‘You can’t take that on the plane for free!’ How Ryanair turned its staff into bounty hunters

## Summary
Photograph: Lewis Oliver/Alamy ‘You can’t take that on the plane for free!’ How Ryanair turned its staff into bounty hunters Ground staff earn €2.50 for every piece of oversized luggage that they intercept. Meanwhile, passengers who are caught out pay a much bigger penalty Name: Oversized cabin bags. Quite well, according to CEO Michael O’Leary, especially since it began paying airport ground staff a bounty of €2.50 (£2.20) for every oversized bag apprehended. Don’t worry – you can buy a Ryanair-compliant free cabin bag for £40 or £50.

## Article Content
You could end up paying more for your bag than for your seat.
Photograph: Lewis Oliver/Alamy
View image in fullscreen
You could end up paying more for your bag than for your seat.
Photograph: Lewis Oliver/Alamy
‘You can’t take that on the plane for free!’ How Ryanair turned its staff into bounty hunters
Ground staff earn €2.50 for every piece of oversized luggage that they intercept. Meanwhile, passengers who are caught out pay a much bigger penalty
Name:
Oversized cabin bags.
Age:
Venerable – but prior to the advent of airline cabins, they were simply known as “bags”.
Appearance:
For our purposes, anything larger than 40cm by 30cm by 20cm.
How am I supposed to know if my bag is bigger than that?
Shove it in that cage by the gate desk at the airport – if it doesn’t fit, you must submit.
Submit to what?
Paying up to a £75 levy.
It does fit, except for the wheels. Surely the wheels don’t count?
The wheels count.
But it’s also sort of tapered at the top, which means the overall volume will be less than …
I don’t make the rules, I’m afraid.
Who does?
Ryanair does.
Ryan
air – I might have known.
The airline has been conducting a tireless crackdown on passengers who try to take bags larger than the stated maximum dimensions on to its aircraft for free.
How’s that going
?
Quite well, according to CEO Michael O’Leary, especially since it began paying airport ground staff a bounty of €2.50 (£2.20) for every oversized bag apprehended.
Doesn’t that
encourage them to enforce the most draconian interpretation of the restrictions
?
It certainly does. As a result, the number of passengers with oversized bags has gone way down.
But isn’t it bad publicity?
O’Leary would very much
like you to know he doesn’t care
. “I make absolutely no apology for it whatsoever,” he said when he decided to raise the bounty by a euro last year.
How can one truly define what is meant by “oversized”?
That is a problem – other airlines have their own rules. EasyJet, for example, allows one free bag of a size up to 45cm by 36cm by 20cm.
Are Ryan
air’s ungenerous dimensions
designed to catch people out?
Actually, they’re more generous than
the EU’s minimum guaranteed free bag size
introduced last summer: 40cm by 30cm by 15cm. In response, Ryanair increased its permitted volume by 20%, making it 33% greater than the EU minimum.
But my carry-on bag is still
too big.
Don’t worry – you can buy a Ryanair-compliant free cabin bag for £40 or £50.
Then it’s not really free any more, is it?
Or you can just pay to have a larger bag in the cabin – from £12 to £36, depending on the route.
Thirty-six pounds is more than I paid for my seat!
Again, I don’t make the rules.
I suppose we’ll have other things to worry about
when all the jet fuel runs out
this summer.
That’s the spirit – embrace the bigger picture.
Do say:
“If we want to challenge the restrictive and often capricious rules surrounding cabin baggage, further industry regulation is necessary.”
Don’t say:
“40 by 30 by 20? My dog is never gonna fit in that.”
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## Expert Analysis

### Merits
N/A

### Areas for Consideration
- That is a problem – other airlines have their own rules.
- Do say: “If we want to challenge the restrictive and often capricious rules surrounding cabin baggage, further industry regulation is necessary.” Don’t say: “40 by 30 by 20?

### Implications
- You could end up paying more for your bag than for your seat.
- Photograph: Lewis Oliver/Alamy View image in fullscreen You could end up paying more for your bag than for your seat.
- But it’s also sort of tapered at the top, which means the overall volume will be less than … I don’t make the rules, I’m afraid.
- Ryan air – I might have known.

### Expert Commentary
This article covers bag, free, ryanair topics. Areas of concern are also raised. Readability: Flesch-Kincaid grade 0.0. Word count: 563.