An advocate for senior citizens in Cork has called on the transport minister and the minister of state for older people to address the \u201cappalling\u201d decision made by Ryanair to implement paperless boarding before the end of the year.<\/p>\n
Ryanair confirmed this week that it will move to a fully digital boarding process this November, seeing passengers travelling to and from Cork Airport required to make a switch to digital boarding passes only.<\/p>\n
The budget airline announced on Wednesday that all passengers will be required to present a digital boarding pass from November 12.<\/p>\n
The move comes in a bid to encourage passengers to utilise the airline\u2019s digital platform, where a customer\u2019s digital boarding pass will be generated via the Ryanair app.<\/p>\n
Paddy O\u2019Brien, who is an advocate for senior citizens in Cork, said the move to a paperless system will lock the older generation out of travel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an appalling situation,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m dealing with people on a daily basis who find it hard to make a phonecall \u2014 this is desperate \u2014 it\u2019s an awful situation to spring on anyone.<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI would implore the minister for transport and the minister for older people to step in and do something about this \u2014 it\u2019s no trouble to young people, it\u2019s principally older people who will be affected.\n <\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t express how disappointed I am that an organisation can come along and penalise a group of people for their lack of IT skills.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Government should and must have a say here. There will be loads of senior citizens who can\u2019t go on a holiday, so many people will be affected by this.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat comes to my mind straight off is that this is just the beginning \u2014 how long will it be before other airlines decide to do the same?\u201d<\/p>\n
This initiative is the latest step in Ryanair\u2019s digital transformation, having already rolled out several new in-app features last year. This includes the in-flight order-to-seat scheme, where passengers can pre-order their food and drinks to their seat via the app.<\/p>\n
According to the airline, almost 80% of its 206m passengers already use digital boarding passes.<\/p>\n
‘PATRONISING’<\/p>\n
Ryanair CEO Michael O\u2019Leary said that it is \u201cpatronising\u201d to suggest older people will not migrate to digital boarding passes.<\/p>\n
Speaking to journalists in Dublin yesterday, Mr O\u2019Leary said that he was \u201camazed by the outrage\u201d following the airline\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m old, and I travel [with] Ryanair on a very regular basis,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Leary.<\/p>\n
\u201cI use the Ryanair app, it is pretty simple [and] pretty easy to use.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is slightly patronising, this notion that old people can\u2019t and won\u2019t move to mobile technology, or to the apps.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will just convert and move because that\u2019s what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An advocate for senior citizens in Cork has called on the transport minister and the minister of state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":44522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,4257,8932,79,22119,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-44521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-cork-business","10":"tag-cork-city-centre","11":"tag-cork-news","12":"tag-elderly","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}