Ryanair tries forcing app downloads by eliminating paper boarding passes

Should not be allowed. Lots of elderly people use Ryanair and they're often not great with apps. O'Leary calling them stupid is no addition.

I use Ryanair and the app is decent but it should not be mandatory to fly

United Airlines has been doing some similar, it takes a lot of effort to get a paper boarding pass or do anything via the web.

To be honest, I don’t think you’ll need to use the app. I get my passes via email and add them to Apple Wallet.

In some airports, printing the pass is actually free, they have a dedicated vending machine just for this.

They are not saying that you can not print the pass yourself, I suspect this move will save a lot of time and money which, ultimately, is a good thing for everyone.

They want to charge a check-in fee if you don’t do it online, I would not be surprised if they have a lot of people wasting time doing it in-person instead of doing it online. This could speed customer who actually have luggage.

What am I missing?

maybe this is a case of "fire your customers"

You end up with a bunch of compliant customers, sticky relationships and a data mining revenue stream.

next step is to fire customer service and replace with ai chatbots.

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45877027

I didn't actually need another reason to not use Ryanair, but thanks anyway.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45877027

While I never fly on Ryan, the question here would be whether, as the article suggests but isn't completely clear, digital boarding passes are actually app-only, or whether, like most airlines, you can get an image boarding pass from the website or by email that is meant to be displayed on a phone.

App-only would be dubious.