First time on Ryanair - when do they close boarding?
 

Flying FR for the first time, from CGN to STN, on a late evening flight.

No luggage, boarding pass already on my phone, fast track at security, paid highest fare - so basically I cut out all factors that could slow me down. Remaining question: when do they close the boarding gate? Not the "we recommend to be at the airport x hours before departure" time (where you end up wasting time watching the paint dry on the walls) but the time after which they no longer scan boarding passes and don't let people through the gate anymore? I'll build in some buffer, but I'd need to know whether I have to add my buffer to "departure-10 minutes" or to "departure-30 minutes".

Thanks!

From their website:

The gate closure time is printed on the boarding pass. From memory, I seem to recall 30 minutes being the official gate closure time but I do not think I have ever come across a Ryanair flight that was fully boarded at that stage (more often than not, this is roughly when they start boarding).

[edit]it seems like ft101 has more recent and reliable information on the official cut-off point.

Thanks guys, this is helpful.

Being less familiar with FR I had not found that information on their website.

Thanks again!

At STN, and presumably elsewhere, it is strictly enforced. Even with fast track you will need at least an hour before departure to get through STN. It can get very busy.

At LIS they close it at T-30. All the "boarded" pax then wait in a corral past the BP scanner while arriving pax disembark.
In other airports the setup is similar. The only place where this is different is airports like HAM where they use jetways.

Well... it depends. For example in STN they go probably by the book.
In other cases it might be a bit different. The only goal for them is to get the aircraft back into the air as soon as possible. Should there be any delays, it's gonna get costly for the local airport / GH.

So lets say the aircraft arrives 20 minutes before the ETD. In that case the boarding might start the pre-boarding (boarding pass check) process 20 minutes earlier and finish it as soon as possible. Lets say there are 184 pax boarded of the 189. All the missing pax have no checked-in luggage. I'm not 100% sure they would wait for the missing 5 for the 20 minutes they now have for spare. 25 minutes turnover time leaves no space for error or waiting.