Ryanair will pay airport staff increased and unlimited bonuses of \u20ac2.50 for every non-compliant carry-on bag they take from passengers, the airline\u2019s boss has announced.<\/p>\n
Passengers whose cabin cases exceed the maximum dimensions for a small suitcase are charged fees of up to \u00a375 and their luggage is taken into the hold.<\/p>\n
The fines have outraged some travellers, especially when it emerged that staff at the boarding gate have been incentivised to spot oversized bags.<\/p>\n
However, an unrepentant Michael O\u2019Leary, the chief executive of Ryanair, said the airline would be upping the bonuses to keep baggage to the correct size. \u201cWe\u2019re going to raise it from \u20ac1.50<\/a> to \u20ac2.50, probably from the start of the winter schedule in November this year,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I make absolutely no apology for it whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Leary said the airline would also remove the cap on bonuses, currently \u20ac80 a month, to encourage staff to stop as many non-compliant bags as possible. \u201cWe should encourage people. I want our ground handling people to be catching people who are scamming the system.\u201d<\/p>\n Michael O\u2019Leary talks to the press on 27 August 2025. Photograph: Thierry Monasse\/Getty<\/p>\n All passengers are allowed to bring on a small bag for free, that fits under the seat, at a maximum dimension of 40x30x20cm. A second cabin bag, typically a small wheelie suitcase, of up to 55x40x20cm, can be brought on board for a fee, normally lower than the price paid to put baggage in the hold.<\/p>\n It was reported this year that Swissport staff handling easyJet flights were paid bonuses of \u00a31.20 a bag<\/a> to enforce similar rules at the boarding gate.<\/p>\n O\u2019Leary said anxiety over punitive charges for small infractions was exaggerated: \u201cI go regularly and do boardings in Dublin, and we don\u2019t have an issue with the small bag, this kind of mythical, oh, only the zip was outside \u2013 if the zip was the only thing that was outside the sizer, it gets on, there\u2019s no issue.\u201d<\/p>\n But, he said: \u201cI am still mystified by the number of people with rucksacks who still think they\u2019re going to get through the fucking gate, and we won\u2019t notice the rucksack. We will. And you will be paying for the rucksack. You\u2019re not getting on if it doesn\u2019t fit.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Leary said the number of people paying fees was going down as more brought on compliant cases. \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to catch people out here. Most people, 99.9% of our passengers, comply with the rules. The amount of people who pay a gate bag fee is less than 0.1% of our passengers, and that\u2019s still 200,000 passengers a year.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n Get set for the working day \u2013 we’ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cSo we have more work to do to get rid of them, but the numbers who are paying a gate fee is tiny. They get a disproportionate amount of news or of coverage but frankly we don\u2019t really care.\u201d<\/p>\n He told journalists at a press conference in London: \u201cKeep covering it because we want everybody to comply with the rules, if you comply with the rules, no issues.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are running a very efficient, very affordable, very low-cost airline, and we\u2019re not letting anybody get in the way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryanair will pay airport staff increased and unlimited bonuses of \u20ac2.50 for every non-compliant carry-on bag they take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[51,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-378232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115102030491548147","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}