Reminder to Passengers Ahead of Move to 100% Digital Boarding Passes
Postedabout 2 months agoActiveabout 2 months ago
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Digital Boarding Passes
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Ryanair is moving to 100% digital boarding passes, requiring passengers to use their mobile app, sparking controversy and concerns about accessibility and customer rights.
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https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/lp/explore/digital-boarding-pa...
Doesn't look like it will be possible. That's a deal breaker for me, I don't need another app spying on me on my phone.
Selling my location, list of the installed apps, cookies, whatever they can extract.
That's for starters.
But most importantly why the hell should I be forced to use phone app if having a printed pass was good enough?
I need to reverse your surprising question into: should I be expected to install, update, maintain and use apps of ALL the service providers I use?
Separate app for train provider A, another for train provider B, another for bus provider C.
No paper tickets.
An app to purchase groceries, another app to pay for the parking, another app to buy a coffee, another app to buy a newspaper in the kiosk. And app to check in the hotel, an app to order food in the restaurant, an app to call the tax return website (not the phone, an app).
Can you see now how absurd is to normalise it?
If a company is going to make something a requirement like this, they need to also invest in the effort to support everyone's device, and not block people with old, icky phones.
> Data Linked to You - Location, Contact Info, Identifiers, Usage Data, Other Data
I'm all for calling out bad privacy practice, like when a Weather app says it links your contact info. But an airline app inherently does this.
Did you know that Ryanair knows your name when you fly! They even know what city you're flying from.
> your main email address
Right, it doesn't get my main email at the moment, true, turns out an app needs `android.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS` to do that. I do, however, expect them to do that later -- looking at their declared permissions, it's hard to assume a good will:
- `BLUETOOTH_SCAN`, `ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION`, `ACCESS_ADSERVICES_AD_ID` -- all together. Yes, I see they use `android.ext.adservices`
`READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE`? `WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE`? What for? Do they even offer saving a PDF into a Downloads folder? I think they can do it without asking for the separate permission.
> and they can only identify apps from a fixed list
While it's true they would require `QUERY_ALL_PACKAGES` to openly get a _complete_ list, see this: https://www.medianama.com/2025/04/223-android-apps-data-brea...
And then check their admitted privacy practices/policy from their Google Play listing (com.ryanair.cheapflights)
Notice, the first section is `DATA SHARED`, not just collected. It's shared with the undisclosed third parties (we know from the privacy policy[1], though, that at the very least it includes all the social networks
>> App Activity: installed apps >> Purposes: Analytics, Personalisation
>> Also: Email address, financial information, physical address, user payment info, phone info.
`DATA COLLECTED`:
>> Photos, User ids (plural, it's not just email used to login), Installed apps once again, Files and docs (?!)
Generally;
I have a very little trust for a vendor that is known for the deceptive practices and which lies from the outset about the reasons to force all passengers into using their app.
If they lie in such a fundamental question, it should be assumed they're using deceptions and trickery.
Like with disgraced Meta caught red-handed on deception and trickery: https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/06/meta-and-yandex-are...
[1] https://www.ryanair.com/ie/en/lp/privacy-policy
Of course, Google is the ad company, this is the reason.
Thankfully I could contain and strangle it in its dedicated profile with the better AOSP variant. Works for the time being.
Why does it matter whether the boarding pass barcode is scanned from a printed paper vs a phone screen?
Tracking where your passengers go on vacation would be useful data for them. Sheesh you could even track flights: "User was online at London Heathrow until 11:45, and was then offline, and came back online again in Madrid at 14:30, the corresponding flight at those times was EasyJet 78".
Yeah, I can’t recall well enough to agree with you, can’t remember enough to dispute it, either. That was a long time ago. :-)
I think it's all quite hazy, because if you had no checked bags and it was a small airport, but you might just go to the gate and try to get your boarding pass there. That and 24 years have passed. :D
[1] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-09-11-fi-42564-...
[2] https://www.chicagotribune.com/1996/12/29/no-match-no-flight...
This was the case being referenced: https://abc7.com/post/wicliff-yves-fleurizard-stowaway-secur...
I reckon you'll be able to print out a screenshot of the app and use it to check your bags in and get through security. They won't hold a flight up with checked bags at the gate - will cost them too much money.
In smaller airports (the ones Ryanair used to operate from) it's also sometimes their own barcode scanners before the gates that are dedicated to them.
I believe they will be able to enforce this in many places.
It would also be curious to see who pays for removal of persons once they are airside - eg in the case the flyer with nothing to check in who goes past airport security, but before RyanAir staff meet them at the gate.
They can't collect your data from a printed sheet.
And is it true it won't allow screenshotting?
And, if their server flaky, does that mean all boarding will stop? If the agents can check people in manually, it seems like the small fraction of people using a paper boarding pass can't be adding much extra cost. If they are saving cost by removing that flow, presumably they are giving up redundancy. Given the quality of airline software, I predict they will see a mass outage within a year.
I've once been in that situation with Ryanair: I booked through some reseller, not knowing that they'd make all bookings using some omnibus Ryanair account they would not share the password for (so mobile app use was out), and only emailed me the boarding pass PDF. But I didn't have a printer...
