.
And of course it's only possible using a specific proprietary app. You'd think a penny-pinching company would want to use open standard to save money instead of develop a custom app, right? I'm 100% sure this is done intentionally to scoop up as much personal data from their customers.
Yeah, it's right up there with the rest of the shady business practices.
Delta, for example, charges more physical cash for a cash+miles ticket than for a pure cash ticket (every time I've been inclined to try to use miles over the last few years anyway). I get that they maybe don't meet the legal barrier for fraud, but even a child can see that it's unethical.
Toss in the seat-selection UI (strongly suggesting you have to select a seat if you don't know the game and figure out how to exit that menu, but every possible seat has an upcharge above the ticket price), "trip insurance" which is insanely overpriced and mostly only covers the things the airline is already required to reimburse you for, and everything else they do, and it's obvious that when a new anti-feature comes out (mandatory app usage being the latest and greatest) it just exists to scam a few more dollars out of you and lie a bit more about the true ticket price.
Their goal is not my goal. My goal is to fly to a destination. A paper ticket has always been enough for that. And if they want to upsell a web page can be full of upselling too. But I don't want upsells, only a flight and air companies are commodities. Imagine if I had to install an app for every chain of gas pumps around my country and the nearby ones.
In many European segments we're finding them comparably priced. If we factor getting to the Ryanair airports, luggage, etc., sometimes we're better off flying, say, Brussels Airlines. And I'd happily buy food in Ryanair flights if their catalogue had any proper food.
I refuse to ever fly Southwest because of their history of open seating. I refuse to ever fly Spirit or other American discount airlines because I want to keep the nickle and diming to a minimum. I fly less than I could if I sought out rock bottom airfares, and that’s ok.
I think with these kinds of ideological issues, all one can do is vote with their wallet. Nobody is forcing you to fly Ryanair, there are other choices, and if you don't like their practices, don't fly with them. If enough people do it, then they might change their ways, but if their 80% number is accurate, you're probably just stuck not flying with them anymore and nobody else is going to care but you, unfortunately.
Not trying to be rude at all... you said their goal is not yours, so that's why you choose not to do business with them. Every business can't please everyone at the same time.
> I think with these kinds of ideological issues, all one can do is vote with their wallet
Needs to be viewed in the light of the distinctly un-open market in which airlines operate. There are only so many airports, and only so many slots. I might wish to start another airline which customers may use an open solution but the reality is that incumbents have a massive moat around them. No market, that I know of, is perfect but air travel is an unusually distorted one.
This was going to be my comment. "vote with your wallet" only works in open competitive markets. But (with a few exceptions), this is not the world we live in. Regulation is the only option left. You have to vote with your vote to get laws in place that force industry to behave better.
Though much less distorted in the EU than in the US. It's common to have the choice between 2-3 different airlines to get from one place to another, and if that's not good enough the next major airport is frequently just a 2-3 hour train journey away
True for everybody but Tesla. If you have a Tesla you install the app once to enter your credit card and then you can delete the app if you wish. All you need to recharge is the ability to drive the car (which doesn't require the app).
I don't think it helps if you're arguing their position. We don't want to allow them to upsell. They're crossing the line into social ostracization grounds.
At this point, their destruction of social trust is so severe that simply boycotting is not enough, just like you don't just boycott a company that's doing environmental destruction. They simply need to be stopped, regardless of their goals.
I used this app over the weekend, it's actually quite handy. Can't help but notice those priority boarding and seat selection buttons while checking for the gate number. You can also order food from your phone in the cabin using some magical Bluetooth protocol I didn't understand
Just to be clear I think their policy is horrifically abusive, but I can totally see why they're doing it
I literally have just got home from a Ryanair flight where they provided me with no option but a paper boarding pass for my daughter.
It’s essentially a result of a crazy hack they’ve implemented to support families who have Ryanair prime.
You can only name adults as Ryanair prime members, and when you book through a Ryanair prime account, you can only book for the named members. There’s a maximum of two per account, as it’s intended for couples. The kids, aged 2-16, you have to make a “linked booking”. You don’t get boarding passes through the app or email - the only option is to go to a customer service desk and have them print you a paper boarding pass.
Also… digital boarding passes are an open standard - IATA BCBP. You can go make your own.
Ill-intentioned persons may falsify their BCBP by changing the flight number or class of service.
They may also simply print two copies of the BCBP and pass one to a friend, or even create a
counterfeit BCBP. Technical solutions exist, e.g. algorithms, called certificates, which can for
example secure the bar code if necessary.
There's a YouTube video that talks about how valuable the major US airlines reward program is. The market cap of each airline is less than the value of each airline's reward program at the time the video was made.
I recall Apple was valued in a similar manner back in the late 1990s. Their market cap was barely more than cash on hand. Talk about missed investing opportunities...
Last year I purchased a ticket to a Broadway show in NYC. I refused to use their digital ticketing nonsense, and when I showed up at the box office just before showtime and said my phone wasn't working (for my own definition of "working") they just handed me paper tickets. So I have to believe every one of these companies must have a way of issuing tickets when people's phones "don't work."
It moves the app one notch back from mandatory, but that's still enough to be a real problem. That method is going to have very low capacity and if you lie about your phone being dead or elsewhere that might screw you over.
i cant believe i'm about to defend Ryanair but just fwiw it seems quite normal to do a custom app specifically for tickets, for anticheat purposes + the nicety of putting your ticket in Apple Wallet is nice enough that i willingly do it for the airlines i fly.
ok that wasnt really defending Ryanair but just being argumentative for the sake of fairness. obviously Ryanair doesn't have Ticketmaster level tech.
It absolutely doesn't take an app to issue a boarding pass which will appear in your Apple Wallet. It's literally a zip (with extension .pkpass) containing a master JSON, a few assets like logos and a digital signature. There are tutorials for making your own.
