How £120 airline luggage fees spiralled out of control

Telegraph

a day ago

Have airline luggage fees gone too far? While anyone who's been within a mile of Stansted knows that budget airlines have steep baggage charges, the speed with which those fees have been escalating across Europe in recent years has been enough to give even experienced travellers a nasty surprise.
At least that's the view of the European Commission, which is proposing new legislation to get the likes of Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz Air to standardise their baggage rules. The move is being cheered on by consumer rights groups who have spent years complaining that airline luggage fees are unfair.
It's true that the red-tape enthusiasts in Brussels aren't known for their intelligent, pro-market approach. But on the other hand, there's no denying that the airlines have been taking liberties when it comes to their baggage charges – many of which have spiked several times since the pandemic.
Look at Ryanair, which has tweaked at least one of its baggage charges every year for the past four summers. The end result is that the maximum charge for storing a 10kg suitcase has gone from £23.99 to £44.99 – an 88 per cent jump – and the maximum fee for a 20kg checked bag has risen from £39.99 to £59.99. Meanwhile, bringing a larger bag for hand luggage could cost you as much as £36 (up from £20 just four years ago). Given that the fees are per flight, you'll need to double those numbers if you want to bring the bag back with you.
Because of how Ryanair's fees work – with the exact cost depending on the flight in question – it isn't easy to make a like-for-like comparison. But a quick search of some of the most popular routes this summer confirms that passengers are almost certainly paying more than they were before the pandemic.
Looking at a flight from Stansted to Santorini on June 27, for example, a 10kg check-in bag will cost £28.99 one-way. But we can see from archived versions of Ryanair's website that the maximum fee for that service was £23.99 until just three years ago – so there's absolutely no way someone would be paying that much.
Like the proverbial boiling frog, these bigger changes have happened bit by bit. In 2023, a 10kg bag was capped at £25 each way; in 2024, it increased to £29.99; this year, it jumped all the way to £44.99. In other words, if you've been thinking that your summer jaunt to Turkey has been going up in price in recent years, it probably isn't in your imagination.