Ryanair Baggage allowance 15kg - how strict?

mbailey

mbailey wrote: »

We're flying from Stansted with Ryanair at the weekend.

Can anyone comment how strict Ryanair are with the 15Kg limit?

We are 2 adults, 1 child and 1 baby. I have paid for baggage for 3 people, so we should have 3 15kg suitcases.

How much over 15kg do you need to be before Ryanair charge you?

On the Ryanair website it gives a charge of £5.50 per kilo.

If we have a bag of 16kg, will they charge us?

We're back from our holiday so I thought I would report back on how we got on.

Before leaving home we checked the cases using a digital bathroom scales and they were all around 14 to 15Kgs. (To be honest the bathroom scales didn't seem to be that accurate and keep changing +/- 2kg so I wasn't really sure that the bags would be at the check-in desk.

At the check-in at Stansted bag 1 = 13.5kg, bag 2 = 14kg and bag 3 = 14.5kg.

Coming back from Alicante we had to guess the weight of each case and try and distribute the weight evenly. The first bag we put on the scales was 18kg and the second was 12kg. We pulled them both off quickly and moved across what we would thought we would be heavy items and put them back on the scales again, bag 1 = 14.5kg, bag 2 = 15kg and bag 3 = 15.0kg!!! We did have a few extra things coming back, so I am not surprised the bags were slightly heavier when checked at Alicante compared to Stansted.

From my experience my discrepancies with the scales at Stansted or Alicante airport.

The big thing we have learnt is that you *can* go away on holiday with only 15kg and we don't need to fill the cases to maximum with upto 25kg! Even with 15kg limit we still ended up taking too many clothes! :-)

Seren_2

Ryanair charged me £33.00 for 7 kilos over, going to Milan, but on return 4 kilos over and no charge. My hand luggage was probably a bit over the 10 kilosbut was not checked.

MarkyMarkD

Netto (or at least my local branch) are selling hand baggage sized trolley cases for only £3.99 at the moment which is a bargain.

Some airlines have no weight limit on hand baggage - easyjet and bmibaby are two such. You can fit way more than 10kg of weight in one of these hand baggage sized trolley cases if you put your mind to it!

If you are taking a baby with you (under 2) it can be worth paying for a seat as the extra 15kg (or 20kg or whatever) of luggage allowance each way is worth way more than the cost of a seat in many cases. You can also put the baby on the "spare" seat apart from takeoff and landing and it makes things a lot less cramped.

alanrowell

MarkyMarkD wrote: »

Netto (or at least my local branch) are selling hand baggage sized trolley cases for only £3.99 at the moment which is a bargain.

But WHOSE hand baggage size

Easyjet - 55x40x20cm
Ryanair - 55x40x20cm
Jet2 - 46x30x23cm
BA - 56x45x25cm
BMI - 56x45x25cm
BMIBaby - 55x40cmx20cm

Then there's the airport sizing

Stansted - 55x40x20cm
Heathrow - 56x45x25cm

etc etc

MarkyMarkD

Interesting point.

They are about 56cm x 40cm x 21cm but it depends how you measure them.

I don't think that's realistically going to give you a problem - I've never had the size of my hand baggage checked by an airline (nor the weight checked - apart from Thomsonfly who weigh total baggage which is quite a fair system really).

The idea of airport-specific limits had passed me by - that seems completely unfair! The DFT limits are 56x45x25 so all airports should stick to that. :mad:

alanrowell

56cm x 40cm x 21cm would mean they wouldn't get through security at Stansted Airport and therefore you'd have to check them - which on Ryanair automatically means £10 for the extra bag and if it then puts you over the 15kg limit it'll cost £5.50 per kg - plus of course you could end up missing your flight due to the extra time

MarkyMarkD

Lucky I never fly with Ryanair, or from Stansted, then, eh?

Are Stansted security really so exact in their measuring or do they only measure cases which look ridiculously over-sized? These certainly don't look any different in size to any other hand-baggaged size trolley cases.

Jonah1156

Just come back from Dublin via Bristol and never encountered any problems with our hand luggage at all. This is with Ryanair!

We just showed them the regulation plastic bag for liquids etc. and went through security without a hitch.

There are case measuring frames situated at the security area and we only tried that out once just to re-assure ourselves regarding the measurement of our hand luiggage and that was it.

I think too much emphasis is placed on scaremongering by perhaps other posters. Just be sensible over what you can or cannot take/do and you will be fine.

mbailey

Jonah1156 wrote: »

Just come back from Dublin via Bristol and never encountered any problems with our hand luggage at all. This is with Ryanair!

We just showed them the regulation plastic bag for liquids etc. and went through security without a hitch.

There are case measuring frames situated at the security area and we only tried that out once just to re-assure ourselves regarding the measurement of our hand luggage and that was it.

I think too much emphasis is placed on scaremongering by perhaps other posters. Just be sensible over what you can or cannot take/do and you will be fine.

On my trip from Stansted I saw some people being turned away from security, but they did have 3 bags each and the regulation is just 1 bag. Once they put it into 1 bag it was too big so they were forced to go back to the airline desk and checkin the bag.

On the return trip at Alicante we saw one couple that had purchased an item which was larger than 56cm in length and the security people said no it couldn't go as hand luggage. They tried to tell the security team that the airline checkin desk said it could go as hand luggage, but the security team wouldn't have it.

In general I would say it is more the security teams that are getting stricter over hand luggage rather than the airlines.

MarkyMarkD

Was that a ridiculously sized item, or a supposedly hand baggage sized case which fractionally exceeded the limits?