Many airlines let you download one once you check in on their website, or email you one, or embed a download link in an SMS, just to name 3 alternatives.
Recent experience with United: the SMS option was deeply broken (as in couldn't actually get one boarding pass from the link in SMS). Their kiosks were crap too (as in attendant tries to tell me I'm doing it wrong, then they can't do it, and they finally have to check me in on their own terminal).
Why does a boarding pass need a rootkit? ("anticheat" is usually code for root kits, and at least it has some positive trade off for users in the video game case)
They can just check the scanned pass against their own database to verify authenticity. They could also cryptographically sign it.
It's true that not all apps are hostile, but my pessimism and paranoia aren't unfounded. If you think the current state of software, security, privacy, etc, is fine and dandy and doesn't warrant skepticism, then our shared reality is probably too fractured to have a meaningful debate.
I work in cybersecurity, heading the group in a company you know. I also develop open source software. So I am painfully aware of the pandemic of cybersecurity issues we face professionally and at home.
Progress has its good and bad aspects, and we must fight as much as possible in some battles, and choose them wisely. This is why the EU efforts around privacy are great, and without their drawbacks. But ultimately they are great.
Being infuriated as I see in this thread about the decision of a company to use mobiles as boarding passes is not something I adhere to. One can always fly with another airline that does not have these restrictions, and complain on another thread how expensive this is.
Saying that all of current technology is evil means going off the grid and living a quiet life in a remote forest. This is of course a solution.
Saying that some technology is evil (and it definitely is) means fighting for these specific things to be regulated. Ryan Air's digital boarding passes is not one of them.
I'm not trying to crusade against digital boarding passes, my issue is with normalizing mandatory apps for all the things.
If we had high quality, trusted software, leveraging open standards, that would be one thing, but instead we have janky proprietary snowflake apps that are borderline malware. Like you said, it's a pandemic of cybersecurity issues, so it's hard for me to accept the 'just install the app' mentality.
I agree we should pick our battles, but I don't believe regulation is the only solution worth fighting for. My comment was to nudge cultural change, by pushing back against what I see as a bad practice.
You can usually get the ticket printed at the desk, print it at home, have a PDF on any device like a Kindle, take a screenshot of the QR code, add to your wallet on your phone even without proprietary apps, etc…
I download the airline’s apps, but I hate relying exclusively on these potentially unreliable apps, or unreliable phones so I always get the ticket in other formats, too: always have an analog version, and some form of digital version on at least two devices.
I don’t travel often, but when I do, missing a flight would be expensive or annoying, so it’s a reasonable trade off for me, ymmv. With that said, I also don’t fly Ryanair, so they can do whatever they want.
Out of curiosity, what happens when someone does not own a smartphone (or the battery is dead)? They just can't fly?
And, if their server flaky, does that mean all boarding will stop? If the agents can check people in manually, it seems like the small fraction of people using a paper boarding pass can't be adding much extra cost. If they are saving cost by removing that flow, presumably they are giving up redundancy. Given the quality of airline software, I predict they will see a mass outage within a year.
The whole business model of discount airlines is to cater to the fat part of the bell curve and not the long tails. If you require special accommodation at any point in the process don't fly via a super budget value airline. Even if they do support your use case, they're not in the business of making it easy and they'll hit you with a "fuck you" fee to make it worth their while.
They'll make accommodations, but those will be very budget accommodations and not comfy, just like everything else about them.
Hence why you're better off going with something else. In fact, you're almost always better off going with something else. I'm not a giant, but at 6'4" (1.93 meters) I've found that I absolutely detest most shared transit. Either my legs are too long or shoulders too broad, and even non-budget airlines can be unpleasant to fly in.
Yeah, disability accommodation laws are pretty weak, even in the countries with the strongest protections. "reasonable" accommodations often equate to situations that still don't actually provide practical accommodations for people.
I'm not sure I understand. It sounds like you're saying you don't like the leg room being so cramped that beyond a certain height you're physically required to angle your knees into a neighboring seat's space. That's surely part of the charm though?
It's bad enough when I have to fight for elbow room with the people next to me. It's a whole 'nother experience to fight for the elbow room of the people in front of me to have a place to put my knees.
I had the misfortune of acquiring a temporary disability while I was overseas and it kind of opened my eyes to how shitty the west treats the disabled. While I was in eastern airports the staff were tripping over themselves to accommodate me. I was assigned at least one person whose entire job was to stay with me and take me where I needed to go. They handled my bags, security, even got me food and drinks when I got hungry. It was beyond respectful. But as soon as I got to the western leg of the journey home I became a burden. I basically just got a wheelchair and my partner had to push me around while juggling our luggage.
It's crazy to see real life proof that it doesn't have to be this way.
Every American I know who has spent time overseas comes back with at least one thing where they can't believe how massively we've screwed it up while also somehow ignoring that it's been being handled far more sensibly by others.
It’s true, in my experience at 6’7” it is much nicer to fly private. Shared transport offers a much inferior experience except on long haul flights where you have actual first class, but even then you need to be careful while booking to not accidentally end up on some silly plane.
I once flew from London on Ryanair when the airport's passenger Wi-Fi was completely down, and 4G was completely overloaded as a result as well.
Things were indeed pretty chaotic. I can't remember if they did print paper boarding passes in the end.
> it seems like the small fraction of people using a paper boarding pass can't be adding much extra cost
You're looking at this from the wrong angle: This is Ryanair. Actual cost does not matter, only the opportunity to extract more revenue. Presumably app users are that much more valuable to Ryanair (as they can be upsold various things there, and potentially because it also acts as a filter for a generally less profitable customer segment).
It's also a marketing channel for future flights. The app almost certainly asks for notification permissions, and most people will say yes -- they're useful for knowing if your flight is delayed or there's a gate change.
