Budget Travel - Ryanair bump up on line checkin and add taxes afterwards again

I noticed that Ryanair have started advertising flights STN-XRY for £29.99 but then when you click on the flight to book it the price is broken down as the following:

1 x Adult 29.99 GBP

Fare: 29.99 GBP
Online Check-In: 6.00 GBP
Taxes / Fees: 31.07 GBP
Total Price: 67.06 GBP


I thought "REGULATION 1008/2008 – TRANSPARENCY OF AIR FARES" was supposed to have stopped this tom-foolery?

I thought "REGULATION 1008/2008 – TRANSPARENCY OF AIR FARES" was supposed to have stopped this tom-foolery?
Nope, all they require is that the fare is achievable SOMETIMES

So sometimes the online checkin is free & the taxes / fees are zero.

ah, so bending of the rules then. God the thinktanks they must run at Ryanair to get around the law..

This depends on exactly where and how this fare was shown.

If, on going to their web site, you found a list of destinations and fares but subsequently discovered that no flights were available at those fares then they can get away with it claiming that the fare has sold out. All they have to do is prove that they sold at least one ticket at that fare.

If, on the other hand, you select a destination and a date, and the system gives you a fare quote for that destination and date, then the fare they quote must be the final fare inclusive of all taxes and charges. The only thing they are allowed to add are credit/debit card fees, as long as there is a free alternative to paying by credit/debit card.

So - if those figures came up as part of a fare quote for a specific flight then I believe they were breaking the law.

I ask for STN-XRY on the 1st April.

It shows the fares Tuesday to Monday and which ones are available. I click on Friday as it says "from £29.99" to book it, then it tells me the taxes etc are extra plus £6 checkin.

I ask for STN-XRY on the 1st April.

It shows the fares Tuesday to Monday and which ones are available. I click on Friday as it says "from £29.99" to book it, then it tells me the taxes etc are extra plus £6 checkin.

It says "from" 29.99. You can probably get a fare of 29.99 total, just not on that day.

I've just been to the site to obtain a fare quote for 1 April, and the full fare appears on the very first screen... so I don't think they're breaking any rules here.

everything says "from" so they can put the £6 checkin fee on it.

Transparency of air fares? It's next to impossible to compare Ryanair fares with other airlines since there are so many fees on top of the actual fare. I've never seen a website comparing fares with Ryanair - have anyone else?

3. Permitted use. You are not permitted to use this website other than for the following, private, non-commercial purposes: (i) viewing this website; (ii) making bookings; (iii) reviewing/changing bookings; (iv) checking arrival/departure information; (v) performing online check-in; (vi) transferring to other websites through links provided on this website; and (vii) making use of other facilities that may be provided on the website, use of any automated system or software to extract data from this website or the www.bookryanair.com website for commercial purposes (“screen scraping”) is prohibited, except in cases where third parties have entered into a written Licence Agreement directly with Ryanair which permits that third party to access Ryanair’s price, flight and timetable information for the sole purpose of price comparison.

Skyscanner works for me. Although I am not generally in the habit of flying FR anyhow.

everything says "from" so they can put the £6 checkin fee on it.
That would be illegal under EU law as the claimed price isn't achieveable. However what they do is have some fares where they have free checkin

So sometimes the online checkin is free & the taxes / fees are zero.

I was just looking at Ryan Air and thinking about giving it a go, but then I had a question: Let's say the fare is 20GBP, which then they throw on their 10GBP for the credit card (I have a visa electron, but that's a dead deal now).

When I go to check in for the flight, can they say "Whoops! That'll be 6GBP sucka!" or is that final 50GBP from above the final price (presuming that my baggage is ok).

EDIT: Oohhh, I see what they did there. They just pepper in the online checking fee willy-nilly. That's really cheesy.

When I go to check in for the flight, can they say "Whoops! That'll be 6GBP sucka!" or is that final 50GBP from above the final price (presuming that my baggage is ok).
Nope, assuming you do online check-in and keep to the T&Cs then there isn't anything else to pay.

Skyscanner works for me. Although I am not generally in the habit of flying FR anyhow.

+1 .. and strangely there have been multiple occasions when I have managed to find a cheaper fare once I go to the FR site after checking out skyscanner.. :confused:

I noticed Kayak.com pulled up Ryanair fares when I was in Europe.


The problem was the fares were shown in USD while in reality I could only replicate the exact same fare in Euro... which meant they were much more expensive than what Kayak showed.

The moral of the tale is that only a fool would book tickets based on a headline price - but there are lots of fools

The moral of the tale is that only a fool would book tickets based on a headline price - but there are lots of fools

IMHO, headline prices are given by many many airlines .. LH sends me mailers with headline prices of arnd Eur 500 from India to Europe and I never manage to get those tickets .. the lowest I find is something arnd eur 650 etc..

All airlines do this, and IMHO I dont think clients book and pay for tickets based on that.. headline prices get the clients to surely visit their website and check for the tickets but am not sure how successful they are in getting the pax to book the tickets..