RYANAIR HAS CUT its second free bag policy that it says is causing “boarding and flight delays”.

Up until now, Ryanair has allowed passengers to carry one cabin bag along with an additional small bag, such as a backpack or shopping bag for free.

However, the airline has announced it is to axe the scheme as “too many customers are availing of Ryanair’s two free carry-on bags service, and with high load factors, there is not enough overhead cabin space for this volume of carry-on bags”.

Ryanair said the high volume of carry-on bags is causing boarding and flight delays.

From 1 November, all non-priority customers will be asked to check their second bag – bags with wheels and anything bigger than 10kg – into the hold at the boarding gate. This will be free of charge, according to Ryanair.

Only priority boarding customers will be permitted to bring two carry-on bags on the aircraft. Priority boarding costs an additional €5 per person, per flight.

In addition to cancelling the scheme, Ryanair has increased check-in bag sizes from 15kg to 20kg “to encourage more customers to check in bags and reduce the number of customers with two bags at the boarding gates”.

The airline has also reduced the standard check-in bag fee from €35 to €25 for a 20kg bag.

Ryanair spokesperson Kenny Jacobs said the new bag policy changes will cost the airline more than €50 million per year in reduced checked bag fees.

“We believe offering bigger bags at reduced fees will encourage more customers to consider checking-in a bag, which will reduce the high volume of customers we have with two carry-on bags at the boarding gates, which is causing flight delays due to large numbers of gate bag and cabin bag offloads,” Jacobs said.

We hope that by restricting non-priority customers to one small carry-on bag, this will speed up the boarding of flights and eliminate flight delays being caused by not having sufficient overhead cabin space on busy flights to accommodate over 360 carry-on bags.

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