Ryanair has debunked claims that they are charging passengers an additional fee to add a random seat if they wish to receive a digital boarding pass.
The last ten passengers on a Ryanair flight, when they attempt to check in at Stansted: received a message saying: “this is not a mobile boarding pass, you must collect your boarding pass at the airport check-in desk”.
Ryanair said in a written reply to a query from Travel Extra that “there is no charge for a Ryanair digital boarding pass – ever. All Ryanair passengers can pay for a reserved seat if they so wish or if passengers wish to avoid this seat fee, they can select a randomly allocated seat entirely free of charge.”
England’s Mail on Sunday first reported that passengers who refused to pay the fee were instructed to queue at the airport to obtain a printed boarding pass, causing outrage among customers.
They were responding to tweets on X by customers at Stansted who were sent a notice on the app to go to a check in desk to collect their boarding pass. The anomaly is believed to have ben caused by an algorithm requiring the last ten passengers who had not prepaid for seats to collect their boarding passes at a desk rather than have them issued to their smartphones.
Four countries do not accept mobile passes and require passengers to print oout boarding passes, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco and Turkey. Two airports do not accept mobile boarding passes: Kefalonia and Tirana.
