Anti-Christ update; Ryanair launches home printed boarding pass fee plus a hefty fine

Ryanair has found new ways to shake down its customers with a £5 fee for printing their own tickets at home, and which is unavoidable, as it is also shutting down all of its check-in desks.

In addition it will fine passengers £40 at the airport if they turn up without it, by charging that amount as a ‘boarding card re-issue fee.’

All of which proves that while its CEO Michael O’Leary was joking earlier this year about charging a £1 pee fee (solids included) to unlock coin operated toilet doors on Ryanair jets he will find ways of gouging a few extra quid or euros from the public right up to the point where mass riots break out in the terminals.

The burning question here is whether Australian carriers will be inspired by the anti-Christ of air travel to invent even more fees of their own.

Already on Tiger there is an inconvenient ‘convenience fee’ of $5 for paying with a credit card on-line, which is the only way payment can be made, as well as an optional seat selection fee, a meal fee, and the least competitive baggage fees in the domestic market.

Jetstar has a reverse fee, in that you can travel without checked luggage for a lower fare, but if you turn up at the counter wearing three sets of clothing, walking boots and two handbags you will not only look like an idiot, and require a seat belt extension, but get charged extra for anything deemed to be in excess of the carry on limit, or is that the carrying on limit.

And Jetstar also has fees for better seats, and meals, if it remembers to load them on to its flights.

Virgin Blue has a Ryanairesque checked baggage fee of $8 if you pay on line, or $20 if you pay at the airport, and $8 per extra kilo above a 23 kilo limit.

Qantas is generally fee-less for most domestic flyers, unless you turn up looking like a Himalayan porter and think you are going to get away with using six overhead bins to store your carry-on luggage.

On a more serious note, these extras on domestic flights are a headache for business travellers or their account managers because they each contain a GST component, and may also be tax deductible, and add to the number of items that need to be tracked and reconciled by the software programs often used to manage travel and entertainment expenditure.