Ryanair’s plan to become the first airline with entirely digital boarding passes has been criticised as confusing and inaccessible – but the budget carrier’s CEO insists it’s the best way ahead. The airline will stop accepting paper print-outs of boarding passes from November 3, instead requiring all travellers to present their pass from a Ryanair app on their mobile phone. Chief executive Michael O’Leary said the move will “eliminate almost all airport check-in fees” and enable “direct updates from Ryanair’s operations centre during disruption” as well as saving around 300 tonnes of paper each year.
Mr O’Leary admitted that there would likely be “some teething problems” following the changes but insisted that the majority of customers had mobile phones and that paper passes could be issued at the airport free of charge after people had checked in online. “Between 85 and 90% of passengers show up with smartphones,” he said. “Almost 100% of passengers have smartphones, and we want to move everybody onto that smartphone technology.”
“The big concern peope have is, ‘What happens if I lose my battery or I lose my phone?'” he told The Independent’s daily travel podcast.
“If you lose your phone, no issue. As long as you’ve checked in before you go to the airport, we’ll reissue a paper boarding pass at the airport free of charge. But you have to have checked in before you got to the airport.”
“Also, if your battery dies or something happens, once you’ve checked in, we’ll have your sequence number anyway at the boarding gate, we’ll take you [and] you’ll get on,” he added. “So nobody should worry about it.”
Ryanair currently charges travellers a £55 fee for checking in at the airport rather than online, and also an extra £20 for re-issued boarding passes.
The new measures won’t immediately be in place in countries including Albania and Morocco, where authorities have insisted on keeping paper boarding passes, at least for the first few months.
“We’ve reached [an] agreement with the Albanian authorities now that from next March, they’re going digital as well,” Mr O’Leary said. The Moroccans still insist on paper, and in those cases we’ll accept paper boarding passes.”
The airline also said that older passengers, who may not own a smartphone, can ask friends or family to download their pass for them.
“Once a passenger is checked in, they will be provided assistance at the airport, where staff can see they have checked in,” a spokesperson said.