Now they have a channel where they can let you know about deals, etc. I'm sure they've modeled exactly how much this is worth, and I'd be willing to bet it's a lot.
Isn't that against App Store guidelines? (Not that Apple could afford to kick out Ryanair, but I think they have other options, such as blocking updates until it's been remedied etc.)
The upsell opportunity isn't worth anywhere near $50 though. I suspect it acts as a price discrimination filter. You make people jump through hoops (ie. installing an app) to save some money, with the expectation that people who are willing to jump through hoops are more price sensitive, and would also be willing to switch to another airline.
They already charge that and more if you have to check-in at the airport for any reason. And you cannot check-in online without making an account with them. Ryanair is grift squared.
That said I never had problems boarding with a PDF displayed on the phone screen. Unfortunate that they're going away.
Stupid question here, because I haven't flown with Ryanair in like almost 10 years, but I've recently flown with WizzAir and after checking-in online (the night before) it generated a .pdf boarding pass which I saved on my phone. I was then able to get onto the plane by presenting the QR code from said .pdf, i.e. while I was at the gate, no need for internet access. Does Ryanair do things differently?
These byzantine arguments and justifications and profit motivation and incentive tea readings are so ridiculous at a certain point, I'm surprised so many people wont even consider socializing airlines.
What a cold comfort to a grandma struggling to use an upsell-focused dark patterns app when the wifi is poor at some airport to get home to see her grandkids stuck at some airport to say, "Well, this maximized shareholder revenue."
I feel like I'm in the last stages of 'anything goes' capitalism. The ridiculousness here has hit such levels, especially in the USA, that there must be pushback sooner than later. I dunno how the Irish feel about this considering this is their airline (HQ at least), or their experiences, but on this side of the pond, this has all has reached new levels of absurdity that would make even Kafka blush.
I just randomly checked Dublin to Rome route, for early December. The first 3 cheapest options are Ryanair, the 4th option (Air Lingus) is almost triple the price of the cheapest one, $262 vs $90
That’s your answer. People vote with their wallet.
Contrary to what many replies are telling you, the link clearly states that if you don't own a smartphone, you can check in online and then obtain a boarding pass for free at the airport.
(Not sure how easy that will be or if they actually verify that you don't own a smartphone, etc.)
Technically, the vast majority of users don't own their device. They are leasing it through their carrier. Then because it is HN, once the device is paid off, the user still doesn't own it as they cannot use it as they see fit and still must use it as the manufacturer sees fit. So this "own" word is potential for interpretation
>Contrary to what many replies are telling you, the link clearly states that if you don't own a smartphone, you can check in online and then obtain a boarding pass for free at the airport.
The press release says absolutely nothing of the sort.
Frontier already expects digital boarding passes. I do not own a phone, so they charged me a $25 fee to print one at customer service. Except they also do not accept cash, so I had to go buy a gift card with cash from a vending machine for another $5 fee.
For $30 I could buy an entire discount printer and print one myself.
> Out of curiosity, what happens when someone does not own a smartphone (or the battery is dead)?
Or you drop your phone. Or it gets stolen. Or for whatever reason the software fails. Electronic devices are so flimsy, even if you want to use an app it's worth having paper as a backup option. It's the same reason why I always carry cash and a card on me (and I pay in cash as much as possible anyway).
> If you have already checked-in online and your smartphone or tablet dies,
you will receive a free of charge boarding pass at the airport.
> If passengers don’t have a smartphone or tablet, as long as they have already
checked-in online before arriving at the airport, they will receive a free of charge boarding pass at the airport.
Not to mention that the hard copy always scans flawlessly at the gate. Phone scans, not so much.
Not only does the phone scan not work well, but people often aren't prepared and so the boarding line stalls while people unlock their phone and retrieve the e-ticket.
> Not to mention that the hard copy always scans flawlessly at the gate. Phone scans, not so much.
Not true. Recently I printed a hardcopy of my boarding pass at the airline's kiosk, then found it wouldn't scan at security. Luckily I was able to pull up the barcode on my phone.
Ouch. Perhaps it's a dice roll either way. I guess I just assumed everyone else also had issues with phone tickets, and not with paper. You and your sibling comment have opposite experiences however, so it seems I must retract my statement.
I've once been in that situation with Ryanair: I booked through some reseller, not knowing that they'd make all bookings using some omnibus Ryanair account they would not share the password for (so mobile app use was out), and only emailed me the boarding pass PDF. But I didn't have a printer...
The airport business center did have one, with a moderate 50 cent per page fee – except if that page contains a boarding pass, in which case it was 8 Euro.
I would've photoshopped the barcode onto a Covid certificate and then ask to print it...
Isn't barcode on the PDF good enough anyway, to be scanned by a machine (either biological or electronic)? Obviously it's Scamair, so they could've imposed dumb rules like "we need the physical paper"
Yup, that's it. They explicitly weren't allowing scanning off of a screen, as far as I remember. (The code on the screen might be fraudulent, after all – can't do that on paper!)
This is simply the mindset of discount airlines. If your battery is dead when you arrive at check-in that's too bad for you. It's in the terms and conditions.
If the server is flaky then boarding will be delayed for everyone and it'll be a whole crapshow but if their overall cost is lower than it would have been with printed boarding passes, fine.
Usually they'll happily help you out with a "late boarding pass printing fee" on the order of a hundred €/$, though.
If this really is a total refusal to do even that, I'd be slightly surprised, but I'm sure their business developers have done the analysis and it makes some sense to them.
For more fun, Frontier's app doesn't even run on my phone. Step 1 to fly with them is to go buy a phone from the last 2-3 years (can probably get away with something a little older if iOS).
Passport/EU-ID to check you already have a ticket should be the standard. Everyone saves time and money this way BUT now they can earn more money at the gate.
