Well its quite ironic that just after the EU announced that its 18 month into the investigation into the ticket price practices of several major airlines RyanAir came out with an absolute gem! They are starting from the end of July to charge their customers for checking into flights online! Now what makes this more ridiculous is that you have to pay extra if you check in at the airport too so no matter what you do you end up paying the fee. After all you have to check in somewhere don’t you? If this practice is not the very definition of a hidden charge then i don’t know what is.
Id also like to point out that this kind of issue effects all kinds of people travelling but in particular on short haul flights within the uk and definitely people looking for cheap flights to Edinburgh. Airlines are also notorious for some of their credit card charges. For example if we go back to RyanAir again (oh how i love them) they charge a credit card fee of £16 which is pretty excessive in my opinion. This charge is more or less compulsory for anyone wanting to book. However they get around the fact in their many adverts for cheap flights by saying that you can avoid this charge by using a “Visa Electron” card. Now it’s worth noting that less than 2% of the UK population actually have this type of card. So for the vast majority of people who see a cheap flight deal on a poster or magazine to fly to some exotic location for just £10 it just isn’t a possibility. Once you count airport taxes and other misc fees into the price of your average budget flight then the price of a flight can quickly triple or more.
I suppose from the airlines point of view they are just trying to get people onto the site and then at the final stage of the booking process reveal the true cost of the flight to the unsuspecting customer. Most people myself included just will end up just paying the extra having already gone through the process of picking the flight they want and then entering all of their personal details and have no desire to go and try somewhere else. I really hope the office of fair trading looks into some of these practices very soon as at the end of the day it’s us the customer who is getting the bum deal. Also i hope sometime soon to do some kind of league table for some of the best and worst airlines for this practice so we can really see who are the worst offenders!
