Bag drop in Gatwick

patricia1066

I am flying Ryanair on 10th November, from Gatwick. The priority was full when I booked, and I paid for the cabin bag in hold.

I can drop off the bag at the Ryanair desk before security, but I am wondering if I can keep it with me til at the gate.

Anyone know how long the check in desk queue would be. I imagine that most try to start queuing 2 hours before the flight departure as advised by Ryanair, so getting to the gate within 30 minutes of the flight departure would be preferable.

Westin

patricia1066 wrote: »

I am flying Ryanair on 10th November, from Gatwick. The priority was full when I booked, and I paid for the cabin bag in hold.

I can drop off the bag at the Ryanair desk before security, but I am wondering if I can keep it with me til at the gate.

Anyone know how long the check in desk queue would be. I imagine that most try to start queuing 2 hours before the flight departure as advised by Ryanair, so getting to the gate within 30 minutes of the flight departure would be preferable.

Regret to inform you that you have missed your flight.

The Ryanair flying programme from LGW is quite small. Dublin is served around 4/5 times a day, plus a few other daily flights to Cork, Shannon and Alicante. I have only ever used them from LGW to Dublin and Cork and always found their check-in area fairly quite. I would still aim to be at check in 1.5h-2.0h before departure if you wish to hand in and check your cabin bag.

I think you will find the gate will be displayed and people queuing for it between 45-60 minutes before scheduled departure. At -30 minutes you really should be in the gate area with boarding pass scanned. I actually thought the final cut off was -30 minutes.

patricia1066

Doh! 10 December is when I am flying.

The gate closes 30 minutes before departure, check in 40 minutes before.

So has anyone without priority just dropped their cabin bag at the gate? As I have paid for the bag in the hold I don't see a problem in theory.

patricia1066

I mean check in closes 40 minutes before departure.

TheShape

patricia1066 wrote: »

I can drop off the bag at the Ryanair desk before security, but I am wondering if I can keep it with me til at the gate.

You can take it to the gate but it's £25 to to check in at the gate.

https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/plan-trip/flying-with-us/baggage-policy

patricia1066

Better to hear it now, rather than at the gate. Thanks for that

leylandsunaddict

It's a hold bag so has to be dropped at the bag drop, pre security. You don't take hold luggage through security to the gate. One reason they introduced their new policy was to cut out gate checking bags due to the time it takes.

patricia1066

It was easy, no queue 2 hours in advance of flight, no queue at security. I was very relaxed and had plenty of time to shop and have a meal in the post security area.
In Dublin, the bag drop has no queue because there are several machines; once the tag is printed, just hand over to the clerk without queuing.
Dublin security queues were a very long, very slow crawl, and I would have missed the deadline for gate except that the gate doesn't close til the last passenger is on the plane. We didn't get on the plane til 10 minutes before take off.