That's normal in the Schengen area, you only need ID if you're checking a bag. (Or if there's a spot check by police, but they won't care if your boarding pass matches your ID, just that your ID is valid.)
Re: the "their server is flaky" (I believe you mean at the gate) case, I think any airline might be then struggling with boarding passengers, whether they have paper boarding cards or not.
>For what it is worth, at least on iPhone you can still use the bus/train pass feature in Wallet even when the battery is dead.
AFAIK that only works for NFC passes? For passes that are just qr/bar codes I can't imagine how that'd work if the battery is actually dead. The "use bus passes when battery is dead" feature only works because there's dedicated low power circuitry to power the NFC hardware, which obviously doesn't exist for the display.
It depends on the details. Last time I flew I used the airline's app to get the ticket which were then immediately loaded into wallet and read via NFC at the gate.
But this is Ryanair so it's probably going to do some stupid QR thing that will be super touchy and be a struggle to work on at least half of the devices. Bonus points if the app refuses to start if it can't make a live internet connection back to some cursed cloud service so the people waiting in line who accidentally let their phone go to sleep find they can't get it to show the ticket in the dead zone at the gate.
You need the app to download the pass (AFAIK) but it goes into your Google/Apple wallet after that. I have the app disabled (so it can't run in the background, as much as possible), and I only use it to get the pass.
I wish they'd just let me download a pkpass file, but what can you do.
You would also be surprised at how 'tech savvy' non-tech people are in the UK. It is quite common for non-tech people to screenshot train ticket QR codes just in case they have no signal at the station yet none of the common train booking apps suggest this.
Rest assured, Ryanair knows their passengers very well. They know that every single one of their passengers knows how to babysit a smartphone so the battery doesn't die on their flight. Let's be honest, sudden unexpected incontinence is more likely than a Ryanair passenger fluffing up their pocket device for doom-scrolling.
We talk about ryanair, the scummiest of the bottom scum of airlines, they wanted to charge everybody 2 euros to use toilet (or did it pass? I can't imagine in EU, I would piss on their cabinets since I don't carry coins around).
I always print boarding passes, traveled enough to see tons of people struggling with their phones, with their pdf viewers or airline apps, to block everybody else to know what good manners and empathy to others (or simply less stressful travel) are. I wish I could save that atto fraction of a planet by not printing but it can't be like that with current ways of things.
Luckily ryanair is mostly absent from our airport (Geneva), its Easyjet all the way, way more than even Swiss airlines which chickened out on numerous levels on every swiss airport apart from Zurich. They are low cost with their share of issues but man, compared to ryanair they are absolute top versus rotten vomit, to keep things polite but precise.
> Out of curiosity, what happens when someone does not own a smartphone (or the battery is dead)? They just can't fly?
Yup, based on this announcement, and previous policy calls they've made, that person won't be able to fly. End of. They lose their seat, kthxbye!
Ryanair has made its way in the budget market (arguably inventing the budget market to some extent), by employing money-making practices of dubious need from charging people to use toilets on-board, to flying with so little fuel that they regularly call fuel emergencies on approach.
Their bet - that the market seems to support - is that people will put up with almost anything if it means a cheaper ticket.
They're even expecting to get clearance from authorities to get rid of proper seating and move to "standing seats" so they can get more people onboard, their theory being you'll stand for 3 hours on a plane if it means your ticket is x% cheaper.
I refuse to fly with them on principle - they're a terrible airline owned by a terrible person, run in a terrible way. It's only a matter of time before people realise just how dangerous they are as an operation. I hope it's just a data security issue they run into and people run away from the app scared, and not the increasingly inevitable hull loss that many have been predicting for years.
This is just another reason not to fly with them, for me.
This is a PR stunt that is regularly used (like the idea of standing-room-only tickets) to generate a new round of press for the company and highlight how cost-efficient and ruthless they are, which aligns with their branding and keeps the story alive.
I understand the sentiment but as sibling comment points out, you're very light in the way of stating facts to back up these claims.
There's an interview with the CEO where he explains (claims) the idea of that policy is to reduce demand so they can leave out a couple of toilets and put in / sell more seats -- it's not about the charge for the toilet per se.
May I point out that your counter-argument to "this is a PR stunt" is "no no, the CEO himself floated this idea publicly and got interviewed in the press to talk about it".
>to flying with so little fuel that they regularly call fuel emergencies on approach.
If you're talking about the recent incident, I thought that was because they tried landing several times at different airports? Is there any evidence that they routinely fly with less fuel buffer than other airlines?
Sure, I first heard about this years ago when Channel 4 (a UK broadcaster) ran a program about pilots stating they were concerned about the policy. There had been outrage within the aviation industry after three fuel emergencies in one day at one airport. [0] Ryanair sued [1], and lost: Channel 4 had engaged in fair journalism, it turns out.
Seems they're still at it, hence the recent incident.
All three flights were diverted due to weather, and none of them fell below the legally required amount of fuel. One has to wonder if it’s really reasonable to criticize them in this instance if a single weather event affected them all.
I hate just about everything I know about Ryanair but if they're not below required limits, then I'd say they're not the problem and the point is moot.
I mean it isn’t surprising people put up such abuse when I find that usually these discount airlines are half the ticket price of a major carrier for the same sort of flight. I’ve gotten remarkably good at efficiently packing my allotted small personal item bag.
I have no idea about Europeans, but as an American who's flown a lot recently, the push to smartphone based tickets has been a nightmare. Not because of the tickets, but people aren't seemingly smart or considerate enough to use them correctly.
Paper tickets were so fast. Fold, press, beep, done.
App based tickets? Constant announcements (I'm talking 10 or more during boarding) to turn your brightness up. Despite that, I saw
1 - 25ish percent of people had dark screens, so the attendant had to take the phone, up the brightness, scan it, then hand it back.
