I sympathise with the consumer associations: charging for largish hand luggage makes price comparisons deceptive, distorting the market.<p>On the other hand, storing hand luggage overhead is one of the most time consuming parts of the boarding process, which is even worse with Ryanair's short intereuropean flights. All that time spent on hand luggage costs money, and it seems only fair to make those pay that cause the delay, incentivizing people to take less luggage (bags that can be stored under your seat are still free). It makes economic sense for everyone.<p>To satisfy both sides of the argument, you could show the price with large hand luggage fee included, and offer a discount if you show up without hand luggage. If you extend that concept, you arrive at a "base feature set" that has to be included in the base price of any flight, and from there you can add surcharges and discounts.
Ryanair brought this on themselves. They charged for checked in bags and everyone rightly started bringing hand luggage only. Problem is that Ryanair didn't design their planes for everyone bringing large hand luggage and so they forced people to put them in the hold.<p>Airlines like Jet2 have designed their overhead bins with more hand luggage in mind. Jet2 bins fit 4 hang luggages vertically rather than the 2 horizontally that most Ryanair planes fit.<p>This isn't a problem of space it's a problem of design and not realising the consequences of your own actions.
Not sure how I feel about this. It annoyed my greatly on my last RyanAir flight that in order to take a slightly larger than laptop sized bag (35L) I had to pay for priority which was 8 quid or whatever. A Primera flight I've just booked is now doing exactly the same. Small bag free, bigger bag not so. But, as some of the comments here, I think it sped things up once on the plane.
However, adding the extra charge leaves a bitter taste in my mouth - "here's the price for you cheap flight, but here's the actual 20% more price now you have to add a bag".
It'll be a smooth win for the first aggregator (Skyscanner or whoever) that adds a 'taking max size cabin bag' option to their search and includes it in the price.
I travel quite often in Europe and took a fairly amount of Ryanair flights as well. The amount of people rushing in to the plane and messing around when it's time to put their stuff in the overhead lockers is incredible, even as fellow passenger this is super annoying hence I don't blame Ryanair at all.<p>Also, even if you have to pay for the luggage, Ryanair still comes often cheaper than traditional airlines. If you want all the perks you can just fly Alitalia and you're set.
I took a fairly short Ryanair flight recently, and it was much nicer with these new baggage rules.<p>No-one was rushing to board first, in order to fit their sized-to-the-limit suitcase into an overhead locker. There was plenty of room left for handbags, small backpacks and so on, so those (like me) who'd paid for checked luggage didn't have to have their small bag around their feet. Boarding was noticeably faster.<p>These were my biggest annoyances before.
Firstly, travelers are consenting adults that should understand and accept the baggage policy - or use a different airline. The market is extremely competitive.<p>Secondly, as a person who has traveled backpack for years, I find the whole "luggage is an essential element of air transport" line quite offensive. It's a service I want to purchase but you won't let me because some guy might be confused by a price comparison app to buy a baggage-less ticket (mind you, not even by Ryanair themselves, on their website it is very clear what you get for the price). It's revolting.