The airport business center did have one, with a moderate 50 cent per page fee – except if that page contains a boarding pass, in which case it was 8 Euro.
Isn't barcode on the PDF good enough anyway, to be scanned by a machine (either biological or electronic)? Obviously it's Scamair, so they could've imposed dumb rules like "we need the physical paper"
If the server is flaky then boarding will be delayed for everyone and it'll be a whole crapshow but if their overall cost is lower than it would have been with printed boarding passes, fine.
If this really is a total refusal to do even that, I'd be slightly surprised, but I'm sure their business developers have done the analysis and it makes some sense to them.
Things were indeed pretty chaotic. I can't remember if they did print paper boarding passes in the end.
> it seems like the small fraction of people using a paper boarding pass can't be adding much extra cost
You're looking at this from the wrong angle: This is Ryanair. Actual cost does not matter, only the opportunity to extract more revenue. Presumably app users are that much more valuable to Ryanair (as they can be upsold various things there, and potentially because it also acts as a filter for a generally less profitable customer segment).
That said I never had problems boarding with a PDF displayed on the phone screen. Unfortunate that they're going away.
Now they have a channel where they can let you know about deals, etc. I'm sure they've modeled exactly how much this is worth, and I'd be willing to bet it's a lot.
This might be the case here as well.
You wanna fly? Allow notifications!
What a cold comfort to a grandma struggling to use an upsell-focused dark patterns app when the wifi is poor at some airport to get home to see her grandkids stuck at some airport to say, "Well, this maximized shareholder revenue."
I feel like I'm in the last stages of 'anything goes' capitalism. The ridiculousness here has hit such levels, especially in the USA, that there must be pushback sooner than later. I dunno how the Irish feel about this considering this is their airline (HQ at least), or their experiences, but on this side of the pond, this has all has reached new levels of absurdity that would make even Kafka blush.
That’s your answer. People vote with their wallet.
For $30 I could buy an entire discount printer and print one myself.
But it has always been the Ryanair brand to ask the consumer "how much bullshit are you willing to put up with to save a buck?"
Doesn't seem like it'll help in this case, seems Ryanair is forcing the usage to be via their app instead of anything else.
But this is Ryanair so it's probably going to do some stupid QR thing that will be super touchy and be a struggle to work on at least half of the devices. Bonus points if the app refuses to start if it can't make a live internet connection back to some cursed cloud service so the people waiting in line who accidentally let their phone go to sleep find they can't get it to show the ticket in the dead zone at the gate.
I wish they'd just let me download a pkpass file, but what can you do.
AFAIK that only works for NFC passes? For passes that are just qr/bar codes I can't imagine how that'd work if the battery is actually dead. The "use bus passes when battery is dead" feature only works because there's dedicated low power circuitry to power the NFC hardware, which obviously doesn't exist for the display.
Yup, based on this announcement, and previous policy calls they've made, that person won't be able to fly. End of. They lose their seat, kthxbye!
Ryanair has made its way in the budget market (arguably inventing the budget market to some extent), by employing money-making practices of dubious need from charging people to use toilets on-board, to flying with so little fuel that they regularly call fuel emergencies on approach.
Their bet - that the market seems to support - is that people will put up with almost anything if it means a cheaper ticket.
They're even expecting to get clearance from authorities to get rid of proper seating and move to "standing seats" so they can get more people onboard, their theory being you'll stand for 3 hours on a plane if it means your ticket is x% cheaper.
I refuse to fly with them on principle - they're a terrible airline owned by a terrible person, run in a terrible way. It's only a matter of time before people realise just how dangerous they are as an operation. I hope it's just a data security issue they run into and people run away from the app scared, and not the increasingly inevitable hull loss that many have been predicting for years.
This is just another reason not to fly with them, for me.
If you're talking about the recent incident, I thought that was because they tried landing several times at different airports? Is there any evidence that they routinely fly with less fuel buffer than other airlines?
I hate just about everything I know about Ryanair but if they're not below required limits, then I'd say they're not the problem and the point is moot.
strawman
Seems they're still at it, hence the recent incident.
[0] https://www.eurocockpit.eu/news/fuelling-debate-safety-vs-pr... [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23686678
AFAIK this has never happened.
This is a PR stunt that is regularly used (like the idea of standing-room-only tickets) to generate a new round of press for the company and highlight how cost-efficient and ruthless they are, which aligns with their branding and keeps the story alive.
I understand the sentiment but as sibling comment points out, you're very light in the way of stating facts to back up these claims.
May I point out that your counter-argument to "this is a PR stunt" is "no no, the CEO himself floated this idea publicly and got interviewed in the press to talk about it".
That sounds pretty illegal if they aren't making accommodations for disabilities.
Hence why you're better off going with something else. In fact, you're almost always better off going with something else. I'm not a giant, but at 6'4" (1.93 meters) I've found that I absolutely detest most shared transit. Either my legs are too long or shoulders too broad, and even non-budget airlines can be unpleasant to fly in.
It's crazy to see real life proof that it doesn't have to be this way.