2 - A number of screen with cracks or something (didn't get a good look) that required moving the QR code around to get it to scan.
3 - An alarming number of people who didn't bother to even unlock their phone, who then proceed to fumble with thumbing or face scanning, close whatever they were doing, then go into the app and find their ticket.
I'd say the boarding process took at minimum two to three times as long as they did with purely paper tickets.
Temporarily controlling screen brightness is something that, at least on android, the app can do itself...
The cracked screen thing - funny.
I wonder how long these twats will hold out.
I hope by the next time I fly Ryanair, someone has figured out how to emulate the look of the app and extract the relevant data so I don't have to run their garbage malware on my phone in order to have the pleasure to fly a "cheap" airline which bills you for everything after using every dark pattern imaginable when you purchase their tickets.
I fly a lot and most people are using their phones now without issue. But when someone does have an issue I remind myself that many people rarely fly, and haven't been through the process hundreds of times. Phone, paper, whatever - people screw it up if they haven't done it before. Boarding first, pre-check/global entry are all beneficial in part because you're dealing with other frequent flyers.
While annoying, the boarding pass scanning process usually isn't the bottleneck.
After I scanned my boarding pass, I then waited in line in the jet bridge, because people in the plane were busy putting their luggage in the overhead compartments, searching for their seats, moving to let people sit in the window seats, and other assorted activities.
The paper scanning is hardly the limitation with onboarding.
I feel like you never fly because if you did, you’d know the biggest limitation in boarding speed is the inefficient method they use to board people… not the scanning part. If everyone scans efficiently (something you see often at places like SFO), you just are waiting on the jet bridge… It only takes one person who needs to take off their coat before they sit down or has trouble putting their oversized carry on in storage, etc. to completely shutdown onboarding.
It's ok to point out a flaw in my argument without calling me a liar.
I probably should have said 3x the scanning time, perhaps not total boarding time, I agree with that much.
That said, if the person blocking your seating arrived on the plane 20 minutes later because scanning took an extra 20 minutes, that still means you were delayed 20 minutes + person blocking you.
But I'd expect someone who flies from an airport smarter than everyone else in the US to have already factored that in.
> If you have already checked-in online and your smartphone or tablet dies / is lost, you will receive a free of charge boarding pass at the airport.
> If passengers don’t have a smartphone or tablet, as long as they have already
checked-in online before arriving at the airport, they will receive a free of charge boarding pass at the airport.
Wow, this might just be an improvement on the status quo (app optional, but high boarding pass printing fee if it's not used).
I don't think this policy will hold up in the face of Ryanair ticket resellers though, since it seems to be pretty clearly designed to make their life harder once again, but free replacement printing would offer them a way out.
Reminder what kind of company ryanair is. At one point some 15 (?) years ago ryanair used to charge you 60 euros if you showed up at the boarding gate having only the boarding pass on your phone instead of printed on a piece of paper. There was absolutely no reason for this (their reader reads as well from phone as from paper) other than betting that some fraction of the people would forget to print their boarding pass in paper. And they were right, I saw it in front of me many times and one time almost happened to me. If memory serves me I believe that at the time this was regulated out by the EU.
Here's another one. I read some headline years ago that the ryanair boss was happy to order as many 737 MAX as he could, despite the planes reputation for problems, because if you make the flights cheap enough, people will still fly on it.
I have no doubt he's right, but says something about him and the company.
Ok but what you're describing is the classic "be cheaper than competition, gain market share, then raise prices" and is basically how business works. Almost every company does this if they are run well enough to manage to pull it off.
Setting up rules to trick customers to make mistakes and then demand 60 euros for printing a sheet of paper is morally dishonest and I would say most don't do this.
Traveling seems to be essential, but having the App Store, iPhone, or Android definitely are not.
What happens if your phone is stolen, broken, discharged? Finally, I fly several times a month with different companies, does that mean I should have a circus of apps on my phone?
More broadly, we need regulation where companies cannot make "ownership of the newest smartphone" a requirement to do business with them. I'm lucky to be in the USA where we still haven't smartphone-ized everything yet, but every year I see it creeping in. Every year, a new bank requires a smartphone to create a passkey or whatever. Every year, a restaurant I like moves over to QR code menus. Every year, a doctor decides to move over to smartphone-based payments only. And of course, all of the crappy app developers insist that 1. I use a very recent phone and 2. I run the latest OS, or I'm shut out.
I have no problem with enabling smartphone-based payments and passes for people who like them, but companies should not be allowed to block out (or charge extra to) others who prefer not to tether themselves to a phone.
Here in some European countries, like France, having a smartphone out in a restaurant is a sign of bad etiquette. It's not crucial, but from some people's perspective it might seem out of place. However, some restaurants tried QR code menus due to COVID-19, but most of them have since stopped using them.
I fully agree that having the latest version of a phone/OS should not be treated as a requirement for access to services, especially essential ones.
> I have no problem with enabling smartphone-based payments and passes for people who like them, but companies should not be allowed to block out (or charge extra to) others who prefer not to tether themselves to a phone.
I agree with this. (The same would apply to restaurant menus.)
(In the case of restaurant menus, they could post a single copy near the entrance or somewhere that it can be seen by everyone in case they do not want to make multiple copies (and do not want to waste paper). E-paper displays might be used in case they sometimes change.)
>More broadly, we need regulation where companies cannot make "ownership of the newest smartphone" a requirement to do business with them.
I'm not keen on mobile apps in general, but I don't see a need for regulation here. Companies want customers. It's not in their interest to needlessly harass people with pointless technology requirements that drive people to competitors. No company has ever required "the newest smartphone" for everyday tasks.
