Will free suitcases included in the ticket price return? Ryanair boss: It’s impossible

Marzena Tarkowska, “Directly”: The European Parliament proposes amending the Act on Air Passenger Rights. The overwhelming majority of parliamentarians are in favor of allowing passengers to take cabin suitcases on board in the price of the ticket. When can the change come into force?

Michael O’Leary, CEO of Ryanair: He won’t come in, it’s impossible. The European Parliament is coming up with all sorts of crazy ideas. There is no room for two free pieces of hand luggage per passenger on the plane. We therefore do not believe that this change will enter into force and the Commission should block it. We have Putin and the war in Ukraine, Trump in the White House, Europe must be competitive. All baggage regulations will only result in more flights being delayed and increasing the cost and price of airline tickets for consumers. If the European Parliament is serious about doing something for them, it should fix the air traffic control system throughout Europe and abolish the EU ETS, i.e. the environmental tax on air travel.

Is this surcharge such a big burden?

There is a crazy system in Europe where we pay about 8 euros in environmental tax per passenger. But airlines from America, Asia or the Persian Gulf that take off and land within Europe are exempt from fees under the ETS. So we exempted everyone from outside Europe, but we tax Europeans with huge taxes. And, as usual, the morons in the European Parliament don’t seem to care or notice. They deal in nonsense like “people want to take two pieces of luggage on board for free.”

Back to the items on board. Many airlines, e.g. Lufthansa, have recently introduced bans on the use of power banks during flights due to the risk of overheating and fire. Have your airlines taken this into account as well?

Not at all, we fly very short routes, flights last 1.5-2 hours. How to properly enforce such a ban? We won’t start looking into women’s handbags. “You don’t put a power bank in there”? This is crazy.

You mentioned a sudden jump number of bookings to European countries for Easter, at a time when travel to the Middle East is impossible. On Monday, there was a drone attack on a British base in Cyprus. Could this result in less interest in this field?

The airspace in Cyprus is open. We believe that the Americans, Israelis and others, including the British, are ensuring that the airspace over Cyprus is clean and safe, but we must monitor the situation on an ongoing basis.

You have announced record schedules for the summer season in Warsaw, i.e. from March. But in the spring we will say goodbye to several routes. The Polish community in Ireland was disappointed with the cancellation of connections from Cork to Gdańsk and Poznań. Passengers feel sorry for them.

We also regret it, but a balance must be maintained. This year we are growing very strongly in Poland. We operated flights from Cork to Poland throughout the winter and there was little demand for them. Additionally, Cork to Dublin is 2 hours by car and about an hour and a half by train. This is not a big challenge for passengers, and there are many flights between Dublin and Poland on offer. We regret closing this route, but there are many other options and services.