Ryanair to charge for airport desk check-in

PBA

They check your passport when you go through security whether you've checked in online or at the desk, so it's not putting an extra burden on the airport security. I'm not sure when the security questions would be asked, but assume this is done online.

This is a bit annoying as I'd love to be able to check in online, but as I usually have luggage to check they won't let me. I'm happy to pay the fiver for my baggage, but it's a little annoying to have to pay an extra £2 to stand in a line I'd rather not stand in, just because they won't let you check in online if you've got luggage.

peterbaker

Of course airlines have been using various forms of online check-in for ages but the other airlines have previously had more robust systems to deal wth it and only a small minority of passengers used it anyway.

Ryanair actively avoids costly robust systems.

Ryanair has now said it wants it's small minority who are online checkins to be much bigger and it has NO special system to deal with it at front of house. That's someone else's problem unless I am mistaken? If you hadn't noticed, Ryanair controls the majority share of all passenger throughput in some of our airports now.

It has changed the face of our airports so much that no-one can say what is standard anymore. Now Ryanair wants to abdicate front of house completely and dump the cost on airport security.

Even cattle markets have fences and cattle-prodders, and escapes are rare. Where is there evidence of even remotely similar control at our airports? Every day at Stansted you see non-standard movements of people circumventing queues. Ryanair has trained us all to be masters at that! There surely isn't any control if we just issue everyone with security papers printed off on twenty thousand different types of inkjet printer and just wave them through?

PBA wrote:

They check your passport when you go through security whether you've checked in online or at the desk...

Not so. Well I know security don't check passports if you've checked in at the desk at Stansted and at least one foreign airport I use a lot, anyway. They only want to see boarding cards. Do they perhaps check passports if you have checked in online and have an inkjetted boarding card? Perhaps they crosscheck the self-printed 'boarding card' with your name on your passport? What training do they have in the vagaries of inkjet technology I wonder?

moonrakerz

peterbaker wrote: »

Do they perhaps check passports if you have checked in online and have an inkjetted boarding card? Perhaps they crosscheck the self-printed 'boarding card' with your name on your passport? What training do they have in the vagaries of inkjet technology I wonder?

Last time I flew with BA (out of Gatwick) no one checked my passport until I got to the boarding gate and no one checked it at all when I got Spain !

budgetflyer

I would imagine the security services have access to passenger lists. Often they have months to browse these. Most of us normal law abiding citizens are no risk. Possible risks should be flagged up well in advance if the proper systems are in place. So the only problem should arise with late or same day bookings. This will be a small percentage. If they cant deal with that we might as well just chuck the towel in.

moonrakerz

budgetflyer wrote: »

I would imagine the security services have access to passenger lists. Often they have months to browse these. Most of us normal law abiding citizens are no risk. Possible risks should be flagged up well in advance if the proper systems are in place. So the only problem should arise with late or same day bookings. This will be a small percentage. If they cant deal with that we might as well just chuck the towel in.

Surprisingly this eminently sensible suggestion is not widely used - for fear of upsetting "minority groups" ! The US have a version of this where they scan passengers lists for known names, with the result (last week) that a seven year old from Birmingham on his way to DisneyWorld was arrested when he arrived in the US !

So you are not allowed to concentrate on Eskimos if the main threat is from Eskimo terrorists, you must waste as much time searching Australian Aunties and German Grannies as a suspicious looking Eskimo carrying a box marked "bomb".
I used to travel regularly to Germany, so I received the same 'going over' as all and sundry, wasting my time and that of thousands of others.
On one occasion I was carrying a small "Powerpoint" projector, at Stuttgart I was taken into a side room where it was X-rayed, swabbed and sniffed for explosives. My laptop was ignored, BUT, neither got any special attention at Heathrow on the way out.
If my personal/travel profile had been stored, I would have thought that my travelling to Germany every couple of weeks and working for a German company would have made me a lower category of risk - but no, everyone must get the same pointless treatment ! Which of course means that the potentially higher risk passenger like the "shoe bomber" gets the same treatment as the regular commuter on that flight. He couldn't have been a regular traveller, otherwise he would have known that you can't reach your shoes in an economy class seat !

alanrowell

moonrakerz wrote: »

you must waste as much time searching Australian Aunties and German Grannies as a suspicious looking Eskimo carrying a box marked "bomb".

If you only searched Eskimo's carrying a bomb marked "bomb" the Eskimo terrorists would recruit Australian Aunties and German Grannies

Take for example Richard Reid, [SIZE=-1]Jose Padilla, David Hicks, Germaine Lindsay[/SIZE]...

It also leads to people who look like Eskimo terrorists being wrongly singled out - see Charles de Menezes for example

Aiadi

moonrakerz wrote: »

So you are not allowed to concentrate on Eskimos if the main threat is from Eskimo terrorists, you must waste as much time searching Australian Aunties and German Grannies as a suspicious looking Eskimo carrying a box marked "bomb".

May be pointless to you but it is called trying to treat all human-beings fairly. We all get p***ed off with the long queues and delays in airports but I wouldn't like an Eskimo being singled-out just because of how they look or their names. There is a million other way to improve efficiency and speed of the security system but the US way shouldn't be one of them as everyday's lessons are telling us.

moonrakerz

Whilst I accept some of the points in the previous two posts, the first thing that must be accepted is that you will never stop a determined terrorists from carrying out their aim - without making life/travel impossible for the law abiding citizen.

After Sept 11th (I was actually in the air when it happened) I was amazed by the sheer stupidity of most of the measures that were introduced. The classic has to be when the Government flooded the Heathrow area with the Army. What use is a ten ton light tank with a 30mm cannon against a terrorist trying to smuggle a bomb/gun/knife onto an airliner ?? It made good television, but that was all.

As a regular traveller you get to see some of these pointless measures and realise that most of them are fairly easily circumvented. I have said previously on this site that I have an artificial hip which always sets off the metal detectors. When this happens I am NEVER checked properly once the alarm has gone off, I am 100% convinced that I could get an illegal "weapon" through security at Heathrow because of that ! and you are worried !

Also if you are a terrorist; is it easier to find a way round the measures or to recruit an 80 year old Australian female to your cause ? For security to your own organisation it has to be the former. Proper passenger profiling would have made Richard Reid and others stand out as much higher risk passengers.

As they at the end of Crimewatch "don't lie awake worrying about it" - you are far more likely to die in your car on the way to the airport or in a "normal" plane crash !

budgetflyer

The easiest method I can think of to improve security is "FREE" (this is MSE afterall;))
Just get more people to like us.
A simple concept - if we dont pee off half the world ,then half the world will not want to kill us.
To test it works, just be more nice to people on an individual basis, try it for a week and see the difference.
Then when it works (it will, I promise:beer:) think how collectively we could implement this to improve security

Aiadi

moonrakerz wrote: »

As a regular traveller you get to see some of these pointless measures and realise that most of them are fairly easily circumvented. I have said previously on this site that I have an artificial hip which always sets off the metal detectors. When this happens I am NEVER checked properly once the alarm has gone off, I am 100% convinced that I could get an illegal "weapon" through security at Heathrow because of that ! and you are worried !

Have you seen this one then?? it is a cracker!

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=535759