I don't support a general right to refuse adoption of any and all new technologies. What I do support is a mandate to use open technologies wherever possible for infrastructure that no one can reasonably avoid. What we can't allow is that people who lose some oligopolist account can no longer live a normal life.
"Companies want customers" is often not enough of a market force to result in behavior that is inclusive of everyone, which is why, for example, we need things like the Americans with Disabilities Act, which mandates that companies' services are accessible to all, and other laws which require full and equal accommodations. We could almost argue that making things "[new] smartphone only" might violate the ADA. I'd like to see such a lawsuit.
I agree that we sometimes need regulation to guarantee access for everyone.
But regulations need to be kept up-to-date and they need to be consistently enforced. That's a lot of work. Having too many of them only helps lawyers and people who can afford them.
Some random company requiring a smartphone for access to some service doesn't strike me as exclusionary enough to justify burdening the system with more regulation.
Indeed, and that's why perhaps some internal marketing analytics show that people with installed apps often buy tickets from the same airline company. Then, we discover how airline companies decide to push their mobile phone application adoption through mandatory tickets.
Such decisions are always about sales, and never about security or customer care.
You're probably right. I just think it's not worth piling the equivalent of technical debt on our legal system just to curb small annoyances. Budget airlines are an incredibly rich source of small annoyances.
>. And of course, all of the crappy app developers insist that 1. I use a very recent phone and 2. I run the latest OS, or I'm shut out.
Signal did this when my wife's Macbook could no longer be updated to the latest Apple OS version. Signal just stopped working for her completely on her laptop. She couldn't install the latest version of Signal due to her not being on the latest OS, and Signal won't allow the old version to work once it's outdated. We had to buy her a whole new laptop (not Apple this time) to get her back on Signal (something she relies on).
Yes, I know about the hacky workarounds to get the latest OS working on a Macbook, but fuck that noise.
Third party developers dropping support for OS versions that are, frankly, not even very old, is a scourge in software today.
I can maybe understand sunsetting support if the OS made a huge backwards-incompatible step change, but macOS and iOS updates don't tend to be that kind. The differences (for developers) between Catalina and Mojave are minuscule. Retaining support for Mojave should be close to zero effort on the part of the developer. There should be no difference in maintenance burden between building an application that runs on Mojave and Catalina, and building an application that runs only on Catalina+.
> What happens if your phone is stolen, broken, discharged?
Another comment says that if any of those apply (or if you do not have a (compatible) smart phone) then you can still receive a boarding pass at the airport, although it seems that you will still need check-in online.
Do the checkin online and add the boarding pass to your ios/android wallet, as simple as that. Just did the last weekend with ryanair. Btw the faq specify that as long as you do the checkin online, if you lose your device or it dies a boarding pass will be printed for you for free
If a government offers official apps for those platforms and banks allow you to use some services for free via app but charge a fee if you show up in person I think airlines can get away with it too
Or use a different phone than apple's or google's, one that protect your privacy against airline companies stealing and resselling your data. The free market will... hem...
Traveling by plane, and specifically by budget airline, isn't essential. I'm not in favor of Ryanair's move here but it's also a free market, they can add restrictions and the market will react to it.
I'm fine with restrictions if they are reasonable/justified. I don't have an app store and I'm not planning to use one, and it's unclear to me why I'm unable to download and print a ticket when they can do the same for €50.
From a personal computer there are zero requirements, I don't need to have a special OS, or application, or anything. On the mobile application side, I must have one of two authorized app stores, an account there, and perhaps a specific OS version. This is something that I find unfair in this business practice.
Ryanair basically invented most of the dark patterns that are now prevalent in all travel websites. Back then, the experience was so awful that it was comical (and even inspired a song[0]). Therefore I'm not surprised that they are the first to mandate you install their app on your phone. All other companies that have dreamed of this will be quick to follow suit.
Notice the euphemism of calling this "going digital". Everybody is already digital, using a pdf reader on their phone at the terminal, despite some companies discouraging this practice. That's not digital enough, is it?
"Ryanair, Europe’s No.1 airline, today (Thurs, 6 Nov) reminded passengers that from Wed (12 Nov) it will move to 100% digital boarding passes. This means that from Wed (12 Nov) passengers will no longer be able to download and print a physical paper boarding pass but will instead need to use the digital boarding pass generated in their “myRyanair” app during check-in to board their Ryanair flight."
Why does it matter whether the boarding pass barcode is scanned from a printed paper vs a phone screen?
It'll be interesting to see where this is enforced. Most people won't actually see a member of Ryanair staff until the gate (at which point very often you're asked to scan your own barcode with a staff member present).
I reckon you'll be able to print out a screenshot of the app and use it to check your bags in and get through security. They won't hold a flight up with checked bags at the gate - will cost them too much money.
It's not rare that some staff are checking that passengers have all needed documents as they head to departures. Looks like they could check app usage there. They could also easily check the app when bags are checked in (that's Ryanair staff doing this).
In smaller airports (the ones Ryanair used to operate from) it's also sometimes their own barcode scanners before the gates that are dedicated to them.
I believe they will be able to enforce this in many places.
Ryanair use scan-and-drop self-checkin of bags in many airports.
It would also be curious to see who pays for removal of persons once they are airside - eg in the case the flyer with nothing to check in who goes past airport security, but before RyanAir staff meet them at the gate.
Anti theft perhaps? Last March a guy was able to sneak onto a Delta flight by taking a picture of someone else's QR code. Some ticketing apps have temporal QR codes that are resistant to this exploit.
For a period after 9/11, ID was required to be shown at the gate on domestic flights. I don't recall when that stopped, but it's been a while (and apparently long enough ago that apparently some have never had to do it).
I seem to recall IDs occasionally being checked at the gate prior to 9/11 as well. Memory is fuzzy, but they weren't checking boarding passes or ids at security. But back then I would always get my boarding pass at the check-in counter (sometimes exchanging an actual ticket for the boarding pass).
