Ryanair’s additional charges are scandalous and their profits sky-high – we’ve created a monster

Stories of nightmare Ryanair experiences seem as much a part of the British summertime as rain stopping play at the cricket, over-priced beer and heroic sporting failure.

The most recent incident proves that, incredibly, it is still possible for this company to find new depths to plumb.

An elderly couple, who’d inadvertently downloaded the wrong documents, were hit with a £110 charge just to have their tickets printed at the airport so they could check in. The company’s response to the resulting furore can be filed under adding (grievous) insult to Ruth and Peter Jaffe’s injury. “We regret that these passengers ignored their email reminder and failed to check-in online,” its statement read. This came after a patronising explanation of how it works when you fly Ryanair.

It’s a curious way to treat your customers: patronising them after having – in my view – just ripped them off. A £110 charge for a printout? What’d they use? Gold leaf paper? Parchment? Vellum?

Of course, Ryanair defended its actions, saying “These passengers were correctly charged the airport check-in fee (£55 per passenger)”, and that everything was “in accordance with Ryanair’s T&Cs”.

So what should be done about this?

“Fine them all,” says Which? Okay, I’m paraphrasing there. But the consumer group has penned a letter to Rishi Sunak, which has been co-signed by holiday companies up to and including big guns such as Thomas Cook. It urges more powers for the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to combat delays, disruption and bad beahviour on the part of airlines. Presumably that would include the behaviour mentioned above.

Given the preponderance of travel misery at this time of year, a savvy prime minister ought to be inclined to listen, especially with a difficult election coming up.

At this point, however, perhaps we should raise a question. Given the regularity with which stories like this appear, and the fact that in 2010 the chief executive of the Office of Fair Trading accused Ryanair of acting “outside the spirit of the law”, going on to describe the airline’s extra charges as “puerile” and “almost childish”, why haven’t people taken the hint? Why are they still flocking to Ryanair’s website?

In May, the group reported a €1.4bn (£1.2bn) full year profit, a near record. Ryanair carried 168.6 million customers, gaining market share in the process. Its pugnacious CEO Michael O’Leary also crowed about the company’s “enormous growth opportunities”, anticipating even better times to come.

Time and again, travellers have looked at how cheap Ryanair’s headline ticket prices are and then done their best to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s so as to avoid ending up like the Jaffes. On occasion, Ryanair has cheekily used the old BA slogan to style itself as “the world’s favourite airline”. Sales figures might support this, however, as far as its “customer score” goes, Which? says “Ryanair regularly sits at the bottom of our table”.

Other airlines have taken the hint, adopting the same model. EasyJet is similarly recovering from its post-pandemic hangover, having said profit for the year to the end of September will exceed market expectations of £260m.

Mock them all you want for their excessive additional charges for your bags, a sandwich, “priority” boarding, printing out tickets, using the loo (come on, you know they’ll try it, it’s just a matter of time). Blanch at how much money they make from those charges – a staggering €3.84bn (£3.28bn) in the case of Ryanair. That is up 79 per cent on the previous year. But numbers like that show their formula is working.

My wife and I once paid a premium to avoid Ryanair in favour of one of its competitors. This was some time before the latest cost of living crisis, however the alternatives were scarcely any better then. Now, all we seem to have is Ryanair and its mini-mes.

Ominously, it’s only going to get better for the company if O’Leary is right and those mini-mes fall by the wayside.

It should be said that Ryanair works well for those who don’t need much in the way of baggage and can work their way around its T&Cs. The young and footloose, for example.

It’s not so easy for the likes of the Jaffes. With no meaningful alternative for people like them who make honest mistakes, or for people with disabilities like me, or for people with kids, travelling options feel very much stacked against certain groups. I’d feel I’d have more chance of remaining unscathed if I went for a paddle in a shark tank.

This is why Sunak should heed the Which? call – not just because it would be popular, but because it is necessary.

The CAA agrees, having called for powers to bring it into line with other European regulators. CEO Paul Smith says plans already announced by the government will do that, giving it more clout to levy fines. Last month the CAA announced it has taken “enforcement action against Wizz Air ... following significant concerns over high volumes of complaints about the airline not paying passengers what they are owed.”

But Which? is concerned about the timetable: when are we likely to see these enhanced powers come into full effect? Which? doesn’t want any delay and I’m inclined to agree.

Everyone would ultimately benefit from this, even if, as O’Leary might argue, the headline price on your ticket goes up a bit as a result. It would be a worthwhile price to pay if it brought an end to the hellish experience of the Jaffes and – judging from the annual mountain of negative news reports – many other travellers as well.