I am planning to fly Ryanair from Frankfurt Hahn to Ireland later this year. Is it to my benefit to contact Ryanair and work out the best method to avoid the check in fees?

Just trying to plan ahead...

I have recently travelled with Ryanair and I was extremely dissatisfied with their charging non-EU passport holders for checki-in. Even though I would have loved to do the check-in online, this option is unavailable to non-EU passport holders. This is nothing more than discrimination so please everyone, who is interested in making them stop such a discriminatory practice please write to query@nca.ie and englandhelpline@equalityhumanrights.com The more people write the better it will be. Plus please write in your EU country of residence to the anti-discimination authority and customers' one as well. It is written in the law that EU residents and spouses of EU nationals have the same rights! Screw Ryanair!

I am a senior citizen and want to travel inside Europe this March. Possibly traveling by air to and from 4 cities. The prices of Ryanair are the prices I can live with. I can even live with the baggage and credit card fees. The information I need is how early before flight time do I need to be at the airport and if I can not check in online is there a long line at the check in desk? Can you give me the limit in lbs. to the carry on bag and also on the check in. Thanks for your input.

Even worse, it now appears that, as of May 20th, Ryanair is charging a 5 GBP fee for those who do actually choose to check-in online. And if you don't check-in online, regardless of whether you are an EU or non-EU user, it appears that they will be charging you 40 GBP, per flight, at the gate. We must all vigorously protest this clearly discriminatory policy.

Thought I'd share a nasty experience my husband and I had with RyanAir. We checked in online and when we went to the counter to check in our baggage, they refused to issue us our boarding tickets. They said that we were not E.U. citizens and had to go to the special ticket place and pay 20 euros each before we could get our boarding tickets (with the exchange rate, it's over $55 USD). Well, this was nearly as much as the cost of our flight! If I hadn't paid this fee, I would have lost my flight and certainly wouldn't have been refunded for it. I wish I had booked with a competitor that does not have such crazy policies... I would have saved money in the long-run.

I am upset for multiple reasons, and cannot believe that RyanAir is getting away with this. How "clever" that they don't have any way to get in touch with them that doesn't cushion their pocketbooks (you have to pay to call and there's no publicized customer service contact info. like e-mail addresses in this day and age). Just because they say, "Without Prejudice" (see below) doesn't mean they aren't. In fact, to charge a last-minute fee expressly based on someone's nationality - a fee that none of the competitors are charging - solidifies the fact that they are as unscrupulous as everyone makes them out to be. If I had known what I know now, I would have booked with another carrier; there is no warning of this fee when you go to buy your tickets. By the way, my bank tells me there is no way to contest this because I didn't have it in writing that they would refund this fee to me.

My message to RyanAir that was not replied to:

I was informed at the airport desk that we would not be given permission to board our pre-booked flight without paying this fee because my husband and I are not E.U. citizens. However, if we did pay this exhorbitant fee (nearly as much as one of our flight tickets), we would indeed receive a refund as long as we sent in the necessary paperwork. I mailed you all of the paperwork in less than a week after being charged and followed instructions from the Ryanair representatives to a ¨T.¨ However, I am now receiving your e-mail that our booking was not made prior to the 19th of March 2009, and there´s no recourse despite us providing you with all the paperwork (e.g. completed refund request form, boarding passes, a copy of our flight confirmation, etc.) that was initially requested of us for a refund.

I am totally annoyed that I had to do any of this for a number of reasons. Firstly, and most importantly of all, no warning of this hidden charge was on your web site (see below) when I booked and confirmed our tickets; it was especially a total shock to us that we had to pay any fee because we had self-checked in online before coming to the airport. When we were charged, we were told we´d receive a refund if we followed the instructions, and now you´re telling us that this isn´t the case. Secondly, no other discount airlines charge this fee. We flew return on Aer Lingus and did not have to deal with the hassle or expense of this. I´m sure this is a hidden fee only for Ryan Airlines in a scheme to boost profits. I noticed your ¨Without Prejudice¨ in the e-mail response to the paperwork we submitted - your corporation´s actions should be a criminal offense! Thirdly, this took time away from our vacation and I had to spend money out of pocket for postage of all these papers and copies of the documents. I hate that I am still spending time on this nonsense, but will continue to pursue this until I am refunded the money based on principle. Let me know when I can expect a refund for the $55.28 to my bank account.

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Below I´ve pasted the terms and conditions copied verbatum from your website (http://www.ryanair.com/site/IE/conditions.php). I spent a deal of time reading the details and the only charge that was remotely close to ours that I could find was that passenger(s) will be charged a boarding fee for not checking in online in advance of the flight and having an online boarding pass. As aforementioned, this was not the case for us. As evidence of this, your system probably captured the fact that we checked our selves online hours prior to our flight. What´s more, there is absolutely NO mention of non-E.U. citizens having to pay this fee at the airport within your Terms and Conditions where one would expect to find this. We certainly weren´t informed of this during the booking process or else I would have booked with one of your competitors.

This was RyanAir's reply to my refund request that they denied after I sent it in because I booked on the 21st of March. Note that I was force to pay postage to even make this request as there's no way to do it online:

"Without Prejudice

Dear [---],

I refer to your recent correspondence regarding your booking confirmation [---].

We wish to advise that passengers who are non EU/EEA citizens can avail of the Online Check-in if their booking was made on or after the 19th March 2009 and therefore we are not in a position to refund the Airport Check-in fee for any bookings made after the above date.

However if your booking was made prior to the 19th of March 2009 it is necessary for you to forward a copy of your Passport to; Ryanair Customer Services Department, P.O. Box 11451, Swords, Co. Dublin, Ireland or by fax on + 353 1 508 1702 in order that we may investigate your request for a refund of the airport check-in on the basis that you were unable to avail of Online Check-in by reason only of not being the holder of either a valid passport or a National Identity Card, issued by the government of an EU/EEA country.

Please also quote your booking confirmation number in all future correspondence.

Yours sincerely,

Ryanair Customer Services.

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Ryanair Holdings plc (Company No. 249885) / Ryanair Ltd. (Company No. 104547).
Registered in the Republic of Ireland. With registered address Corporate Head Office, Dublin Airport, Co. Dublin, Ireland."

I believe this aspect is growing everywhere as business owners learn what it is. For example, Phoenix is much more sophisticated in this regards than here in Tucson. I average small business owner is still way behind in their understanding such incidents.
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