Ryanair on Wednesday announced that it is increasing checked-in baggage and airport check-in fees with immediate effect for all new bookings as part of "its continued drive to encourage passengers to travel without checked in bags and avail of Ryanair’s free of charge online check in."

For all bookings made from Wednesday, Ryanair’s checked in baggage fee will increase from €6 to €9 per bag and the airport check-in fee will increase from €3 to €4. Ryanair said it hopes that these increases will encourage more passengers to avoid these charges by travelling with its "generous hand luggage allowance (10kg) and checking in free of charge on-line", which also has the benefit of free priority boarding.

A rise of 50%?

Ryanair sharply criticises high airport charge increases and it even charges a €6 credit card fee for bookings made from outside a select group of countries and also an EU processing fee.

Speaking on Wednesday, Ryanair’s Head of Communications Peter Sherrard said:

"Ryanair remains determined to encourage more and more passengers to travel with carry on luggage only, which allows them to use our free of charge web check-in, skip airport queues and enjoy our priority boarding service free of charge.

"We have already seen huge increases in the numbers of passengers using Ryanair’s internet check-in since we made it free of charge last September. These increased charges will incentivise even more passengers to use our free web check-in service allowing us to cut airport and handling costs and further reduce our guaranteed lowest fares as we grow from 50 million to 60 million passengers in the coming year.

"These will not be the last increases in Ryanair’s checked in baggage or airport check in fees, which will continue to increase over time until we reach our objective of persuading at least 50% of all Ryanair passengers to travel with hand luggage only, use our free web check-in service and avoid airport check-in queues. This will in turn allow us to reduce the number of airport check-in desks that we rent and the handling staff we employ so that we can continue to pass on these handling savings in the form of Europe’s guaranteed lowest fares"