Airline says it will be flexible even as digital boarding passes become mandatory this week
In one of the biggest changes for customers since the introduction of mandatory online check-in 15 years ago, Ryanair is ditching paper boarding passes in favour of digital ones.
And while Wednesday this week marks the first day from which the airline has told passengers they must use the new digital format, Ryanair chief marketing officer Dara Brady said the carrier will remain flexible while passengers get used to the new rule.
“Ultimately, this will improve the customer experience,” he said. “Through the app, we do a lot of our disruption management, our gate information – all of our communications during disruption is on the app.”
“A lot of people were using paper just out of habit of having the option to use paper,” he added. “You’d see people travelling with the app and bring a paper pass as a sort of safety net.”
He said that people shouldn’t panic if their phone battery dies before they arrive at the airport, or if they lose their device en route to their flight, for instance.
“If you phone has died but you have already made it through security, we can see your name on the passenger manifest at the gate, and the staff can deal with you there and give you a boarding card,” he said.
He added: “If your phone died before security or you’d left it on the train and you haven’t your boarding pass, we can reissue the boarding pass at the ticket desk. We had a boarding pass reissue fee of €20, but we’re now scrapping the reissue fee as part of this. Passengers must check-in online though.”
The Ryanair executive said that when the airline announced in September that it would make a move to mandatory digital boarding passes, about 75pc of customers were using its app. That has now grown to 90pc.
Dublin Airport. Photo: Getty
Today’s News in 90 Seconds – Tuesday, November 11
“The last few percent, we’ll get them over the line as we roll it out from midnight tonight,” said Mr Brady.
He insisted there will be no hard stop in the short-term to the airline’s flexibility in relation to the passes.
“We’re not trying to catch people out or penalise them,” he said. “The notion of passengers printing 40 million sheets of paper every year – we don’t see the need for it. We genuinely believe that most people will adapt and manage and will be quite happy with the experience. We don’t have a hard cut-off on the flexibility.”
Mr Brady also defended Ryanair’s controversial decision not to refund Irish national Stephen Crean the cost of his flight after he was injured trying to protect passengers during a knife attack on a train headed to London last weekend.
Mr Crean was due to travel to Austria on Wednesday this week to watch a football match.
“We’re clear on our policies,” said Mr Brady. “We don’t make decisions on human cases. Our rules are our rules. We try to take out the subjectivity from it. If you book the flight and you can’t fly, it’s a non-refundable ticket.”