Or you drop your phone. Or it gets stolen. Or for whatever reason the software fails. Electronic devices are so flimsy, even if you want to use an app it's worth having paper as a backup option. It's the same reason why I always carry cash and a card on me (and I pay in cash as much as possible anyway).
Not only does the phone scan not work well, but people often aren't prepared and so the boarding line stalls while people unlock their phone and retrieve the e-ticket.
Not true. Recently I printed a hardcopy of my boarding pass at the airline's kiosk, then found it wouldn't scan at security. Luckily I was able to pull up the barcode on my phone.
> If passengers don’t have a smartphone or tablet, as long as they have already checked-in online before arriving at the airport, they will receive a free of charge boarding pass at the airport.
https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/lp/explore/digital-boarding-pa...
(Not sure how easy that will be or if they actually verify that you don't own a smartphone, etc.)
https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/lp/explore/digital-boarding-pa...
> as long as they have already checked-in online before arriving at the airport, they will receive a free of charge boarding pass at the airport.
The press release says absolutely nothing of the sort.
I always print boarding passes, traveled enough to see tons of people struggling with their phones, with their pdf viewers or airline apps, to block everybody else to know what good manners and empathy to others (or simply less stressful travel) are. I wish I could save that atto fraction of a planet by not printing but it can't be like that with current ways of things.
Luckily ryanair is mostly absent from our airport (Geneva), its Easyjet all the way, way more than even Swiss airlines which chickened out on numerous levels on every swiss airport apart from Zurich. They are low cost with their share of issues but man, compared to ryanair they are absolute top versus rotten vomit, to keep things polite but precise.
https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/lp/explore/digital-boarding-pa...
Re: the "their server is flaky" (I believe you mean at the gate) case, I think any airline might be then struggling with boarding passengers, whether they have paper boarding cards or not.
Rest assured, Ryanair knows their passengers very well. They know that every single one of their passengers knows how to babysit a smartphone so the battery doesn't die on their flight. Let's be honest, sudden unexpected incontinence is more likely than a Ryanair passenger fluffing up their pocket device for doom-scrolling.
Source: https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/lp/explore/digital-boarding-pa...
What happens if your phone is stolen, broken, discharged? Finally, I fly several times a month with different companies, does that mean I should have a circus of apps on my phone?
I hope someone will regulate this matter.
Pay Ryanair 50 bucks for a printed boarding pass at the counter.
From my perspective, even a paid toilet (1) would be a better offering than this.
1. https://abcnews.go.com/Travel/Green/paying-pee-airlines-crit...
I have no problem with enabling smartphone-based payments and passes for people who like them, but companies should not be allowed to block out (or charge extra to) others who prefer not to tether themselves to a phone.
I'm not keen on mobile apps in general, but I don't see a need for regulation here. Companies want customers. It's not in their interest to needlessly harass people with pointless technology requirements that drive people to competitors. No company has ever required "the newest smartphone" for everyday tasks.
I don't support a general right to refuse adoption of any and all new technologies. What I do support is a mandate to use open technologies wherever possible for infrastructure that no one can reasonably avoid. What we can't allow is that people who lose some oligopolist account can no longer live a normal life.
Indeed, and that's why perhaps some internal marketing analytics show that people with installed apps often buy tickets from the same airline company. Then, we discover how airline companies decide to push their mobile phone application adoption through mandatory tickets.
Such decisions are always about sales, and never about security or customer care.
But regulations need to be kept up-to-date and they need to be consistently enforced. That's a lot of work. Having too many of them only helps lawyers and people who can afford them.
Some random company requiring a smartphone for access to some service doesn't strike me as exclusionary enough to justify burdening the system with more regulation.
Signal did this when my wife's Macbook could no longer be updated to the latest Apple OS version. Signal just stopped working for her completely on her laptop. She couldn't install the latest version of Signal due to her not being on the latest OS, and Signal won't allow the old version to work once it's outdated. We had to buy her a whole new laptop (not Apple this time) to get her back on Signal (something she relies on).
Yes, I know about the hacky workarounds to get the latest OS working on a Macbook, but fuck that noise.
Luckily, email is always with me, despite OS version and platform.
I can maybe understand sunsetting support if the OS made a huge backwards-incompatible step change, but macOS and iOS updates don't tend to be that kind. The differences (for developers) between Catalina and Mojave are minuscule. Retaining support for Mojave should be close to zero effort on the part of the developer. There should be no difference in maintenance burden between building an application that runs on Mojave and Catalina, and building an application that runs only on Catalina+.
I agree with this. (The same would apply to restaurant menus.)
(In the case of restaurant menus, they could post a single copy near the entrance or somewhere that it can be seen by everyone in case they do not want to make multiple copies (and do not want to waste paper). E-paper displays might be used in case they sometimes change.)
I fully agree that having the latest version of a phone/OS should not be treated as a requirement for access to services, especially essential ones.
Almost all short haul airlines in Europe more-or-less resemble the Ryanair model now
From a personal computer there are zero requirements, I don't need to have a special OS, or application, or anything. On the mobile application side, I must have one of two authorized app stores, an account there, and perhaps a specific OS version. This is something that I find unfair in this business practice.
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