The change should take effect starting from November 2025 and is meant to catch the 0.1% of travellers who don’t comply with the luggage rules.
Ryanair has a very strict luggage policy. Travellers who choose to travel with the strict minimum are allowed one ‘personal item’. For a long time, that one piece of hand luggage could measure 40 x 20 x 25 centimetres and weigh up to 10 kilograms, but those dimensions have recently been altered. As European airlines have agreed to adopt a new minimum size for cabin luggage, travellers can now bring a bag measuring 40 x 30 x 20 centimetres on their flight.
Those who want to bring more hand luggage while travelling can do so by opting for priority boarding, which allows them to bring a second bag on board. The added cost depends on the route and can amount to €60. However, when people try to board with an oversized piece of hand luggage, they may be obliged to pay a penalty of up to €60. The piece of luggage will then be placed in the hold.
In order to reward them for intercepting those oversized bags, ground staff at busy airports are already given a €1.5 bonus per bag with a cap of €80 per month. However, in an interview with the BBC, Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary has now announced that staff rewards will increase from the current €1.5 to €2.5 from November onwards. The monthly cap will be lifted, allowing staff to earn quite a bit of extra money per month, although the €2.5 bonus seems quite slow when compared to the €60 fine.
According to the CEO, while most people already comply with the rules, some 0.1% do not. Therefore, catching the 1 in 1,000 travellers who try to hide their luggage has become a priority.
“99.9% of Ryanair passengers comply with the bag rules, no issues. That 0.1%, we need to get rid of them. We need to get rid of those big bags. Everybody has to play by the rules, and then there’ll be no issues, but we are going to continue to catch more people”, Michael O’Leary told The Independent.
Faster boarding, more efficiency
The CEO added that while many passengers complain about the way their oversized luggage is handled, he makes no apology for it, as ground staff are meant to catch those who “scam the system”.
“The more we can do that and eliminate that, the faster the boarding will be, the quicker the turnarounds will be and the more efficient overall Ryanair will be – and we’ll keep passing on those efficiencies in the form of low fares”, he told The Independent.
Previously, O’Leary has spoken out against a proposal under consideration in the European Parliament which would require airlines to allow passengers to carry both a personal item and a small piece of hand luggage free of charge. According to the CEO, the measure would be physically impossible due to the limited space on board.
“We’re flying largely full flights, about half the passengers can bring two bags and the other half can only bring one – because that’s all that fits in the plane. We’re already struggling with that amount of baggage. That’s one of the reasons we are so aggressive about ‘eliminating the scourge of passengers with excess baggage,” he told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland earlier in 2025.
