To have not known this about Ryanair?

[eastandwestand]

So, we’ve not flown for around 5 years.
Instead we’ve done ferries, a couple of cruises and U.K. holidays.
Booked our flights with Ryanair and booked 2 bags which could each contain 20kg.
Weighed them the night before. 1 bag was 20kg and 1 bag was 22kg. So 2kg over.
Spoke to a few people who said the person checking the bags usually turns a blind eye with a couple of kg extra weight. In fact I’ve never been charged for excess luggage, even when my bag was 29kg instead of 25kg EasyJet just stuck a “heavy” label on it.
Anyway, got to the airport and it’s self check in.
You weigh your own baggage and before the machine prints you a luggage label you have to pay on the card machine attached to the scales for any KG you are over.
So you can’t physically board a flight until you have paid £11 per kilo for anything over.
I paid obviously, as my case was over, but I never realised this check in system even existed!
Has it been around for long? Or am just not an airport pro these days?

It's Ryanair - they'll nickel and dime you for all the extra fees they can get away with. 🤷 I'm surprised you got away with it before.

What's your question?

You didn't know about self check in or that you didn't know when they said 20kg they meant 20kg?

Yes, I didn’t realise if we didn’t check in online then we’d be charged £50 per person to check in at the airport.
But randomly with our plane tickets we are able to take on 2 bags of cabin luggage each (so 8 in total) one of which can be 10kg.
So I tried to argue that we only had one small handbag to take onboard each, so had 40kg of weight still unused, but apparently this isn’t allowed!

Well my question was both really.
When did they get so strict with the 20kg limit and how long have you had to weigh your own case and pay for excess kg before you get a luggage label.

Flybe do the same - even without the auto thing, it's worth ensuring you aren't over, as they don't always waive the excess anyway.

Could you not have taken things out of the case and put them in a beach bag or something if you had unused cabin baggage allowance. You've had to check in online for years now and they were this strict about weights when I was flying back from uni in the early 2000s

I think all (low cost) airlines have been getting increasingly tough on baggage size and weight over the last few years. I now can't remember the last time I would have chanced it with an oversized/weight bag. Sorry OP - they'll fleece you for all you've got nowadays!

You were not charged £50 to check in though?

Felt a bit uncomfortable opening up the cases in front of all the other passengers to find a beach bag and get stuff out.
The toddler was kicking off and it was just easier to pay the £22 than block the check in queue to deal with bag juggling. It was like narrow barrier queues to get to the scales so we couldn’t turn back to get out of the queue.
I’ll know for next time though!

We fly regularly from Stansted with Ryanair and at Easter was the first time that we had to weigh our own bags and do our own luggage tags etc

Whoever told you Ryanair will let a few kg go is deluded, Ryanair will charge you any which way they can, we only use them as few airlines fly the route we need.

This is the case with many airlines now. I was caught the same way last summer after the conveyor had already whizzed my underweight suitcase away (I had two suitcases—one light and one heavy—but the total weight of both was under the permitted level, which would normally be accepted by a human being).
Welcome to the future.

No I wasn’t charged £50 for check it.
But someone else on the flight was! I didn’t realise that was the cost if you didn’t check in online. A lot has changed in airports in 5 years!

Its been around since they brought in self check-in, so a couple of years. And you can't fool it, when you put the bag on the conveyor to send off your bag, it reads the bar code to make sure the weight matches what you checked in - no sneaking in a few items after you have the label!
Guy in front of me at christmas got stung for this, he put his coat in the bag after he had the label, but the conveyor came up with a warning message as the bag was then heavier than the label.
It does seem to have a tiny bit of discretion, my bag weighed at exactly 20kg when I put it on. Then I put on the lock and it went to 20.1kg - with heavy written beside it!! It didn't charge me though....

I wonder how much it will let you go over? I reckon anything under a kilo over would be free. So 20.9kg you’d be fine as you’re not quite 1kg over.

Gosh - I didn’t know there was such a thing as weigh your own bags and print your own label!

@Aridane thank goodness I’m not the only one!

I saw those machines for the first time 10 years ago, so they've been around for a while

Easijet also have scales to print your luggage labels as we used them this year at Glasgow airport

You were charged for excess baggage, not for checking in at the airport.

EasyJet now do this too, make sure you don’t exceed their limits.

In my experience you can get away with 20.9 kg but if it ticks over to 21, or 22 kg, you take stuff out of the case, or you pay for the extra kilos.

It's all in the T&Cs, which if you're travelling on Ryanair, or the other budgets, especially Flybe, who are being really picky ATM, you really must read unless you want to throw money away for being tripped up. It's how they make their money when they will sell people flights for less than the cost of the applicable taxes.

If you are on a booking with other people, it's the total weight that counts, as long as no bags are above 30/32 kg for H&S reasons. So that might explain how you got away with it with Easyjet. Someone else in your party probably had a much lighter bag.

If you were allowed 2 bags into the cabin, you must have booked priority boarding, so didn't you see all the stuff about what bags you could take.

Did you pay to check in at the airport or not? The check in machines are reasonably new, at some airports they've been around for a while, but are fairly new at other airports. I agree that they are a pain, we usually have to go to the proper counters due to massive soft dive bags anyway.

You can check the weight at any empty check in desk though. I'm paranoid about being over so would have taken the excess out before getting into Ryanair queue.

Easyjet are the same with a self service check in. I fly Ryanair a lot and it's been around a while but I'm not sure how long exactly.

I don’t remember that when we flew with them in April last year, the one and only time, wasn’t impressed. Flew back Norwegian they did weigh our hand luggage we were under though. We usually fly easyjet, find them quite straight forward.

Flybe are not picky , they rarely even weigh the bags.