I spent some time looking for old information, best I could come up with was this article [1] from 1996 about requiring photo ID at check-in, which doesn't mention checking at the gate, but does mention why the airlines might be happy to do it (protect revenue by making sure passengers don't fly on other people's tickets... unless they share their name with the other person). This article [2] , also from 1996, is a little bit less precise about if people are denied at check-in or by gate agents.
I think it's all quite hazy, because if you had no checked bags and it was a small airport, but you might just go to the gate and try to get your boarding pass there. That and 24 years have passed. :D
Didn't Uber get caught tracking their users (I want to say victims but there are actual victims of Uber sexual harassment/assault) even though they didn't have the app open?
Tracking where your passengers go on vacation would be useful data for them. Sheesh you could even track flights: "User was online at London Heathrow until 11:45, and was then offline, and came back online again in Madrid at 14:30, the corresponding flight at those times was EasyJet 78".
It has to be compatible with the physical scanners at the airport, e.g. before security. So Ryanair probably is not very flexible in how they design the code.
A grim view of things to come. More companies will do this, and eventually your defacto tracking device (ie, your smart phone) will become your government-mandated tracking device. I'd like to stop traveling by air altogether. Sadly, I need to travel for work this December.
Boarding an airplane, which requires that someone check your ID, is one of the most reliable tracking indicators available to show that a person was in a specific place at a specific time.
Nabbing people at airports is a common strategy for this reason.
Putting the boarding pass on a phone doesn’t make it easier for the government to know that you’re flying.
I just mean in general. If airplane companies normalize using an app then other companies may as well. Do you need a smartphone to pump gas? Or to use government services? How about to buy groceries? That sort of slippery slope is what I would be afraid of.
> If airplane companies normalize using an app then other companies may as well.
I fly a lot and can't remember the last time I had a paper boarding pass. When I board the vast majority of people also use their phones, so normalization has already happened with air travel.
You think this mandated budget airline app is only going to track a gate check-in and nothing else? My guess is that it will collect an absurd amount of extra data and waste endless amounts of time with up-sells and other dark patterns.
Agreed here. I'll check in online, but I'll only install their app as a last resort. I'm hopeful that boarding passes are still sent as PDF.
Then again, I rarely fly Ryanair anyway.
I'm averse to installing any apps. I don't want to use a smartphone, and I don't want companies or governments to mandate their usage. As a consumer you have no real way of knowing which apps are tracking you and selling your data and which are not. Every app is suspect, even if some are legitimately clean. Every single company that says "just use the app" is another roll of the dice: will they get breached and reveal my data? Are they tracking me and selling to advertisers / insurance companies / police? Consumers really have no way of knowing for sure.
In addition to the great reasons others posted, I'll point out another one: Most airline apps won't even install or run on my device anymore. So, even if I wanted to use the airline's app (I don't), their developers have chosen to not support my device, and therefore I cannot even install or run it.
If a company is going to make something a requirement like this, they need to also invest in the effort to support everyone's device, and not block people with old, icky phones.
Selling my location, list of the installed apps, cookies, whatever they can extract.
That's for starters.
But most importantly why the hell should I be forced to use phone app if having a printed pass was good enough?
I need to reverse your surprising question into: should I be expected to install, update, maintain and use apps of ALL the service providers I use?
Separate app for train provider A, another for train provider B, another for bus provider C.
No paper tickets.
An app to purchase groceries, another app to pay for the parking, another app to buy a coffee, another app to buy a newspaper in the kiosk. And app to check in the hotel, an app to order food in the restaurant, an app to call the tax return website (not the phone, an app).
In addition to that (which is already bad), you will need a compatible smart phone (I do not have and do not intend to have; other people mentioned the same thing), and if you do have then it might use more battery power and more disk space, and sometimes the battery power will run out (or it can fail due to many other reasons), so it is even worse than what you mention.
Think about the future ramifications if more companies were to implement this invasive garbage. Do you want to have to install mcdonalds app to order their food? Great clips app to get a hair cut?
It's an unnecessary invasion of privacy for one, and not everyone has or wants a smartphone or to install third party apps, or carry it with them onto the plane. It could also be dead, broken or otherwise incompatible, or the passenger may have a disability or religious reason that prevents them from using it.
A "boarding pass" was always a redundant document anyway. As are "tickets" whenever ID is required for the service in question. The ID has a number on it, in the system that's the ticket. In police states like China, tickets are a thing of the past.
That flying - an entirely unsustainable mode of transport - is now widely viewed as a commoditized consumer good is already a form of ethical collapse IMO. Now this. We need regulation. But for that, people need choose it, to vote for it.
Huh. I feel like one of Ryanair's major profit centres in the past has been that €50 fee they charge to print your boarding pass at the counter when the app doesn't work...
Right, it doesn't get my main email at the moment, true, turns out an app needs `android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS` to do that. I do, however, expect them to do that later -- looking at their declared permissions, it's hard to assume a good will:
- `BLUETOOTH_SCAN`, `ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION`, `ACCESS_ADSERVICES_AD_ID` -- all together. Yes, I see they use `android.ext.adservices`
`READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE`? `WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE`?
What for? Do they even offer saving a PDF into a Downloads folder?
I think they can do it without asking for the separate permission.
> and they can only identify apps from a fixed list
And then check their admitted privacy practices/policy from their Google Play listing (com.ryanair.cheapflights)
Notice, the first section is `DATA SHARED`, not just collected. It's shared with the undisclosed third parties (we know from the privacy policy[1], though, that at the very least it includes all the social networks
>> Photos, User ids (plural, it's not just email used to login), Installed apps once again, Files and docs (?!)
Generally;
I have a very little trust for a vendor that is known for the deceptive practices and which lies from the outset about the reasons to force all passengers into using their app.
