> 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.
Why does it matter whether the boarding pass barcode is scanned from a printed paper vs a phone screen?
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.
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.
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).
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.
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?
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 would be a better offering than this.
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 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.
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.
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.
You'll no longer be able to print a boarding pass but they will.
Nabbing people at airports is a common strategy for this reason.
Putting the boarding pass on a phone doesn’t make it easier for the government to know that you’re flying.
You vill download ze app and you vill accept the TOS.
*Downvote me all you want here's the proof:* https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/av-doc-technic...
And let me guess - then they'll use Play Integrity API so that you cannot fly if you're not using Google certified device with preinstalled privileged spyware (or lease an Apple device you don't own)?
Nearly 80% of 207M passengers already adopted it means 41M passengers have not.
I apologize in advance for being overly dramatic. I just flew with a digital boarding pass and my phone nearly died while waiting at the outlet-less gate. I'm sure I could have gotten assistance, but it was stressful.
So what.
- Provide a discount/credit for using electronic digital boarding pass (PDF file, no apps). If someone is not able to use the PDF etc (either their own printout or on their phone) and require a paper pass at the airport for any reason, their discount/credit goes away. Simple.
Scanning a QR code from a screen is faster than from a piece of paper? How does that work?
> smarter
A smart person would carry both a digital and paper copy of their travel documents.
> greener
Ah, yes, all it takes to make flying "green" is eliminating a single sheet of A4 paper per passenger.
That's 80% filled with ads...
See: https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/lp/explore/digital-boarding-pa...
Want to make it a little bit more fancy? Apple Wallet and Google Wallet both support a more fancy setup.
Technologically speaking banning the other things is only driven by hoping that people will forget something and they can charge extra.
What's next? They 'accidentally' kill the app during boarding. And they can up charge you.
Notice the euphemism of calling this "going digital". Everybody is already digital, using a pdf reader on their phone at the terminal, despite some companies discouraging this practice. That's not digital enough, is it?
https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/lp/explore/digital-boarding-pa...
> But what if, and what if, and what if?
> If you have already checked-in online and your smartphone or tablet dies / is lost, you will receive a free of charge boarding pass at the airport.
> 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.
I don't think this policy will hold up in the face of Ryanair ticket resellers though, since it seems to be pretty clearly designed to make their life harder once again, but free replacement printing would offer them a way out.
That flying - an entirely unsustainable mode of transport - is now widely viewed as a commoditized consumer good is already a form of ethical collapse IMO. Now this. We need regulation. But for that, people need choose it, to vote for it.
ivanjermakov•1h ago
lsxr•1h ago
shrx•1h ago
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.
Freak_NL•1h ago
https://www.ryanair.com/gb/en/lp/explore/digital-boarding-pa...
jonplackett•1h ago
everdrive•1h ago
ranger_danger•1h ago
ryandrake•1h ago
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.