A Ryanair passenger was recently left shocked after she was charged €60/£50 by the no-frills airline to take a 750ml water bottle on a plane.
Ruby Flanagan explains in the Mirror that the carrier made her pay the excess baggage fee before she boarded a Stansted-bound flight in Dublin.
She arrived with the bottle strapped to her body and demonstrated that her backpack fitted the bag-sizer. But staff insisted the bottle had to go inside the bag. Ruby obeyed, but it was a tight squeeze, with her backpack now sporting ‘a giant growth-like lump’.
Ruby was told that the bag was now ‘too big’ and she had to pay a fee. When the traveller asked why she couldn’t carry the bottle in her hand, she was told it would be classed as a ‘second bag’.
The traveller pleaded that she had carried the water bottle separately on her outgoing flight to Dublin – but to no avail. She writes: ‘I drifted over to the fella with the card, paid €60, and was tagged with the yellow sticker of shame on my backpack.’
Ruby describes being ‘shaken and confused’ by her bottle drama. But was Ryanair in the wrong?
Ryanair’s baggage policy states: ‘Each passenger can take one small item of carry-on baggage (up to 40cmx20cmx25cm) on the plane with them.’
This bag ‘must fit under the seat in front of you’ and can be a ‘handbag, laptop bag or backpack’.
At the gate, as happened to Ruby, passengers may be asked to place their bag in one of Ryanair’s bag sizers to check that it’s within size limits.
A Ryanair passenger was recently left shocked after she was charged €60/£50 by the no-frills airline to take a 750ml water bottle on a plane
Ryanair says that the sizers measure ‘42cm x 20cm x 30cm’. The airline’s rules state that: ‘If your small bag does not fit in the baggage sizers, which are placed at every boarding gate, we will tag your bag and place it in the aircraft hold subject to the payment of a gate bag fee.’
As the airline’s rules state that each passenger can only bring ‘one small item’ onboard the plane, the gate staff likely considered the water bottle a separate additional item.
This means that passengers can legitimately be charged the excess baggage fee by Ryanair if an extra item, such as a water bottle in a carrier, doesn’t fit in their underseat bag.
Travellers who need more than an underseat bag can purchase Ryanair’s ‘Priority & 2 Cabin bags’ option, which allows them to bring a 10kg (up to 55x40x20cm) bag to put in the overhead locker as well as an underseat bag.
Prices for this package vary, and it’s much cheaper to buy it when you book. Ryanair says it costs from £6-£36 if bought at the time of booking but the fee will go up to £20-£60 if added after booking or at the airport.
Ruby Flanagan explains in the Mirror that the carrier made her pay the excess baggage fee before she boarded a Stansted-bound flight in Dublin (above)
Checked baggage can be purchased with either a 10kg or 20kg weight limit. The 10kg bag costs between £9.49 and £44.99 at booking and between £23.99 and £44.99 after booking and at the airport. The 20kg bag costs between £18.99 and £59.99 at booking and between £39.99 and £59.99 after booking or at the airport.
Over the years, many passengers have fallen foul of the budget airline’s strict baggage regulations.
A Ryanair passenger on a flight from Dublin to London Stansted in November says she was forced to pay an extra £50 as her suitcase’s wheel was ‘sticking out the bag sizer’.
Meanwhile, a 63-year-old grandmother recently claimed she was singled out to pay £75 for an oversized bag by Ryanair while ‘young’ and ‘good-looking’ passengers were allowed through.
And a violinist claimed she was treated like a ‘piece of garbage’ by airline staff when they told her her instrument case was 1cm too big to take on the plane.
