Quote :

Low-fare airline Ryanair today brought forward its already-announced plan to scrap airport check-in desks from the end of the year to October 1st.

The budget airline also said that from May 1st all new bookings would have to be made on the internet.

In order to dissuade passengers from using airport check-in desks, the fee for airport check-in will double to £20/€20 per person/per flight at the time of booking.

http://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/national-news/ryanair-brings-forward-plan-to-scrap-checkin-desks-1668057.html

Apparently 75% of their customers already use the web check-in service.

They have already scrapped the check in at Stansted.

johnfás wrote:

They have already scrapped the check in at Stansted.

Dublin would be next by that token. We and Stansted are their main airports. You would imagine they would start introducing it here before bringing it to more far-flung provinces of the Ryanair empire.

Robots in the future? My driving instructor told me that there wasn';t much point in learning to drive because in ten years cars will drive themselves....

Anyway, its really common here for domestic flights. Its normal to go to a desk to check in and be redirected to a machine. Older people have a bit of trouble but one person is always on standby to help. One person can standby to assist on a largeish number of machines and once everybody has used them once they rarely need any assistance so I guess its something that can be phased out in time.

To be honest I like them and don't have a problem with it.

I dont either. The queue for checking in and filling stuff out by hand in triplicate used to drive me nuts.

It is dead handy so I don't have a problem with it either. Generally I travel hand baggage only anyway so I'm checked in online and just zip through the airport. However, when I'm taking baggage it tends to be with Aer Lingus (or at least starting with Aer Lingus) and I use their self service machines which are dead handy and simple to use, speeding up the whole process.

Only issue is to make sure the backup is in place. A couple of years ago I was going to Nairobi via London. The whole computer system crashed at Dublin the night before and the check in staff at the airport had to resort to manual checking in - clearly a very onerous process. We were OK, owing to the skill of the staff, but it could have been an absolute disaster. Essentially they managed to check our bags right the way through but still required us to present at the check in desk at Heathrow, which was a nightmare because our connection was short enough already without having to make it to the check in desk 50 mins before depature.

Anyway, enough waffle, the point is, if they don't have the backup in place so that you can revert to wholescale manual checkin in the event of an unforeseen event (such as a computer crash) they will cause a catastrophe which in the longrun does far more damage to the Irish tourism industry than Ryanair charging to use the loo.