Ryanair will pay airport staff increased and unlimited bonuses of €2.50 for every non-compliant carry-on bag they take from passengers, the airline’s boss has announced.
Passengers whose cabin cases exceed the maximum dimensions for a small suitcase are charged fees of up to £75 and their luggage is taken into the hold.
The fines have outraged some travellers, especially when it emerged that staff at the boarding gate have been incentivised to spot oversized bags.
However, an unrepentant Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, said the airline would be upping the bonuses to keep baggage to the correct size. “We’re going to raise it from €1.50 to €2.50, probably from the start of the winter schedule in November this year,” he said. “And I make absolutely no apology for it whatsoever.”
O’Leary said the airline would also remove the cap on bonuses, currently €80 a month, to encourage staff to stop as many non-compliant bags as possible. “We should encourage people. I want our ground handling people to be catching people who are scamming the system.”
All passengers are allowed to bring on a small bag for free, that fits under the seat, at a maximum dimension of 40x30x20cm. A second cabin bag, typically a small wheelie suitcase, of up to 55x40x20cm, can be brought on board for a fee, normally lower than the price paid to put baggage in the hold.
It was reported this year that Swissport staff handling easyJet flights were paid bonuses of £1.20 a bag to enforce similar rules at the boarding gate.
O’Leary said anxiety over punitive charges for small infractions was exaggerated: “I go regularly and do boardings in Dublin, and we don’t have an issue with the small bag, this kind of mythical, oh, only the zip was outside – if the zip was the only thing that was outside the sizer, it gets on, there’s no issue.”
But, he said: “I am still mystified by the number of people with rucksacks who still think they’re going to get through the fucking gate, and we won’t notice the rucksack. We will. And you will be paying for the rucksack. You’re not getting on if it doesn’t fit.”
O’Leary said the number of people paying fees was going down as more brought on compliant cases. “We’re not trying to catch people out here. Most people, 99.9% of our passengers, comply with the rules. The amount of people who pay a gate bag fee is less than 0.1% of our passengers, and that’s still 200,000 passengers a year.
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“So we have more work to do to get rid of them, but the numbers who are paying a gate fee is tiny. They get a disproportionate amount of news or of coverage but frankly we don’t really care.”
He told journalists at a press conference in London: “Keep covering it because we want everybody to comply with the rules, if you comply with the rules, no issues.
“We are running a very efficient, very affordable, very low-cost airline, and we’re not letting anybody get in the way.”
