An Austrian court has ruled that Ryanair’s loathed €55 (US $62) airport check-in fee, along with 13 other ancillary charges are illegal in a landmark ruling following a legal challenge by Austria’s Association for Consumer Information (VKI) brought on behalf of the country’s government.
VKI challenged 15 of Ryanair’s ancillary fees, with the Supreme Court ruling that 14 out of those 15 fees were illegal.
The fees that have been ruled to be illegal include a €55 airport check-in fee that is charged when passengers fail to check in online before getting to the airport.
Other illegal fees include a €25 fee for parents or guardians to travel with a so-called ‘lap infant,’ and a €15 fee to issue a paper boarding pass at the airport (a fee that the airline no longer charges).
In addition, the court also ruled that charging parents or guardians a fee to sit with their children aged between 2 and 11 is also illegal, although Ryanair changed this policy last week in response to an investigation by British competition regulators.
The airline said it would “reluctantly” change its family seating policy before the investigation was even complete, but slammed regulators for stifling competitiveness and forcing Ryanair “to adopt the less transparent and less consumer-friendly family seating policy applied by most other airlines.”
Ryanair said it didn’t directly charge a fee for families to sit together, but it did require one adult to reserve a seat, enabling up to four children to sit with their parent or guardian for free.
The policy will now allow parents to sit together for free, but Ryanair warned that if families aren’t willing to pay for seat assignments for everyone in the booking, they are likely to be positioned in less sought-after seats towards the back of the plane.
Ryanair changed its policy on issuing paper boarding passes last November when Portuguese regulators warned the airline that it could be breaking the law. Ryanair wants 100% of passengers to use mobile boarding passes, but agreed to issue paper boarding passes at the airport for free as long as passengers had checked in online beforehand.
Commenting on the latest ruling, Dr. Petra Leupold, Head of Intervention at the VKI, said: “The judgment is a strong sign of price transparency and fair competition. The OGH [Austria’s Supreme Court] clarifies that additional fees must be made transparent and that consumers must not be disadvantaged.”
“Affected consumers who have paid fees on the basis of these or similar clauses can reclaim them,” Leupold added.
The OGH is yet to publish its full ruling.
For now, the ruling will only apply to Austrian passengers, but it is an important piece of case law that could shape the outcome of similar lawsuits in other European countries. Ryanair has yet to respond to the ruling.
