Ryanair at it again.

It looks like ryanair are at the cost cutting again. according to the news today. Seems that people are going to be charged for checking in luggage now! So if you have a bag to check in, it'll cost you up to an extra €7, but if you only have hand luggage you can check in online and avoid the queue at the airport. Normally when I fly ryanair I'm only going off for the weekend somewhere so I'd only ever have hand luggage anyway, so this'll be good for me (as a guy I can get away with one change of clothes for the weekend), but for families heading off on holidays it's going to be a serious bummer - one article I read stated "In future, a couple travelling to France or Spain could end up paying an extra £110 on a round trip if they take just one suitcase weighing 30kg.*". They reckon tho that they'll save/make enough money on this to be able to afford to drop their prices overall by about €3.50 a journey. So what will that mean for the flights they used to adveretise for 1c? Will they now give it to you for free and pay €3.49 towards your airport tax?

Michael O'Leary's comment on the whole thing is very telling tho - "Mr. O'Leary has described the checking in of baggage as a throwback to the "era of ocean liners"". To be honest I don't really like the guy's attitude. After all the little tricks that ryanair have pulled in the past, like taking "shortcuts" over north dublin housing estates on the way into dublin airport, letting people sit on the toilets, and of course O'Leary's buying a taxi license for his merc so he can use the bus lanes, you just get the feeling that he's a bit too mercenary. I reckon if he thought he could get away with it he'd put hanging straps on the planes like there are on buses so that they can fit in standing passengers.

Ryanair always pride themslves on being the "low fares" airline, but they also have a habit of gouging you on return journeys - like paying €1 on the way out somewhere and then having to pay €120 on the way back. What a lot of ppl seem to forget when they go "ooh look, flights for €1!" is that you still have to pay airport tax regardless, and then there's the hidden cost of getting from ryanair's ass-end-of-nowhere airport to the actual city you wanted to fly into! I got to Belgium to visit my friend Sara a lot, and a lot of times it's just as cheap to fly Aer Lingus into Zaventem as it is to fly Ryanair to Charleroi and have to take the 1hr bus journey into town.

The MSNBC article has an interesting angle on the hand luggage allowance though:

Ryanair passengers are allowed to carry 10kg as hand luggage – which Flybe has estimated equates to "two pairs of jeans, two jumpers, one pair of trainers, four T-shirts, underwear (unspecified), a make-up bag, a toiletries bag, a belt and hair straighteners."

"Unspecified" underwear? At least they're not telling us what we have to wear now anyway. And if you're a guy and not in posession of such items as a hair straightner or make-up bag, does that mean we can shove in an extra t-shirt & stuff?