Ryanair wins boarding card appeal

Ryanair has won its appeal against a Spanish ruling made in January which found that its fees for reissuing boarding passes were illegal.

In January, Judge Barbara Maria Cordoba of the Barcelona commercial court said airlines, and not passengers, were obliged to issue boarding cards.

She took the decision in a case brought by Dan Miro, a lawyer who objected to being charged €40 after he failed to print his boarding card before a flight.

“The normal practice over the years has been that the obligation to issue the boarding card has always fallen on the carrier,” she ruled at the time. “I declare unfair and therefore void the contractual clause in which Ryanair obliges the passenger to be the one who brings the printed boarding pass to travel or face a penalty of €40.”

Ryanair launched an appeal in the Barcelona Appeal Court, which it won today.

It based its appeal on the fact that its passengers agreed at the time of booking that they would check-in online and print-off their own boarding cards at least four hours prior to the scheduled departure of their flight.

It claimed that if a passenger arrived at an airport without their boarding card, then they were in breach of that agreement and not entitled to fly. It insisted it was not open to the Barcelona court to redraft or alter the reasonable contractual terms already agreed between Ryanair and its passengers.

The airline welcomed the decision and said that less than 1 per cent of its passengers pay this boarding card reissue penalty which, it said, applied “only in those rare cases where passengers fail to comply with their agreement, given at the time of booking, that they will web check in online before arriving at the departure airport”.

Ryanair's Daniel de Carvalho said it was his understanding that the ruling cannot be appealed. He said it removed “any confusion in Spain of the lawful nature of our boarding card reissue penalty”.

He said it was the first “of a number of bizarre lower court rulings in Barcelona which we expect will be overturned on appeal”.

He urged all Ryanair passengers to ensure that they check in online prior to arriving at their departure airport, in which case no boarding card reissue penalties would arise.