Ryanair new baggage fees
In June 2016 Ryanair announced cuts in its baggage fees which was a great news for travellers. That meant 17–50% saving for some segments. As an example, for a 15 kg bag on domestic flights the fees were cut from €30 to €15.
The official site lists the range of baggage fees also stating that
Fee varies depending on the route and travel dates selected.
The price list does not give much more details as to which factors the fee depend on. As we know from the press release, the fees depend on:
- Seasonality
- Domestic vs. international flights
- Length of the flight (below or above 3 hrs)
So one could assume that there are fixed prices applied to each of these segments. However some recent insights shared by our community shows that Ryanair has gone beyond apply fixed fees with €5 intervals.
Baggages fees are actually more dynamic.
To proof that, we looked at baggage fees for 15 kg bag (purchased online) for two Ryanair routes (Dublin and Barcelona) departing on 3 December 2016 (low season). Observed baggage fees are presented in the following table.
One will notice high variety of baggage fees across routes. It is clear that as announced by Ryanair earlier, the fees depend on domestic vs. international flights and whether the flight is above 3 hrs. However there must be
other factors not explained by Ryanair
which affect the fees and one of them seems to be the route. Also notice the granularity of price changes. There are even €1 differences between routes.
We believe it is new trend to see baggage fees being so dynamic and Ryanair is among the first airlines to apply it. If it continues like that we don’t discard the scenario where
one day baggage fees may be as fluid as airfares.
In other words bag fees may be affected by the existing demand for each flight and change on regular basis.
You can find more insights about Ryanair flights and other low-cost airlines at airhint.com.
