Anyone aware of a new Ryanair boarding card policy?

I am flying over/back to UK on Saturday , early morning flight out and i don't want to be buried in a queue at the Ryanair desk.

Basically if i check in online as early as possible i will get my digital boarding card as normal ? Leave it to last minute and i potentially have to queue up for a printed boarding ticket.

I have not paid for a seat either.

I was one of those who did wait until late to check in, will stop that from now on so.

Am i correct ?

Fair enough, wasn't aware of that.

Anyway, I got the email this morning for the flight tomorrow morning and checked in as normal. Have the boarding pass on the App, and the seat that they allocated me, and I paid nothing for it.

What did your phone/boarding card say when you checked in? Did you get a screenshot of it? Interested to know how they tell you you need to go to a desk, given that check-in usually generates a qr code and they email you repeatedly about checking in online.

Anyone have an idea of the times that this is kicking in?

I'm always a very late check in and get great seats usually, I wonder if it would be 12 hours before, 6 hours before, 4 hours before. Anyone any ideas?

They call them gate lice

Shiteair is full of hidden costs it's a low budget airline but I guess if it wasn't for them airtravel wouldn't be as affordable, I always travel with aerlingus but have flown a few times on Ryanair

The way to beat this is to check-in EARLY

Get a digital boarding card on your Ryanair app for a randomly allocated seat .

Return to the app just before check-in closes and start to purchase a seat , all available seats are displayed , simply take a screenshot , abandon the seat purchase and then board as normal and refer to your seating map screenshot to select the best free seat 😎

Can you try to purchase a seat after you have been randomly allocated one? Never realised that

Southwest's policy is fantastic, helped by the fact that the people using it seem to understand it, which could be an issue here.

Any chance we could leave the Ryanair v the world v whoever is better or worse or crap blah out of this thread? It’s very tiresome.

Ryanair is our number 1 way for getting off this island. This policy change is important to very many of us.

Good I'm glad you enjoyed your holiday 😊

Note the relevant quote states that they don't have a new policy of charging people to check in, and a digital boarding pass is always free. That's not answering the question though! No one has said they're charging for a pass, but that, for some passengers, if they want a free one they have to queue at check in. I've seen zero specific denial from Ryanair re that practice - indeed I've seen Ryanair online chat screenshots saying that they were indeed now doing this.

I didn’t think of the “wait for a premium seat” thing at all. When I flew Ryanair to the UK a few weeks ago, I checked in a couple of minutes after 24h before the flight, and was allocated an exit row seat i.e. a premium seat for free. On the way back I checked in an hour later and was allocated a middle seat … but ended up with the whole row, since one person moved to be with someone else, and the other person didn’t show. Result.

There aren't hidden costs with Ryanair. There are very well mentioned costs you can pay for some upgrades such as priority boarding or seat selection.

Personally I like the Ryanair model. Idiots pay for unnecessary extras and it keeps my tickets cheaper.

Flying 7.30 in the morning with Ryanair, checked in just now , digital boarding cards issued for me and my son no problem.

But i guess we have checked in with loads of time to spare, so maybe its the late comers tonight/early tomorrow morning who might run the risk of not getting their digital boarding cards.

The US is already taking action against junk fees.

There's a difference between a fee that you can't avoid and one that you can. While the whole "priority boarding" gambit is in practice farcical a lot of the time, it's an optional extra and one that I've never bought unless part of bringing bags on board

I haven't had additional charges for a long time, they are by far the cheapest,we are lucky to have them in Europe, whether you are flying with them or not the prices are low because of them.

The Sunday Times did an article on this a couple of months back - and Ryanair were indeed by far the most likely to be the cheapest - something like 80% of the routes they checked.