Ryanair customer forced to fork out £75 fine because overhead case wasn’t ‘fit flush’
A Ryanair passenger was forced to pay a £75 fine at Stansted Airport for a cabin bag deemed potentially oversized.
Catherine Warrilow, a 45-year-old branding consultant from Abingdon in Oxfordshire, said her expandable case “fit flush” into the airline’s measuring cage.
However, Ryanair staff claimed she might need to kneel on it to fit it in the overhead locker.
Warrilow told the BBC that she was “confused and frustrated” by the incident, which occurred as she was travelling to Seville, Spain, on Tuesday.
Warrilow said she had to remove items and add a luggage strap to keep within the airline’s allowance at the gate. Despite fitting her bag into the measuring rack, staff deemed it too big when it tipped forward slightly.
“She said: ‘I’m sorry, I can’t let you on board with this suitcase because I can’t have you having to kneel on it to get it into the overhead locker,'” Warrilow recounted.
The passenger reluctantly paid the £75 gate fee, plus an additional £35 to bring the bag back home, on top of her £170 air fare.
Ryanair defended their decision, saying in a statement: “This passenger purchased a Priority Fare which permits a small personal bag and a 10kg bag.”
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The spokesman continued: “As this passenger’s bag exceeded the dimensions allowed for a 10kg cabin bag, she was correctly required to pay a standard gate baggage fee (£75).”
Warrilow expressed concern about the “added extra culture” in air travel. She noted: “The problem is, it’s very unclear. If I’d contacted Ryanair… to check that my case met the standard, then they would have said yes based on the measurements.”
A 2023 BBC investigation found that Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz Air had halved their free cabin baggage allowance since 2018.
It comes as the airline has issued a warning for passengers travelling from London Gatwick Airport today due to weather conditions. Affected travellers are urged to check the Ryanair app for the latest updates on their flights.
The airline stated: “We regret any inconvenience caused to passengers by these weather conditions, which are outside of Ryanair’s control and affect all airlines operating to/from London Gatwick on Thur Oct 24.”
Ryanair reported flying 19.1 million passengers in September, down from 20.5 million in August 2024. However, the airline has launched new routes from two UK airports this winter.
Birmingham and Manchester will see a total of 11 new routes added to their flight paths later this year. Birmingham Airport will fly to Agadir and Marrakech in Morocco, Paphos in Cyprus and the French capital Paris.