Spain issues fine to budget airlines including Ryanair

[Tetchytyke]

In my experience they tend to target "wheelie bags". I've never seen any rucksacks targeted particularly if they are being worn at the time.

I’ve had them make me put my rucksack- which is clearly small enough- into the sizer at both Ronaldsway and Liverpool.

Wow, ok... that's surprising. I wonder if they are third-party contractors doing exactly as they are told, or perhaps the staff at Bristol and abroad are and don't care?

AFAIK all EasyJet ground staff are third party contractors. I imagine different staff have different attitudes to how closely they follow the rules but it’s clearly coming from the airline. Ronaldsway only has one ground agent and relatively few staff; the exact same people despatching easyJet flights also do Loganair. The difference is night and day.

I also think it may be a more recent edict from the airline. They’ve been noticeably more anal about it in the last six months or so.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I believe UK railways have a few things to learn from the budget airlines. They could advertise "click-bait" low fares, let's say £10 from London to Manchester for one train on a Tuesday in February. Then they could legitimately promote "Manchester from £10" while failing to mention that on the day you might want to travel it'll probably be a lot more and the return journey could be vastly more than that. You want a seat? Reservations are from £20 extra. And you've got luggage? £40 per case please! So after being enticed by the "from £10" headline fare you end-up paying an awful lot more than that. And as for delay-repay: why not a premium supplement if your train arrives on time?!

I know there's some joking in there, but that's what Lumo is meant to be, but it (like many FirstGroup things) implements the model curiously badly, e.g. you can't book a larger bag (which could be offered in limited numbers and assigned to a specific ex-cycle area), you just have to randomly hope they will accept it and pay a fee if asked.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

I know there's some joking in there, but that's what Lumo is meant to be, but it (like many FirstGroup things) implements the model curiously badly, e.g. you can't book a larger bag (which could be offered in limited numbers and assigned to a specific ex-cycle area), you just have to randomly hope they will accept it and pay a fee if asked.

Whilst in Spain I travelled between Madrid and Barcelona by SNCF's Ouigo - RENFE was fully booked because of the All Saints holiday weekend. It notionally has airline style luggage restrictions, but there was no check and folk were cheerfully taking huge quantities of it. It all became rather fraught in the limited capacity of a very full TGV 'Duplex' with those useless overhead racks.

 

[Cloud Strife]

I also think it may be a more recent edict from the airline. They’ve been noticeably more anal about it in the last six months or so.

I believe that it is, as easyJet are looking for revenue in light of fighting off the bid from Wizzair. It's likely also down to the fact that Ryanair getting hard on bags has helped them speed up boarding times, and perhaps the ground service companies have finally realised that Ryanair's in-house ground service could become a threat to them in coming years, so they need to be more in line with airline needs.

 

[renegademaster]

Then they could legitimately promote "Manchester from £10" while failing to mention that on the day you might want to travel it'll probably be a lot more

Eurostar have been told off for that before and had their ads taken down