If they lie in such a fundamental question, it should be assumed they're using deceptions and trickery.
Phone's dead/dropped under a bus tire/stolen at security/got bit-flipped by a cosmic ray, now what?
Nearly 80% of 207M passengers already adopted it means 41M passengers have not.
I apologize in advance for being overly dramatic. I just flew with a digital boarding pass and my phone nearly died while waiting at the outlet-less gate. I'm sure I could have gotten assistance, but it was stressful.
If you lose your phone or if it's out of battery, you'll get a free boarding pass at the airport as long as you checked in online before getting to the airport.
If you didn't check in before, you'll have to pay a 50€ fee. (Same as before)
Empty battery is not unlikely in airports that make it extra-hard to recharge a phone (Looking at you, BER). Long ago it was possible to unplug a vending machine as a last resort, but these days all electrical sockets are concealed, as a measure to prevent overnight stays in airports I believe.
Than you haven't been watching the EU enough. They are currently working on MULTIPLE different omnibus laws that will make owning an Google or Apple Approved Phone, running Google or Apple Approved Firmware and using the Google or Apple App store de-facto mandatory for living in the EU.
You vill download ze app and you vill accept the TOS.
I specifically don't use smartphone boarding passes when travelling (on full service airlines, mostly LH group), just so they get the statistic of me using paper. (The barcode has an 'issue type' field, it's a single character and generally the only difference between digital QR and paper PDF417 contents.)
(I collect paper boarding passes and want them to stay ;)
Ironic that RyanAir’s press release website has a print button as if anyone prints websites. There are a lot of advantages to paper and printers. As a general policy policy point I don’t love this direction. But also it’s RyanAir. This is by far the smallest customer rights violation that they have and will continue to commit. And at this point everyone should know that a 25 quid flight from Manchester to Madrid on RyanAir has a catch. Just be glad your luggage wasn’t jettisoned over the channel to save weight.
I wonder how these gate agents will react if I show their app throwing a hissy fit and refusing to work when it is blocked from any data mining. No permissions, no google play services, no safetynet, maybe no network. It is non cooperation with their bs, but it looks like a technical issue. And, if it can work without such things, then I hate it much less.
I just installed it on a fresh profile in GrapheneOS.
Blocked from any access except network, and it didn't even try to check Play Integrity API. Works okay. Didn't have a chance to check in/display boarding pass, but I could access all the details of my flight no problem.
I'd probably pay the fee, take my flight, then charge it back with a reason like "Fee for not using app, app did not work. Fee advertised as optional was not, in fact, optional for me". Completely true statement.
I don't know about Ryanair, but I've had to reverse credit card transactions due to scams a few times and I've never been banned from other businesses.
I think requiring app is an overreach. I hate installing apps. If you want to save money and not do paper, I would just do this:
- Provide a discount/credit for using electronic digital boarding pass (PDF file, no apps). If someone is not able to use the PDF etc (either their own printout or on their phone) and require a paper pass at the airport for any reason, their discount/credit goes away. Simple.
^ This, and nothing else. There is a dark, evil underbelly to the data broker ecosystem that is largely powered by random apps people install on their phones.
The whole point of Ryanair has always been low cost flights by shoving passengers in and stick to the rules to make everything faster and having less staff. People want the £30 flight but don't want to stick to the conditions, ultimately. But that is the trade off you make.
Will the app requirement be disclosed at purchase everywhere? IE: If I am buying on a third-party online travel agent, will the checkout process state that in order to board the flight at the cost quoted, that I will need to have a smartphone with the app installed?
Was hoping you could opt out by moving to Morroco, where local regulations bar digital boarding passes. But Ryanair still makes you get digital ones there, and have you redeem it for a physical one at the airport.
Can I download the app, add the boarding pass to Apple Wallet and remove/disable the app? Or just take a screenshot of the boarding pass and then uninstall it?
I suspect that when you install the app, it will require all the juicy permissions like contacts, and hoover up lots of data before you even begin to use it. So the damage will have been done, even though you uninstall it soon.
Ryanair is best thought of, not as an airline, but as a kind of carnival game that delivers a small monetary prize if you win, and a nasty electric shock if you do it wrong. By playing Ryanair, you have the opportunity to acquire a slightly cheaper flight, and if you can keep a steady hand and navigate the arbitrary rules (each a cunning trap), you can indeed save some money. Good luck.
Reminder to airlines ahead of move to more BS for your customers: You provide one of the most enshittified experiences ever conceived. I have been, and will continue avoiding flying at all costs until the customer is considered again.
Last time I flew Ryanair in July, I presented my phone to the agent to check my boarding pass. She took my phone to scan it. I turned my head to talk to my companion.
When I looked back, the agent was in my settings, quietly enabling all the permissions for the app (which I had deliberately disabled).
When I (shocked) told her off, she rolled her eyes and said I would need to change them anyway to scan the bag tags.
Given that Ryanair used to charge to print a boarding pass at the airport, it seems pretty likely their response will just be to do so again. This is a company which literally hates its customers.
Requiring a particular app for something that could be achieved by scanning a code (displayed on a screen) is bullshit.
And let me guess - then they'll use Play Integrity API so that you cannot fly if you're not using Google certified device with preinstalled privileged spyware (or lease an Apple device you don't own)?
Like it or not, we live in a market economy with market competition. There are new airlines every year. In 2022 there was a net increase of 13 airlines in europe alone.
If people want paper boarding passes, some competitor will give it to them. Always been like that in market economies, and socialists will keep fearmongering about "what one company does" like its the end of the world.
And of course it's only possible using a specific proprietary app. You'd think a penny-pinching company would want to use open standard to save money instead of develop a custom app, right? I'm 100% sure this is done intentionally to scoop up as much personal data from their customers.
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