Bad news: Ryanair cuts free check-in to 2 days unless you pay extra

Ryanair yesterday announced a pretty bad news for all fans of low cost traveling.

The airline is cutting its check-in window from four days to 48 hours unless passengers pay to reserve seats, it has announced.

Millions of holidaymakers booked on Ryanair flights from 13 June onwards will only be able to check-in two days before departure in a move likely to make life more difficult for travellers who choose not to pay for assigned seating.

Passengers who have pre-paid the extra £3-£15 for an assigned seat will still be able to check in up to two months ahead of departure.

Until two years ago, customers could check-in online up to a week before departure.

If you fail to check-in online you will pay huge fee of £55 for checking-in at the airport.

A spokesperson for Ryanair said in a statement: “Standard (free) online check-in will be available from 48 hours to 2 hours pre-departure for all flights from 13th June onwards, in order to increase the choice and time available to customers who choose to pay for reserved seats.

“All affected customers booked to travel from 13th June have been contacted by email and those who do not wish to accept this check-in policy change can cancel and request a full refund within 5 days (of this 14th May notification) after which the change will be regarded as implicitly accepted,” it added.

Ryanair, which is the biggest budget carrier in Europe, reduced the window for check-in to just four days in 2016.

Last year Ryanair’s seating policy for people who chose not to pay for allocated seats came under fierce criticism from passengers who complained that they were being seated apart from friends and family if they declined to pay for allocated seating.

The airline flatly denied it had changed the way it allocated its seats, but a handful of complaints turned into thousands as people across Europe said their travelling parties had also been split up, regardless of when they checked in and how many seats were available on their aircraft.

Earlier this year, the budget airline launched a new cabin bag policy that was not popular with passengers.

From January 15, only priority boarding passengers have been allowed to take two cabin bags on board for free. Those who need more than one small piece of hand luggage are now charged the extra £5 for priority boarding.

To sum it up, you will now have to pay more money more often just to check-in, as it will be very hard for many travellers to check-in online for example for their return flight on their vacation without proper access to the internet or printer.

This is pretty bad news and it seems that after couple of years when Ryanair provided a decent service the airline is back to its evil tactics from early years where they charged for absolutely everything and tried to squeeze as much money from its customers as possible.