> "Almost 100 percent of passengers have smartphones, and we want to move everybody onto that smartphone technology"

Corollary: "Less than 1 percent of passengers don't have smartphones, and we don't want them to be our customers anymore.

Every airline has a website that allows check-in and can generate a QR-code like boarding pass (which can also then be printed!). Both iOS and Android have "wallet" capabilities for storing such things. So the need for an airline-specific app is...?

Makes me wonder what other standards they consider "good enough".

I wouldn't fly them now. Their 100% standard seems to be low....and I'm going to assume that carries over to everything in the organization. That 100% may be more like 89%...and I don't think I want to take an 89% safety rating.

I don't care if it's true...if they make stupid fucking decisions like this based on bullshit numbers; then we should all go on bullshit made up numbers.

While a paper boarding pass is not perfect, I prefer having it in addition to the digital boarding pass.

While every passenger (or group of passengers, like a couple or a family) has a smartphone, not everyone want to install Ryanair's spyware on it. Ryanair obviously wants to collect more data about its customers behaviour.

Also, when travelling abroad, not everyone wants to subscribe for a data plan on the remote country, just to be able to get the boarding pass for the return flight. And using the wifi of an airport in a foreign country would also be definitely a bad idea, security wise.

I've noticed this kind of thing a LOT lately. Evidently this book is out called Nudge that tells its readers to annoy the shit out of their customers until they 'install the app". Because evidently running in the background and draining your battery constantly harvesting your data and monitoring your location is more profitable than actually selling the service.

I booked air tickets on a website and it was deliberately irritating, pausing for a long time between screens, showing a QR code and saying, 't

Fewer than 100% of customers have a sufficiently charged cell phone

While I concede that not every person on the planet has a smartphone and not every smartphone owner wants to install an app to manage their boarding pass (frequent flier details and other things as well), it is a LOT easier to manage that way if you're a frequent traveler. The only times I have used a paper boarding pass for the last 15-ish years is when I didn't want to bring my phone to my destination (i.e. China).

I'm guessing that Ryanair has done the math and decided that they don't care if the folks w

Fun anecdote: I visited the Philippines in 2022. I flew Cebu Pacific Air for a few domestic flights, and they had just setup an abundance of these self-check-in kiosks at their airport check-ins. While prior visits to this particular terminal would see six to eight staff working check-in counters, this visit only had two: one assisting with the kiosks, and one checking baggage. Wait times were long, kiosks were confusing, and people were agitated, but we all got through.

I just returned from another trip now in 2025. Flew Cebu Pacific Air again for my domestic flights. This time the terminal had only three self-check-in kiosks, they were shoved up against a wall aside from the check-in counters, and nobody was using them. Everyone was waiting in line to deal with a human. (In the consideration of both sides of this human-vs-machine argument, perhaps the reason why kiosks didn't succeed in the Philippines is because human labor there is very cheap.)

Regardless, the moral of the story is that airline travel is agitating. Companies that try to nickel-and-dime passengers (even budget airlines like RyanAir) by removing mature, reliable, human & paper & analog components from that experience in place of new, untested, anxiety-inducing digital counterparts may discover that the total cost is not worth the savings.

Now going through phones will be a breeze for TSA , everyone will need to carry one to get onboard. Check for rootkits and spyware in that app. Burner phones will get more popular as noone in their right minds want to let TSA and the likes download all their private lives and search through it at their leasure without proper court orders.

> "There'll be some teething problems," O'Leary said of the move.

That's putting it mildly.

Smartphones can crash, run out of battery or any number of problems. On important trips I usually have a paper boarding pass with me as a backup. Only needed it once, but I'm just one person with fairly normal travel amounts. Multiplied over the number of people flying Ryan Air, statistically speaking this happens constantly.

Frankly speaking, I think it's a gimmick to milk the customers for more money. Someone at Ryan Air has certainly done the calculation, estimated how many people can't access their boarding pass at the gate for whatever reason, and how much additional money they can make by forcing all these people to pay the additional fee for having it printed.

which means that except for that last ticket I got before it was announced I'm not flying with them anymore.

Because decades of market consolidation means your options are very limited.

Why should this not be a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act?

My eyes cannot deal with the "flyspeck 3" fonts used by smart-phones, and as I result I cannot use one. Can I get the statutory $15K per violation specified by this US law?

I had a Gen 0 Apple Watch, and used it for my boarding pass onto a Delta flight. They weren't very common, and the gate agent called me "Batman".

That said, my mother is rapidly approaching her 80s and even with her smartphone I don't think she could be trusted to be able to check in. People like her are going to be fumbling around with their phone right at the gate, and it's going to be a nightmare. Best of luck to them actually making things better.

com.ryanair.cheapflights has the usual Google data/internet/identity/location spyware that most shopping on a phone apps have. It also has "run at start-up" so the privacy rape isn't limited to using the app.

There is no reason I know of for anyone not to delete the airline app directly after returning home.

You can always write your username and password down, reinstalling everything when you fly again.

Even if you have another flight in a month.

...after an awful travel with them. Never again.

Surely this system will prove to be hackable.

People will think of all kinds of creative ways to fuck up Ryanair.

Why not a PNG or PDF in an email that I can access offline?

It's almost like Ryanair intentionally harasses their customers.

will lose my business

Electronic boarding passes are fine, if they're just bar codes in a PDF. Then people with smart phones can use their phone, and people without can print them.

Forcing people to use an app is simply trying to spy on them.