“We’re not so good on smartphones,” said Beryl. I met the lady from East Anglia and her husband, Mick, on Wednesday morning at Stansted airport. I was assessing the effects of Ryanair’s latest cunning plan: scrapping paper boarding passes. It is fair to say that Beryl and Mick were not the youngest passengers I talked to, but they were certainly the most interesting.
After 16 years of dutifully checking in online and printing out boarding passes so Ryanair didn’t have to, things have changed. As from dawn on 12 November, print-at-home boarding passes are no longer acceptable.
There are now two ways of getting on board a flight belonging to Europe’s biggest budget airline: show a digital boarding pass on the Ryanair app, or ask the carrier’s customer services team at the airport to print one out for you. As long as you have checked in online, the latter option is free – and it works. I asked for one for my flight from Stansted to Baden-Baden in Germany, and it was printed out without fuss.
By 1pm on Wednesday, Ryanair was reporting 98 per cent of passengers had presented digital boarding passes. I talked to a fair number of them, many of whom could not see what the fuss was about; the idea of using actual paper seemed as antiquated as a handwritten airline ticket (ask an elderly relative …)
But I wanted to meet the exceptions – representatives of the 2 per cent of “refuseniks”, or rather passengers who are not comfortable with using apps, whether from Ryanair or anyone else.
“We’re old-fashioned,” said Mick. “We just like going to the desk and getting your boarding pass. We’re not great with technology.”
Yet they are successfully navigating their way around the aviation world in 2025.
“Jo at Hays Travel in Norwich does everything for us. She checks us in online and prints out our boarding passes, and gives us everything we need. She’ll say, ‘Just make sure you don’t lose that, and it’ll all be fine’.”
I presumed the valuable service provided by Jo at Hays Travel could be scuppered by the new Ryanair rule. The airline would reject her meticulously printed boarding passes. Yet she has already come up a solution. Mick just needs to remember his phone.
“I pop in the shop to see her – she’ll do it all for me.”
Using the Ryanair app on Mick’s phone, Jo checks the couple in online. All Mick need do at the airport is open the app, tap “Boarding Passes” and speed through security and the duty-free maze to the gate.
“She’s just brilliant,” Mick says.
Many people have said that Ryanair’s move will disenfranchise older travellers who are not entirely well versed in the strange ways of the modern world. Yet it is heartening that Beryl and Mick, with a little help from their friend Jo at Hays Travel, have an effective workaround.
Ryanair claims it will save around £100k per day with the new policy and that fares will fall as a result.
Flying on Ryanair is not compulsory, and anyone who does not like the new policy is welcome to buy tickets on a rival airline. Competition has never been so intense from the UK: with Jet2 setting up at Gatwick next summer, travellers from the Sussex airport to Alicante who prefer not to use Ryanair have yet another option besides the incumbents, British Airways, easyJet and Vueling.
Could other airlines follow the same path? “I think they probably will do it,” said Mick. “Whether they should or not, I don’t know.” But Beryl and Mick will be ready.
Read more Plane and Train Talk from Simon Calder
